In article , Bob Schwartz
wrote:

Bill C wrote:
I think Casey is right in that it takes a
long term consistant effort to be taken as something other than a
sideshow, and delivering results and a press release in a timely
fashion are definitely a big part of that.


You guys really think so?

Don't get me wrong, getting results to the paper is important.
It's important to the riders because recognition is important.
Especially for kids.

But what sort of visibility do you think this provides outside
of personal friends of the riders? Let me put it this way.
Does your local paper publish bowling scores? Has that ever
drawn you to the lanes?

Hell, I know my local paper does and after years of reading
the rag I couldn't tell you what leagues or nights get in.

I've managed to seed a couple of stories in a regional
outdoors TV program, and I very much doubt that outside of
the home towns of the riders involved no one remembers them.

I don't think that having race results published in the local paper
will help recruit a lot of new racers. It does help maintain the
visability of the sport and having results printed in the sports pages
helps better establish bicycle racing as a sport in the mind of the
average American.

As I said before we need program that help introduce new racers to the
sport when someone decides to give bicycle racing a try. Last year I
did a survey of newly licensed riders in my region. By far most of
these new racers got into the sport based on the suggestion of friends,
riding partners and club members. Word of mouth is by far the best
recruitment tool for new racers based on my survey results. This means
that USAC should think about some kind of refer a friend type program
where an existing USAC member can get $1 or $2 off their next license
for every new racer that sign up for a license on the USAC web page and
enters the refering rider's license number on the license application.
This might give some riders an incentive to talk to strong riders they
meet out on training rides instead of just trying to drop them and be
generallly unfriendly.