by Mike Green
For the past few years the Lou Maltese Memorial Race has featured a Junior/Espoir race, but with Junior Nationals scheduled for the same day we had to come up with an alternative plan. The popularity of the CRCA Team Cup series and a conversation with Craig Cook about his experiences racing in France got me thinking about doing a Team Invitational Race. In races in France Craig said the focus is on team scoring and team prizes. Races are scored like a cross- country running race. First place gets 1 point, second 2 etc. The team with the low score wins. We modified the scoring method to include only the first 20 riders with designated points for each place.
The CRCA Team Cup was started by John Eustice to teach team racing tactics. The Invitational looks to do this as well as try to build friendly rivalries between the teams in the region. I remember Mike Fraysse talking about how essential teams are to the sport , Teams give the sport the necessary cohesiveness and strength so we thought we’ll give them a bigger platform than individual competition for this race.
I’m not sure what to expect as far as race tactics but it’s going to be a different type of race. Teams have to figure out a strategy to either get a few guys placing very high or scoring more riders. I haven’t calculated the different combinations of points, does placing 5th 8th and 10th beat 2nd, 12th and 23rd? But I’m sure some of the technical whizzes will be working on this overtime. (Points system here)
We needed to get special USCF permission to hold an invitational race, so I appreciate Judy Miller’s cooperation in allowing us to try this experiment. I hope doing something different adds excitement and energy to the racing season.
We’ll have a field of 15 teams with 6 riders per team. Team response has been great. So far Fastar/Tagetraining, Deno’s Wonder Wheel, Champion Systems, Kissena, Westwood Velo and Blue Ribbon have registered. In the weeks leading up to the July 8 race date, we’ll be featuring profiles of the different teams.