Censored Thoughts Regarding Preferred Starts from the Chief of Registration
O2S 2010

The guidelines that follow have been put together so racers know the background of why a preferred start is granted or denied. Please be courteous whatever the decision is. If you don’t get a preferred start and want to get near the front, it is suggested that you arrive early and set up at the start just behind the preferred start corral. The competitive racer will easily be able to get into the mix from that point and the pack will sort itself out from there.

The guidelines are:

1. Our goal is to place the riders that will finish in the top 50 in the preferred start line up. Because this cuts out most of the fast women, we have also tried to get women with previous top ten results in the women overall category in the preferred lineup.

2.    Age class, single speed, tandem, or other class results are not considered for preferred starts. A person may place 1st or 2nd in their age group and come in 75th overall while a person in a different age group may come in 6th in the age group and 35th overall. This is the reason we need to use overall results.

4.    If you did not place in the top 50 in the Ore to Shore a race resume is needed so that we may determine if a preferred start is warranted.

5.    Please be specific as possible on your race resume. It is often difficult to determine what categories from other races mean and if the other races had riders of the same caliber as the Ore to Shore. Overall finishes in races comparable to the size of the Ore to Shore are what we are looking for. Extra points are awarded for a resume that tells us how long the race was, your overall finish, and how many riders there were in the race.

6.    Road race results are not given as much weight as those from mountain bike races. It is hard to judge how effective a person who rides mostly on the road would be in a mountain bike race like this so if two people are relatively equal, the person with the mountain bike races on their resume will get the nod.

7.  And finally, we hold out 99 numbers in each race for preferred starts and try to give out about 75 of those. It really is a very selective group. It is usually very hard to decide if someone makes the cut or not. Racers need to take this less as a personal slight, and remember there are a couple of miles of paced rollout. Line up near the front and have at it when the race starts. You have a lot of miles to make your case for next year.

8. Have an EPIC ride!
:)