Racing Into the Future

Women cyclists will vie for same prize payout as men at 2015 Dana Point Grand Prix

By Steve Breazeale

Kendall Ryan remembers last year’s starting lines.

There were a decent number of professional women criterium cyclists lining up alongside her, clicking in their pedals and gearing up for a race. The bigger races with larger payouts always drew more cyclists.

This year, when Ryan, 22, looks around at her fellow competitors, even when it’s not a premier event on the USA Cycling National Criterium Calendar, the lines of racers are deeper and loaded with talent, a sign that the stakes in women’s professional racing have been raised considerably.

At the start of the 2015 season, USA Cycling issued a directive to all NCC race organizers that read: “You must have both men’s and women’s pro races, there must be a minimum of $12,000 for single-day events for men and women and there must be equal prize purses for both.”

The edict only takes up four lines of the new NCC requirements and procedures manual for 2015, but for many racers, like Ryan, those four lines mean progress and inclusion.

Professional male and female NCC riders will now be paid the same, unlike in years past when the men’s division received the lion’s share of the prize purse while the women battled it out for sometimes fractions of what their male counterparts earned.

“Girls are coming out of the woodwork now just to do these races that have a lot of money,” Ryan, the reigning USA Cycling Professional Criterium National Champion, said. “There’s so much more reward for all this effort that we’re going through and it’s really motivating for sure. We feel like we’re being taken seriously too.”

The NCC season is young and the 2015 Dana Point Grand Prix of Cycling on May 3 will be the second stop on the circuit.

The Dana Point Grand Prix quickly became a major player on the NCC when it debuted in 2007, given its large purse and notoriously fast but scenic layout that whips riders through the Lantern District of downtown Dana Point. The race had an NCC pro women’s event that ran from 2009 to 2010, but due to lack of numbers and sponsorship money, the race was discontinued. According to DPGP executive director Russell Ames, multiple high-profile women’s events throughout the country suffered a similar fate.

When the USA Cycling ruling regarding equal pay was issued, DPGP organizers embraced the change and decided to include a top-flight NCC women’s pro race in 2015.

“We had a choice, whether we were going to continue to be a part of the NCC or decide to just take a step down and become a regional event,” Ames said. “That’s when the board of directors decided to bite the bullet and say let’s go all in … We’re looking at the long-term plan, which is to grow women’s cycling here in Southern California. We want to use the Dana Point Grand Prix as the benchmark.”

Ames said there are 70 riders slated to compete in the NCC women’s professional race on May 3. Ryan, a rising star in the sport, will headline the field.

The DPGP is known as one of the larger, more lucrative regional races for professional men. Last year’s prize purse totaled $15,000. There was no official professional women’s division, and the top-flight category race paid out $1,000.

The total prize purse at the 2015 DPGP will be $24,000, with $12,000 up for grabs in both the men’s and women’s divisions.

Ryan has already felt a positive financial impact as a result of the new USA Cycling ruling. She earned $3,000 for a second-place finish at the Novant Health Invitational Criterium in Charlotte, N.C. on April 11. When she won the prestigious USA Cycling Professional Criterium National Championships one week later, she took home $2,000. Ryan said in years past she would have taken home about half that amount of money for her efforts.

San Clemente resident Bonnie Breeze, 49, raced professionally in a different era. Breeze, who now works for the Tustin Police Department, raced in the late 1980s through the ’90s, when professional women cyclists sometimes had to work part-time in order to sustain, and fund, their racing careers.

When Breeze was making a living as a racer, only the top echelon of women’s riders could secure a spot on a team with enough sponsorship money to pay for traveling, making it slightly easier to compete full time. Breeze said the rest of the professional racers, which is to say a majority of them, had to make do.

If there was a first-place offering of $1,000, Breeze said it was circled on her schedule as a major event.

When hearing the news of the equal pay ruling, Breeze said with a laugh, “That’s fabulous, I wish they had that back in my day. I would have loved that.”

Breeze, the DPGP 2008 Masters State Championship 35+ winner, will be in the professional field at this year’s installment of the race riding with Team Holliday Rock p/b Zoca Gear.

This year’s DPGP, along with the rest of the NCC races, have given racers like Ryan more motivation. The stakes will be higher, the intensity raised and the starting lines bustling with women racers ready to compete.

“Having a lot more money on the line makes it very interesting,” Ryan said. “A lot of people show up that are legit and have a lot of experience … $12,000 on the line? Yeah, we’re going to make it out.”