As several dozen racers experienced early Monday morning in their race to register for the national championships in Kansas City, there was a technical problem that prevented racers with a valid USA Cycling mountain bike license from registering for the event. The registration process this year required the racer to have a valid USA Cycling license at the time of registration. Mountain bike licenses and road licenses have both been accepted at cyclocross events for many years. However, Dirk Cowley, CEO of SportsBase Online said there was a simple miscommunication between USA Cycling and SportsBase Online that resulted in anyone with only a (valid) mountain bike license to be rejected by the real-time check.
“USA Cycling never told us about that requirement, and we didn’t know to ask,” Cowley said. But after realizing the problem, his team was able to fix the problem “in two seconds,” but well after many mountain bikers had given up.
The upside is that SportBase Online’s system captured timestamps of when each person tried to register, and with this data, Cowley and his team have been trying to contact all affected riders and offer them their appropriate starting position. Racers were clearly angry with the initial snafu, but Cowley has since made a tremendous effort to make things right, and encourages anyone initially affected by this problem to contact him directly by phone at 1-801-942-9989.
(SportsBase Online is contracted by USA Cycling to manage all the national championships online and onsite registration as well as results management.)
