Illinois Moves Up Again

In 2009, Illinois moved from 14^th to 10^th
in the number of licensed riders in the USA.  In 2010 Illinois has moved up one more notch to 9^th place. Moving up five places in two years is
huge. Competive cycling in Illinois is
outpacing the rest of the country by a wide margin. You many wonder how this has happened. While we all might have some good guesses to
why this is happening here in Illinois, truthfully we really don’t know for
sure. Many of us have a favorite theory
and we’ve heard many of them. There are
a lot of people, clubs, race series,and others that probably get some of the credit.
Cycling at the local level is full of heroes and each one makes a
difference.

 Quantitatively, Illinois has had a net gain of 579 licensed riders over the past two years and those riders
know why they got into bike racing. They
can give us the best answers, and perhaps some of the answer could be that fewer people are giving up their licenses too.  Soon the
ICA will be sending you a survey to find out what those answers are. To receive that survey, please make sure you’ve
gone to your USA Cycling account and have checked the box to opt-in to
receiving Local Association emails. Once
the results are in, we’ll have some facts to back up the guesses as to why so
many people have been getting into bike racing lately.

Moving forward, the ICA wants to know what things we should
be doing to continue to improve competitive cycling in Illinois. So our survey will have questions that should
give us some answers. Is it finding ways
to do more road races, provide funding for more introductory clinics, or
provide more information on our web site? What other ideas do you have? We
want to know.

We also want to know who of you out there would like to get
more involved with helping completive cycling continue to grow and prosper. Would you like to become an official, or would
you like to provide content for our web site? Do you want to start a new race series, or would you like to work with
juniors? If you are interested in getting involved with growing the sport, we’d like to know what that is and how we can
help.

The survey will come to your inbox soon. Please check your settings on USA Cycling’s
web site so we can send the email to you.