northbendmtb

@Golden-G: That's not how survival rates work. Survival rates are how many people survive after being diagnosed with a disease. By your definition you are also an AIDs and rectal cancer survivor. Congratulations

After reading through the requirements for world cup teams on the UCI website there are potential issues with employment. An Elite team must employ the riders on the team. Since Santa Cruz is a US team as listed on the UCI site that would seem to mean that she would need authorization to work in the USA to be on the Syndicate. This may not be an easy task in our cluster of a political environment and may have something to do with who they could sign.

@Loki87: I would love to know. Reading through the UCI rules on teams they are very particular about how the rider is compensated and that they are an employee of the team. An example is that if you sort through the UCI team search, no team that is located in Canada employs any riders that cannot automatically work in Canada.

@NinetySixBikes: There is another aspect to all this on the business side that I think may affect signings. UCI rules say that to be on a team you must be employed by the team. The Syndicate is a US team so its possible that to be on the team she would need a US work permit. I don't know for sure but if you look at the makeup of the factory teams a lot of them are built with riders that would be easily employable by the company created for the team. Obviously some of the teams employ people from other countries but just throwing out there that it may not be as easy to sign whoever you want without jumping through a lot of hoops.

As someone who helped start an all girls downhill racing team 5 years ago and currently helps manage it today, I can say that there are definitely girls who need some sort of structure and girl oriented support to get started in down hill racing. We provide training, race support, coaching at races, and all of that is necessary for some of the girls starting out in racing to have fun and succeed. Out of about 25 girls that have come through the program or are currently in it, I would say about one third did not need the all girls aspect, one third like it but would still be racing without it, and one third would not be racing DH today without it. Also there may not be much difference physically between a 10 year old boy and 10 year old girl, but the mental approach they take to racing and risk is very different.