• Explainer

Did Sue Haywood make more money by suing USA Cycling than Kristin Armstrong did winning Olympic gold?

by Charles Pelkey

• December 18, 2008
• Comments Off

Armstrong on the cover of VeloNews. So she’s got that going for her.

Photo: VeloNews

Dear Explainer,
How is it that Sue Haywood ended up making more money by missing the mountain bike race at the 2004 Olympics in Athens than it appears Kristin Armstrong has earned off of her gold medal from the time trial in Beijing this year?

It seems like something is a little skewed here.
Alan Johnson
St. Paul, Minnesota

Dear Alan,
Well, from our perspective, you are really asking two questions there. First, was the nearly $320,000 a federal court jury awarded to Haywood last month an appropriate outcome? Second, whether a gold-medal performance — particularly one turned in by a woman in a relatively obscure discipline — is rewarded appropriately. The first is a relatively easy question. The second deals with a much broader question of the disparities between men’s and women’s cycling. That’s a lot tougher.

As you might recall, Haywood sued after an arbitrator ruled in 2004 that while she had earned more UCI points than had her closest competitor, Mary McConneloug, USA Cycling had failed to report some of those points to the UCI. At first, 15 measly points from a race in Sand Point, Idaho, appeared like they wouldn’t make much of a difference, but they did. With the 15, Haywood had tallied a total of 1489 points over the year leading up to Olympic selection. That total gave her a one point advantage over McConneloug. Without them, she trailed by 14. As a result, it was McConneloug who represented the U.S. in Athens.

The interesting — and quite unusual — thing about the case, when it finally made it to court this year, was that the judge issued a summary judgment regarding liability in the case. In its simplest terms, the court found that the evidence was so overwhelming that the point counters at USA Cycling had screwed up that it wasn’t even an issue that would be presented to the jury. The only question the jury weighed was one of damages.

First off, the jury awarded Haywood around $18,000 for the costs she incurred chasing points and the legal expenses connected with that original arbitration. Those were easy numbers to tally. You can count up things you’ve already spent money on, like airline tickets and lawyers’ fees. The jury considered that and came up with $18,647.14. Easy enough. But then they had to ask how much Haywood’s missed Olympic opportunity was worth. That’s a hard question. They came up with $300,000.

As expected, USA Cycling has argued that the figure is too high and the award is being appealed. It could be some time before that appeal is heard and then some more time before the Court of Appeals issues a ruling. At this point — now more than four years after they put out the torch at Athens — Haywood has nothing.

In the meantime, Kristin Armstrong has a gold medal for a stellar ride on a tough time trial course in Beijing. She has, of course, earned a fair amount of attention for her gold medal performance, but has she parlayed that into the big bucks? Only she knows for sure.

Soon after winning the gold medal, Armstrong signed a deal with the United Dairymen of Idaho, endorsing chocolate milk as a terrific recovery drink. We don’t know the particulars of that deal, but suffice it to say, we’re guessing that the bottom line was probably considerably smaller than, say, Lance “No Relation” Armstrong’s endorsement deals with Nike.

That’s probably not an apt comparison, of course, but it does underscore the disparity between men’s and women’s cycling. There’s no real comparator, since the last American to stand atop an Olympic podium in the individual time trial was Tyler Hamilton, who encountered his own unique set of issues before he could capitalize on his win.

But we all know that cycling is not like professional tennis, for example, where the attention, prize money and endorsements tend to be roughly equal between the sexes. One visit to a women’s version of a “grand tour” will underscore the difference. Women’s cycling gets little attention in Europe. It gets only slightly more here in the U.S. We’re as guilty as anyone, given that at the height of the season, we end up sending our crew to the Giro and the Tour, doing that at the expense of the Giro d’Italia Femminile and the Grande Boucle Feminine.

Here in the U.S. what attention and excitement was generated dropped even more a few years ago when the race that gave Armstrong her start — Idaho’s Women’s Challenge — closed its doors because of problems finding sponsors. The racing was great, the fan support was remarkable for a race run through a sparsely populated Western state, but the money just wasn’t there.

Perhaps the ideal model was put forward back in the 1970s and ‘80s, by folks like Michael Aisner, who made certain that the Red Zinger and the Coors Classic had concurrent men’s and women’s events. It often resulted in full coverage of both and brought a lot more attention to women’s cycling than it would had the two events been held separately. The Tour of California had been planning to take a step in that direction in 2009, with the inclusion of a three-day women’s stage race, but those plans were scrapped and women will be offered only the opportunity to ride in a criterium in Santa Rosa.

Has Sue Haywood earned more than Kristin Armstrong? No, at this point she has not, but the appeals court may change that. Is it fair? Well, if there is an element of unfairness, we’d argue that it doesn’t rest with the jury decision.