Sportive entry costs

To the OP - if you're in the north east, look at the Ryedale Rumble, Sept 2nd in North Yorks.

Last year's entry was £27 and included parking, pre-ride breakfast and coffee, gels, timing chip, fantastic food stops (pies! fruit! mars bars!) great routes(3), coffee, pasta, changing and showers at the end and a t-shirt.

That's good value I'd say.

Don't know how far you are prepared to travel but check out www.polocini.com.

All their sportives have a fixed price of £20 and this includes:

Porridge
Energy Gels
Hydration drink
Coffee
After ride meal of pasta.

Usually two well signed distances including at least a couple of decent climbs.

Did three last year myself and can't fault any of it.

Excellent value for money in my opinion.

I see the Mario Cipollini sportive (in Bristol) is only £100, bargain. Then again I guess it's something worth trying (smallish ride with a big name pro), you'd have to really want to meet the pro to pay 4x the price of a normal sportive though. Wonder how much they're paying MC himself...

Peterborough Cycling Club's first ever Sportive on 10th July, 2011 cost £10 in advance, £15 entry on the day

Over 100 riders had registered before the event and many others signed up on the day to ride on the perhaps the sunniest Sunday of 2011.

The ride generated interest from across the region and during the following days and weeks many positive and congratulatory e-mails were received commending the Club for its effort, organisation and, perhaps most importantly, the quality and content at the food-stops.

Plans are already afoot for 2012, due to “public” demand, to re-run the event.

Sportives!

Wow there seems to be a price hike on everything these days; including a day out cycling with other like minded people! Some of the entry fees do seem to be at a ridiculously high level! In my opinion they are money making and completely overpriced un-necessary profit making practises.

Bring back the organised club rides! Audax and buy a meal out.

I did the Tour of the Peak from Darley dale about 2 years ago. Can't recall entry fee but about £25-£30. A bunch from the club were going so went along. We knew some of the roads but some were a bit far away for a regular day ride. Food was mentioned at the finish but all I got was a dry bread roll! I was towards the back as our group stopped off in Glossop for a cafe stop. Some of the guys were the first back on the 100 miler and the promised thai food was already gone from the riders on the shorter loops. This was wrong as they knew how many were entered.

Audaxes cost about £5 to enter but you have to buy or provide your own food on the course. Sportive's you get fed plus a water bottle, t-shirt or something. In the end not a lot different in cost but I prefer an audax.

A couple of years ago I did the Etape Caledonia route a few days before the event (the one with the tacks) and it was a lovely route and virtually traffic free roads. Escape Bikes in Pitlochry have a map of the route. Personnaly I would prefer to ride on my own or with a few mates rather than be surrounded by hundreds of other riders. Each to his own though, we are all different.

Re the earlier comment regarding insurance, some UK organisers state it's the high cost of liability insurance that pushes up entry costs. However, most of this insurance is there to protect the organiser for liability if an incident were to occur to a participant or third party - I'd still make sure I have my own cover to protect my interests.

Ultimately it's down to if you enjoyed it or not.

Some people can happily go out and spend £60 on a night out, come home at the end of it very drunk and sick, They could also just sit at home with a bottle of spirits and spend a lot less for the same result.

Sportives are like the drinkers night out, although if you have the right friends/company then perhaps you can achieve the sportive experience for a lot less. Not everyone is lucky enough to have friends like that, but going out for a ride alone is not the same!

If it's a Big Day Out that you wouldn't otherwise do, and it comes good, then it's money reasonably well spent I think.

I'll not pay entry fees to ride roads I know with people I don't know, but foer various reasons paying a bit of money for an entry helps to get a group of friends together and committed to a big ride in their diaries, often seeig somewhere slightly different or taking a train ride that I'd not bother with if there wasn't an event.

The big money ones put me off because I just can't imagine the value being there on the day, but I'll pay those sorts of sums for entry to mountainbike events without batting an eyelid.

It's a tricky one, isn't it? But the fact is that the events charging £50-£60 really aren't that huge in number and the organisers running them feel under pressure to provide good value otherwise people won't come back year after year. Note for example that the Dragon Ride which had some complaints last year due to timer chips not working including mine still sold out in hours for 2012. Why? Because it was a great event to attend and ride and even if I had totted up the overall cost (+£60 petrol for starters) it was still a great day. Of course, I wouldn't do that every weekend because I could neither afford it nor get permission to be away all day every weekend even if I wanted to. A couple like that are the highlights of the year that you work up to with the remainder of cheaper or free rides slotted in around work, family commitments etc. It's all good. If you don't want to ride 'em, don't. If you want to travel all over the country to seek out every one, every weekend including all the international ones; that's good, too. Whatever works for your life. All I know is that organisers setting up their events on the road.cc What's On calendar has exploded and if that means there is more choice for more people then that can only be a good thing all round.

If your in the North East try the Northern Rock Cyclone in June 2012 - entry cost is £25. Well worth every penny (i did it last year and met a load of the Sky team as the British Champs were on the same weekend).

@monty - do you reckon the sportive organisers don't need to bother with getting the event insured then? The sportives I have entered, they don't make any kind of pre-condition that individual entrants have to have their own insurance, I had always kind of assumed that I'd be covered in some kind of event insurance.... but there again maybe not. (For me it doesn't really matter in any case since I am insured through BC.)

@joeegg - "cycling just for the affluent 50 somethings?". Well the experiences brought out in this thread certainly seem to be suggesting "sportives just for the affluent 50 somethings", but I wouldn't go as far as saying "cycling".

There are lots of events in Europe for 20 Euros and the only reason for UK fees is profiteering and too many gullible people prepared to put up with it. Insurance is spurious as you can get a years membership to BC, CTC which includes 12 months third party insurance for less than an entry fee. If I want to ride 150 mies in a day I can work out my own route with friends and have a slap- up lunch at a cafe of my choice. If I want to ride hard, I enter a race and know that most other riders are competent too and that marshalls keep traffic off the course.

I enter a few sportives, but the sportives I enjoy most are ones that aren't in my local area, cycling around countryside I would not normally ride on. I am not a member of a club, most of the clubs local to me expect a lot more than I can give, when I can only attend a sunday club run perhaps one or two weekends a month,I've tried audax but that's really not for me.

okay, so basically when we're talking about paying £60plus for a UK sportive we're expecting an experience on a par if not better than the Etape du Tour?

Does that match with the reality?

(I'm assuming here that the Etape du Tour is well organised.)

Have to say, I looked at the audax uk website last night and it does look kind of interesting. I've done a few 100k+ summer rides but to see rides that are 200k+ is pretty jaw-dropping. I wish I were 20 years younger...

Depending on how you enter Etape du tour it can range from £80-200 plus you add in the cost of getting there and somewhere to stay

For instance some charity's have got a team onto Act 1 and 2 next year, entry with them is only £99 but then you pay for everything yourself and also raise some cash for them

http://www.getkidsgoing.com/letape_du_tour.htm

Where as, if you go for a whole package, If you wanted to do Act 1 and 2 with the 3 nights half board and everything else, your talking the best part of £1500

http://www.frenchcyclingholidays.com/sport/etape.html

Etape du tour is around €100.

Audax is great, BTW. less than a tenner a go and generally organised and ridden by experienced, friendly and helpful folk. Gonna try for a 400km this year...

As mentioned above, it's merely symptomatic of cycling's popularity.

You could argue that a well run sportive, say £50-60 is no more extortionate than a Rapha jersey at £150 or carbon bike, wheels and components at £5000. You pays your money.

Most sportives have their origins in club runs/events and have been struggling to cope with the huge demand in recent years, I suspect this is why the private event companies have been moving in recently. Lots of local councils and tourism authorities have also been keen to jump on the bandwagon - which I fear marks the beginning of the end.

They can be hugely expensive to organise both time and money. You also must be very thick skinned to take one on - keeping a few thousand people happy and more importantly safe for the best part of a day over a huge geographical area is a huge undertaking and not to be taken lightly.

I hope the good, well run events with their hearts and roots in the right places do become established as those on the continent have.

Gkam, you mention insurance and that's a good point. As an individual I took out some public liability insurance which specifically excluded racing. if I wanted to race they would insure me but at a higher premium

The sportives I've entered, the organisers clearly point out that it is a sportive, not a race. (This despite them offering different medals depending on finish time.) One assumes that they're not pointing this out for the fun of it, but as a condition of their insurance.

Incidentally when I queried the cost of the Etape earlier I meant the Etape du Tour. I have no knowledge whatsoever of continental events, does anyone know how the prices stack up against uk events?

Sportive organisers are only responding to demand.

My suggestion:

Audax.

The Etape Cymru 2012 costs £55 as far as i know, The Etape Caledonia is £61 this year

There is one thing i think some people are missing, these things cost a bit to organise as they need certain permission's/insurance and license's to run them, I dont know how much they cost

The reason i only enter a few here and there is not based on money, but my ability to run upright for a certain time, I don't do sportive's over 50-70 miles as i'd not be able to complete unless its on my recumbent

A question - anyone know how much it costs to ride the Etape?