The following thoughts are my own unless otherwise quoted or linked.

When I raced at the Sea Otter Classic two years ago, one of the announcers thought it necessary to mention going to strip clubs and getting in trouble with their wives during the Pro Women’s Criterium. They were too busy talking about other things to notice the break being caught (the main group caught up to the women in the lead) in the race.

This year during the Dual Slalom competition at Sea Otter announcer Larry Longo made a joke about Leigh Donovan “coming off the couch” after being a mother and still racing well. In a post race interview she quickly corrected him and informed him that she worked and trained super hard and not to downplay the time and energy she put into preparing for her race because it was not just an insult to her, it also belittled the hard work of the other women in the field. He did go on to apologize for the remarks. The fact that he did it in the first place reminded folks that Larry Longo was fired earlier this year for making sexist remarks at Jingle Cross only to be given the opportunity to do it again at Sea Otter.

I’m not a fan of cancel culture, but I also think there needs to be consequences if you’re a repeat offender. It’s an insult to the women who show up to race their hearts out if they arrive to see a person who has diminished them in the past.

Sea Otter was a huge event with lots of races and one thing that stood out was the consistency in unnecessary comments from many of the announcers. Comments like the one mentioned above and others like “[you] better learn to get along you have a long race ahead of you" ahead of the women’s XC race and "raging testosterone battle" ahead of the Pro Men’s circuit.

Needless to say, by Sunday morning I was fed up when I was waiting for my friend to finish the XC race and tweeted about this: