racing in the states

jkr said:

Hi, I am a female New Zealand roadie and I am wanting to race over in the States in 2006. I came over with the New Zealand team in 2005 and raced pretty well in Superweek in Wisconson. Next time I want to race in a team and stay over for a longer period of time. Does anybody know of anyone I could contact about this? Or know of any teams that might be looking for a hard working and decent rider?
thanks,
JKR

Post this over at Bikeforums.net

You'll definitely get more responses over there than around here.

Questions to address here, or if you post over at bikeforums:

Were you a member of the New Zealand National Team?

Also, how did you do at SuperWeek?

jkr said:

Hi, I am a female New Zealand roadie and I am wanting to race over in the States in 2006. I came over with the New Zealand team in 2005 and raced pretty well in Superweek in Wisconson. Next time I want to race in a team and stay over for a longer period of time. Does anybody know of anyone I could contact about this? Or know of any teams that might be looking for a hard working and decent rider?
thanks,
JKR

Wow, that sounds like quite a goal. A good place to start might be http://www.usacycling.org There is a page for UCI women's teams (http://www.usacycling.org/news/user/story.php?id=1991 ), which I am assuming would be the higher level womens teams here in the states. It doesn't give too much information, but there is a phone contact listed.
another resource might be http://www.womencyclists.com/

Do you need to pay your way with cycling or do you expect to have a job on the side or use savings? I understand that it can be pretty tough to find paying gigs in women's cycling in the US. I guess I am assuming that you are pro or at least cat 1 level.

I looked at the USCF rankings to see what some of the Pro Women's teams in the US might be (not all cat 1's are on Pro teams, so some of the teams that high ranked women are on may not be full time pro. We have a couple cat 1's on our team, but we are mostly a very amateur team lotsa cat 4's) and I saw T-Mobile of course, Webcore, Victory Brewing, Team Lipton (might be a U-23?), Colavita/Cooking Light, Quark Cycling, and Ford Basis. I am pretty sure all of these are pro teams.

Anyway good luck! Hope you can find a team to race with. If you have some more specific questions maybe I can put you in touch with one of the cat 1's on my team. They might have some good contacts/ suggestions.

Thanks heaps you guys. That is both a great help. I will get onto that now. Hope you are all having a great Christmas!

Jo