According to a Bloomington Velo-News tweet, 34 women's teams have registered for the 2010 Little 500.
You don't have to be much of a mathematician to know that number means not all the teams - if they all stay in existence - will qualify for this year's race.
In the 22-year history of the women's race, only once (2006) has a women's team failed to qualify for a race due to a full field. That dubious distinction belongs to Gamma Phi, which botched a bike exchange on its 4th qualification attempt.
This year could see a second team join Gamma Phi on that list.
In contrast, the 2009 qualifications were anything but competitive for the final spots. Team Lioness, after failing to qualify in its three allotted attempts (all botched exchanges), was granted a 4th attempt because the field was not yet full. The team coasted - or crept - to a qualifying time of 3:50, 21 seconds behind the 30th and second-to-last qualifier.
There won't be any coasting to a spot in the 2010 race.
Other notes
- I was going to take a look at women's quals results from previous years (including 2006), but IUSF is either re-working its Web site (hopefully) or has removed the race archives from its page. I'm trying to track down all those wonderful archives.
- On an unrelated note, an independent film company plans to shoot a reality show based around the women's Little 500 for the 2011 race. There's not too many details yet, but the company was seeking interested female riders this year to interview and to grant spots for next year's show. I honestly don't know much more than that.
