Hood to Coast Relay: women left out of overall results

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The Hood to Coast Relay describes itself as the “Mother of All Relays,” yet it didn’t include a women’s awards category in the initial awards presentation. 

The race is an overnight, long-distance relay that runs from Timberline Lodge at the base of Mount Hood to Seaside Beach on the Oregon coast. This weekend was the 37th annual running of the event. The course is approximately 320 kilometres long, and has sold out on opening day of registration for 19 years in a row. 

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Team Goats N’ Roses was the first all-female team across the line. They finished 12th out of 1,032 teams, and completed the race in 21 hours and three minutes, averaging 3:56 per kilometre. The twelve-woman team included: Marianne Falk, Jessie Vickers, Emily Pritt, Madeleine Davidson, Heather Laptalo, Susie Rivard, Francesa DeLuca, Danielle Lohr, Fiona Fallon, Jill Czarnik, Megan Carson and Carissa Galloway. 

This is a very elite squad. Pritt was on the 2016 U.S. World Cross-Country team, Rivard was 20th in Berlin in 2016, and many of the women are former NCAA full-scholarship athletes. Madeleine Davidson of Toronto ran for the University of Louisville and Boston College while in school. The national class runner continues to race, primarily on the track.

Davidson says, “The event was twelve different women, over very hilly terrain, in the middle of the night. In the relay and ultra-running scene this is known as a ‘dream race’ or ‘goal race.’ It’s really, really hard to even get into this race. This was a goal race of mine, and my dream was always to run with an all-women’s team. We have tons of male friends we could recruit to run a faster time. But it was always the goal to do this with an all-women’s team.”

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Team captain Susie Rivard has run the event seven times, three times on all-women’s teams. Rivard’s all-women’s teams have won every year, but she had never stayed for the awards ceremony that follows the race, until this year.  “It’s such an expensive thing overall, we’ve never been able to stay. However, we were lucky enough to get a sponsorship this year, Backcountry.com, so we stayed.”

The event’s website lists a special awards ceremony on the Friday evening. The site says, “Saturday at 5:25pm, the OVERALL HTC & PTC WINNING TEAMS will be announced and honored.” The Goats ‘N Roses team were under the impression that they would be included in the results as the overall female winners. Davidson said, “It’s not a busy ceremony on Saturday. We waited together in our matching jackets. None of the teams who were recognized stayed to get their award, but we did.”

Davidson continues, “Once we realized that they had finished announcing, we started yelling “What about the women?” And the announcer reported back, ‘I’m just calling out what’s on the sheet.'”

After that, Davidson and some teammates approached the race founder and director Bob Foote. When the women asked about why their results weren’t announced, Foote reportedly said, “Go talk to someone who cares.”

My #hoodtocoast2018 team was 12th out of 1032 teams & the top women’s team overall. At the Awards Ceremony, the top walking, HS and men’s teams were awarded trophies. When we asked why women’s weren’t announced we were told by RD Bob Foote, “Go talk to someone who cares” WOW pic.twitter.com/Lciea28gg9

— Emily Pritt (@Emily_Pritt) August 26, 2018

Daivdson felt that it minimized what the women did as a team together. “Just because women can’t physically run as fast as men, it totally minimized all the work we did. It minimized the training work, the planning, and the financial resources we devoted to being involved in this race. This truly isn’t just about us. It’s not about the awards, all of us are really accomplished runners. Many of us have finished high placings in world major marathons, and are all high recognized national athletes. It’s what it represents within all of this.” 

Davidson also wants to stress that the men’s elite teams have been very supportive throughout the weekend. “We’ve received nothing but support from the elite men’s teams. We know these top men’s teams personally. This is not a reflection of the other male participants. This is a reflection of the race itself.”

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Dan Floyd is the company’s Chief Operations Officer. He insists that things will be different at their events going forward. “We’ve always done the very brief ceremony Saturday evening, and a longer one Sunday morning. Sunday morning we do the category awards, which are extensive–everything from high school age to masters, male and female. In all of our races we’re 70 per cent female, usually the women either win the races or they’re top three. This year, there were so many teams and they were highly competitive, so the top three teams were male. What we should have done is added a category that was all-female. We’re working on apologizing, and moving forward we will ensure there is always a women’s category in the overall awards.”

When asked about the comments from the founder, Floyd says, “I was within sight but not within earshot. But it doesn’t matter what I heard, I take the women at their word. If that’s what was said, it’s totally inappropriate, and rude, and it won’t happen again. They deserve better.”

Floyd assures that Foote’s daughter, Felicia Hubber, will represent the company going forward. “She’s been a part of this for years. Moving forward, because of this, she will become the face of the organization.”

The company had already implemented changes. In the results email following Hood to Coast, the women’s results were included first in the email. The email also included male, female, and open results in the walking and high school categories, not just first across the line.

Update from August 31, 2018: Representatives from the Hood to Coast team Goats N Roses met with Felicia and Jude Hubber, the new Chairperson and CEO of Hood to Coast. Both provided sincere apologies for what happened on the weekend on the 24th. The group discussed several actions to be taken going forward, and if these changes are realized, the Goats N Roses team will participate in the relay next year.