The Hairgate Scandal

During the Tour of Page County, a road race finish line image was posted on FB by the officials, pointing out that the racing number of the rider in the image was partly obscured and the rider could not be identified.

As you can see hair is partly obscuring the number; lustrous, long, locks, mostly-straight, dark hair on a female in ABRT kit, wearing a blue and white helmet, silver or white shoes, riding a white and red S-works (Specialized) road bike with Edge Composites wheels.

Who could it be? How can this be resolved?

Well, there were five ABRT women registered and racing… Katy Giles, Ainhoa Perez-Diez, Amanda Watson, Sue "McSpeed" McQuiston and Nikki Raspa.

Hint: McSpeed is blond and rides an ABRT blue/white team colors Guru, Katy is a redhead and rides an ABRT blue/white team colors Guru, Ainho has quite short dark curly hair and wears a black helmet, and Amanda has curly brown hair, wears a white helmet, and rides a mostly black Specialized bike.

So … so that must be Nikki Raspa!!! :-)

The Wheelsucker is very pleased that he was able to solve this mystery for the officials ;-)

And it turns out there may be a cycling rule saying numbers cannot be obscured ... Nikki wore her hair inside the helmet for the other two stages and the Wheelsucker has added "haircut" to his to do list.

Oh, and that looks like a 153 to me. And 158 was not being used.