Foundation grant fills money gap for cyclcross events in Fayetteville arkansasonline.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from arkansasonline.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Molly Rawn, CEO of Experience Fayetteville (Beth Hall)
A major bike race organizer’s pullout from next year’s world cyclocross championships in Fayetteville made headlines as an example of the backlash Arkansas faces because of new legislation on transgender minors. (See Transgender Laws Draw a Hot Spotlight).
The race director, Brooks Watts, who also withdrew from another Fayetteville race, this year’s UCI World Cup, prominently denounced the legislation on social media. He aimed particular outrage at Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s signing of a bill outlawing certain health treatments for transgender youth.
But Molly Rawn, CEO of Experience Fayetteville, the city’s regional tourism bureau that’s putting on the cyclocross championships, said local issues predating the legislation had contributed to a decision to cut ties with Watts’ company, Parkven Productions, before his April 21 state
VeloNews Senior Editor Betsy Welch contributed to this story.
Kristin Diamond saw storm clouds gathering over Arkansas back in February.
Diamond, who along with Brook Watts runs Parkven Productions, the operations group behind the 2022 UCI World Cyclocross Championships in Fayetteville, watched as lawmakers in Arkansas proposed three bills to limit the rights of transgendered people. Among the bills was HB1570, which denies transgender youth access to gender-affirming care.
“Call it what it is this is hateful legislation,” Diamond told
VeloNews. “It was pretty obvious before it even went to committee that it was going to pass. And it was very obvious to us that this was going to be an issue.”