Victoria summer road racing

luke1972

Hi,

I am trying to organise some summer road racing in Melbourne. I have been told not to do it because it might clash with some track race that attracts 5 riders. Can anyone explain why we do not have road racing in summer? Should we abandon the idea because track racing is in summer? I tried track racing last summer and liked it but the fact remains that there is probably only a couple of hundred trackies in Victoria. Criterium racing attracts hundreds of riders per day at some events. Would people prefer to race the same crit every week for 30 weeks? Would they race track if they had the chance? Would they like to see summer road racing?

At the moment our road calendar goes from May to October. In May we have 120+ riders and we loose 10 per week. By October we have 20 riders max.

All ideas welcome.

PS I have sponsorship arranged for a 2 day tour in summer in country Victoria, but the clubs in the area do not want it to go ahead because of a potenial clash with a track race!!

luke1972

36,000 post re road racing on this site. 294 re track racing.

patch70

I am assuming you have checked the various club websites for their summer racing calenders. A few clubs do midweek crit races.
The cyclesport vic website has a link to all the local clubs:
http://www.viccycle.com.au/Clubs/clublinks.htm

luke1972

Yes but who does summer ROAD racing (not crits)

fondy2004

What kind of numnut are you? This is the whole problem with cycling in australia now. People think that road racing is crits!!!

You dumbasses, crits are when you ride round and round in circles for an hour. Road racing is what they do everywhere else in Europe and the world in summer. Road racing here is when 20 or so people race on the road in pissing rain, wind and freezing cold.

I am sure Luke1972 knows where to find crits

fondy2004

What kind of numnut are you? This is the whole problem with cycling in australia now. People think that road racing is crits!!!

You dumbasses, crits are when you ride round and round in circles for an hour. Road racing is what they do everywhere else in Europe and the world in summer. Road racing here is when 20 or so people race on the road in pissing rain, wind and freezing cold.

I am sure Luke1972 knows where to find crits

patch70

Given the choice between doing crits and doing no racing at all, I'll take the crits.

I am aware of the difference and I apologise if I was telling Luke1972 something he already knows.

patch70

On a slightly different note, Victoria seems to have in the winter road racing at least quite a few races that start and finish in different locations making a support person generally necessary. Is this different in other states?

luke1972

Melbourne to Warrnambool, Shepparton and Ballarat are the only races I can think of that start finish in different places. I would not want to do laps of Warrnambool

Grafton to Inverall in NSW is the same (different start/finish), do not know about other NSW races though.

Do you not do these races because of different start/finish? If so ask your club to supply some support for you to get back to the finish. If they cannot do this, join another club that will. Personally I like starting/finishing in a different spot.

sreed

Hi luke 1972

I agree it's completely stupid that the entire summer is dominated by crits or track racing.
I think it just needs some people to start pushing out on the road and then maybe the clubs will listen instead of doing the same as last season (and the one before and the one before etc)!. Maybe the better bike shops ( SBR, PRO-MOTION, TFM, Fitzroy etc) might get behind your 2 day tour with age graded teams of two or three riders competing for something which provides some exposure and profile for the shops as well as the riders.

E-mail me if you want to pursue getting summer mooooving

steve r

luke1972

Hi Steve,

Good to see there is another person willing to be excommunicated for running road racing in summer. The sponsors are geeeeed for action in February. I drove 400km on the week end to approach sponsors and everyone I approached agreed in principle to sponsor the race. Bumped into a local racer who said he would stand on a corner (with the rest of the family), he was so excited he went home and told his club president who rang me up and abused me for trying to organise the event. That said the riders (not the executive) are all keen to support the event. You did not leave me your email address, so you can contact me on coburgcyclingclub@hotmail.com

PS I have been thinking of running a "team" event with bike shops putting money in for winner takes all (inc perpetual trophy for "champion shop" or something cheesy like that).

:-) Luke

sreed

Luke My email address is sreed@skm.com.au I wonder how difficult it is to get air time on channel 31 (TV) all the ethnic groups seem to manage it I wonder if road racing could do it too

steve r

patch70

Regarding TV coverage of road racing, channel 10 had the option of covering the Herald-Sun Tour at essentially no cost to them (ie the tour organizers were offering to cover ~all costs). They decided it was still too expensive for them as nobody was interested.

luke1972

Last stage of the Tour down under next year will be shown live on Channel 10 Australia wide, in SA they show 30min highlights each evening. TDU attracts 70,000 spectators to the stages, Sun Tour attracts more flies than spectators, hence no TV station would want to touch it.

PS TDU is run in summer and attacts Zabel, Boonen, all the top Aussies, ONCE, CA, Saeco, AGR, Telecom, FDJ,etc.

Why doesn't the Sun Tour run a week before/after the TDU? Why doesn't the Bay Series extend to become the Sun Tour (since it is half crits now anyway?) Would be nice to have some sun at the Sun Tour.

:-) Luke