Yup, BMX is going to save Canadian cycling!!!!

Fausto Coppied

JM01

Pfffftttt....

perhaps you're looking in the wrong places...a friend recently finished the TransRockies, 600km, 7 days in the hills, it sold out again, 750 started, a little over 500 finished (he came in 31/83 in his group)

Last week the 24 hour at Albion sold out (another friend came in 4'th in his group)...the recent 8 Hour and O-Cup races sold out as well

also, the annual Squeezer has over 3000 riders

Our sport is growing...and we don't need to dope up like them roadies

http://www.transrockies.com/transrockies/index.html

http://www.chicoracing.com/html/index.php

http://www.libertybicycles.com/squeezer/

Geez

Fausto Coppied

Sold out, huh....

Let me guess, you PAID an exhorbitant registration to PARTICIPATE in this popular mass event.

You were unsponsored.

There were few if any teams entered in the event.

Few if any riders were sponsored.

There was very little if any media attention.

If there weer any prizes irt was amterial donated by bikes shops or the like.

The sport is NOT growing. The sport has shrunk tragically in the last 15 to 20 years.

The type of events you are describing further serve to marginalize the sport and nothing more.

I'm familar with Chico Racing and have known Adam Ruppel for maybe 20 years. We sat beside each other at Gord Fraser's retirement pary last December in Ottawa.

Sorry, I hate to burst your bubble with a dose of reality.
When you see male pro teams racing again downtown in a major metropolitan area please let me know. All the rest is window dressing, side dishes to the roast beef.

JM01

I guess it depends on your definition of "sport"...a group of roadies in spandex dressed up to look like dessert trays probably explains why some aspects of biking are shrinking...

...Sponsors and prizes are just fluff

I ride in the Collingwood area, both road and XC, ride the 100km route followed by the Tour de Creemore as well as 3-Stage, Kolapore, and others (I have +60km of trails 5 minutes from my back door) and am amazed how many now ride up here...many more than just a few years ago

Lot more kids as well...Collingwood even opened a BMX/DJ park in town

Chico run great events...the entry fees are well worth the effort and organization they bring to our sport...even the weekly Tuesday races at Albion are well attended

Jasmineminor

Cycling is doing just fine. More people are on their bikes than ever,

We now have off road and all its iterations: XC, DH, freeride etc. Whistler on any given day in the summer is booked solid and the lifts are constanly shuttling riders up the mountains. Endurance events: Trans rockies, Ruta, Trans Alps and 24 hour races are booked up full well in advance.

BMX is now an Olympic sport. New BMX venues are sprouting up all over. Canada hosted the BMX worlds in 2007!!!!

The cycling public has spoken and they are moving in new directions.

Only ELITE Road and track seem to be in some difficulty. Maybe it is the old fashioned ideas of old farts like M. Arzouian that are the root cause of its demise. NOTHING is or can remain the same as it was 25 years ago. You must embrace change. If not you destin it to be a dinosaur and therefore doomed to extinction.

JM01

Or, as the Taoists say:

"You eventually become what you hate"

Fausto Coppied

All you have done is further marginalize the sport.

It is like having only pick-up hockey teams instead of the NHL.

You have fewer sponsors and lower calibre of athletes.

Elite cycling is what the the media and the fans want to see.

You wannabees can putz around on weekends and think all is well.

It is not.

JM01

if this were true, then you'd be seeing a lot more of it

Seriously, I'm not aware of any demand to see bike races, anywhere here...including MTB. The few extreme bike programs that were televised several years ago are now off the air...I don't recall any road bike programs

Even the TdeF got a yawn, except for scandals

It's tough to promote a sport when nobody is interested...

So we soldier on, riding for the fun of it

Fausto Coppied

Sad to hear cyclist panning their own sport, no wonder the sport is doing so poorly in Canada.

There is a demand to see the sport in many places, including the US. The Tour de France coverage got good numbers. It had numerous sponsors including Cervelo of Canada. Even 2003 World Road Championships in Hamilton, ON got about 100,000 spectators for the Elite race and that with all the mistakes the organizers made in promoting and marketing the event. The USA Pro championships in Phily get 200,000 to 400,000 depending upon the year and the weather. Races in San Francisco Georgia, Chicago do as well.

Had you bothered to watch you would have seen huge crowds in England for the Tour and also huge crowds in France, the mountian stages had more people than in recent years.


Of course, if a person doesn't know anything about the sport as did Kim Sebrango formerly in marketing at the CCA or like Lorraine Lafreniere currently at the CCA of course it is much more difficultl to sell. If you have no passion or no experience with sport it shows.

JM01

Who knew?

Somehow, waiting at the side of a road to see a group of cyclists ride by, and then going home, has very little appeal to me.

Same reason that I don't watch car races (yet I drive), ski races (i'm a skiier), and marathons (yep...I run too). I tried watching golf once...not a great spectator sport.

Anyway, I'm not panning my sport, just commenting on the lack of interest in the races. Last Toronto race, I recall, was cancelled because of the difference in prize money offered to the men and women

But...my wife just quit her job, starts her new one in two weeks, I'm heading up north and hitting the trails for a while

Fausto Coppied

You seem to have very little comprehension of a what a real race entails.


At the Tour de France there are all kinds of things happenning on the road for hours before the riders pass. You can get all kinds of stuff thrown at you. Furthermore, in the mountain stages you will see riders go by for an hour or so.

In Europe many people who watch cycling have never competed themselves and do not ride bikes, they just like the sport like hockey fans or baseball fans here, many of them never played they just like the games.

You seem to have no interest in watching sports in general. I can understand that I usual prefer to participate or go for a ride myself rather than watch TV but many people do watch. Geez,golf!!! People watch that for hours.

As for the race in Toronto being cancelled because of that prize money issue you have Laura Robinson and Pedal Magazine to thank for thier useless and stupid by-law apparently still on the books in Toronto. The dumb by-law basically killed the competitve side of the sport in Toronto and almost the whole province as a results.

holli

Those endurance events, 24h rides and trans rockies or trans alps aren't very much if looking at things from sporting side of cycling. Maybe after couple of years those might become competitive, but at the moment those are as beneficial to cycling as some adventure races. For bicycle industry those events are very good though. I've never heard anyone claim that these "fitness races" would be future of cycling. They might be future of cycling as cycling community is getting older and competitive aspect of cycling becomes less important for older people.

DJ/BMX scene...booming and the future of cycling? Yes it's pretty big, but this side of cycling isn't even close to sport. If DJ/BMX is sport then skateboarding is sport as well and masturbating is the same as making love. There's an easy buck in DJ/BMX though so that will help. BMX racing is more of a sport though but it seems to be less appealing to kids than 100km time trials.

Mountain biking is pretty fun though. I even did one race couple of weeks ago after five years off the trails. It was so much fun that I need to get a MTB for next summer and maybe even try my speed in Canada Cup. MTB should be pretty good training for road too.

And TDF is huge. Spring classics are huge. Worlds is huge. Even junior world cup races are pretty darn big. Not in a way that there's tons of older recreational riders "racing" but there are thousands or even millions of people watching. Even my grandparents watch cycling on Eurosport. Someone might not be very interested in watching cycling and that's ok as for exaple I don't like to watch CFL at all and I think it's the most pathetic "league" ever.

Here's some video from one marathon race which is UCI XCM 1 race where recreational riders start after racers. This might be much better for sport rather than cashing out on expense of weekend warriors. http://213.35.156.10/etv/16092007_t...attamaraton.wmv


Is there some rule that women and men should get the same price money? So 50-100 men and 10-20 women should be racing for the same pricemoney? That's stupid.

__________________
Pain is just weakness leaving the body.

Fausto Coppied

Holli, congratulations, you made me laugh!


That was an excellent line, "DJ/BMX scene...booming and the future of cycling? Yes it's pretty big, but this side of cycling isn't even close to sport. If DJ/BMX is sport then skateboarding is sport as well and masturbating is the same as making love. There's an easy buck in DJ/BMX though so that will help."

JM01

Well put...but speaking with the LBS's I deal with, the future of biking appears to be road, hybrid, or even cyclecross...the aging population won't be hucking much longer...

But still, I'm 57, wife is 55 and we're on our MTB's in Collingwood every weekend (outriding most of the kids), but then we do a lot of asphalt as well

However, I can't see the point of watching bike races...reminds me of the time a client took me to the Molson Indy...great seats, and every few seconds a car zipped by...big deal

I'd compare watching a bike race as opposed to riding a bike to watching a porn flick to making love

Also, to Marylin Churley's law...why should women not have the same prize money as men?