The organizer of the event, John Large, personally invited me to the party.Jasmineminor said:
Who invited you?
I didn't see your name (nobody did since you hide behind an alias by choice) in the Pedal Magazine write up. Mine, Ed Arzouian, was there.
Glad you finally agree with me that Bill Kinash was useless, "Bill K was so ineffective anyway. Probably better he was not there."
As for the VeloNews, pieces what do you find so wrong with them? Pierre Hutsebaut approved them, Norm Miller Director of Communication approved them, Charles Pelkey of Velonews approved thenm and ran them. What has VeloNews printed of yours?
Anybody that to re-read them can do so and judge for themselves. The pieces stand up really well on their own even foru years later. Thye wewre the only go dmedia the evetn was getting.
http://www.velonews.com/news/fea/4095.0.html
http://www.velonews.com/news/fea/3836.0.html
Go to VeloNews and type in my name you can find them all, six or seven lengthy blogs.
I particlualrly like the media one
http://www.velonews.com/news/fea/3989.0.html
Getting ready for the World: Good press; bad press; no press
By Ed Arzouian
Competition Coordinator, Hamilton 2003
This report filed May 26, 2003
[size=-1]Blessed are the cyclists, for they shall never get positive commercial press.
"The Race Bible" -
Book of Ed,
Chapter 12, Verse 3
[/size][size=-1]We interrupt our regularly scheduled technical talk to bring your this important news at Hamilton 2003: We just got another 1.25 million Canadian dollars. Since our CDN dollar is now over the 73-cent U.S. mark, this starts to be real money.[/size]
;)
Is this the most recent cycling picture to be printed in a Toronto newspaper? Sometimes it seems like it
[size=-1]VeloNews readers are indeed a privileged group because the news of this influx of cash to our organization is a well-kept secret, especially in Toronto, about 60km away. That this would be the case is very strange, though no longer surprising - at least not to me. The money we received came from the Trillium Foundation, which is a $100 million charitable arts and culture trust endowed by funds from the casino and gambling licensed in the province of Ontario.[/size]
[size=-1]Of course, when I say "we" I don't mean that I get my grubby hands on that ... at least directly. I really mean the Hamilton 2003 Festival organization.[/size]
[size=-1]Powwows, pomp and ceremony
You see, in addition to the sport side of the weeklong events taking place in Hamilton for the World Road Championships, there is also an entertainment and culture aspect to keep visitors and tourists busy, amused and out of trouble in the evening on Hamilton's streets. Among some of the things the festival organizers are doing is a big opening ceremony at Copps Coliseum with a headlining artist (still a secret), a 250km corporate Spinning challenge for the United Way, a First Nations Powwow (Europeans still marvel at that), concerts, gastronomic street festivals and the like.[/size]
[size=-1]Hey, it's not only about the bike, right?[/size]
[size=-1]So we get another million and quarter. It turns out this is the biggest donation ever handed out by the Trillium Foundation. Remember this foundation is a province-wide organization. (For our geographically challenged readers, a province is like a "state," only a lot bigger.)[/size]
[size=-1]So, you might think that might interest the media in Toronto with its four daily newspapers that are read province-wide. Especially you would think that since The Globe and Mail went out of its way earlier in the year to highlight what it considered to be the financial problems of Hamilton 2003, that they would report this good news in the journalistic spirit of, say, balance and fairness.[/size]
[size=-1]Well, you would be wrong.[/size]
[size=-1]The Globe and Mail, along with every other Toronto daily newspaper, basically ignored the news (somebody was able to find three lines forming almost one paragraph in a brief, but they must have been reading very carefully because I didn't see it. Maybe it only made one edition?). And we had such a nice press conference, too. It was a classy affair at the Hamilton Sheraton, our official race hotel, with the mayor, bagpipes, Highland dancing, caricature and landscape artists working, and even the sultry performance of a torch song for a finale by a Hamilton woman seemingly far too young to be singing such things.[/size]
[size=-1]As I mentioned earlier, this omission is not too surprising, since the Toronto media have never covered cycling properly for the last 60 years. Sure, there's the occasional Tour de France story, but that's it. To read the news there, you'd think that the Tour was the only cycling event in the world.[/size]
[size=-1]Locally, the cycling community didn't help itself back in the ‘90s when Laura Robinson ("Who is she," you ask? Exactly my point) almost single-handedly succeeded in having a Toronto municipal bylaw passed requiring equal prize money for men's and women's cycling events, regardless of the number of participants, distances ridden or the caliber of riders. Ms. Robinson's incredible foresight essentially resulted in killing all downtown Toronto cycling races, since no sponsor would ever foot the bill for such folly. (Oh... that's gonna generate some letters - Editor)[/size]
[size=-1]As is often the case, I digress. Hamilton doesn't have any such silly bylaws - at least not yet.[/size]
[size=-1]How about some national attention?
In most countries hosting a world sports championship is a thing of national pride. Certainly entire states or provinces would rally around the host city. So would most countries on a national scale.[/size]
[size=-1]Canada has two papers, The Globe and Mail and National Post vying for the title of Canada's national daily newspaper, a Great White North USA Today, if you will.[/size]
[size=-1]Now, you would think at least one of these newspapers would pick up on this international, world-class event, which, even if it attracts the very minimum of expected spectators, would be by far the biggest single-day sporting event in the country this year. If the 2003 World Road Championships were to attract the on-site audience we are hoping for - 300,000 to 500,000, which are realistic numbers, since they get about the same in Philadelphia - it would be the biggest single-day sporting event in the history of Canada. You would think one national daily newspaper would grasp the import of this event, taking place in its own backyard, so to speak.[/size]
[size=-1]Again, you would be wrong.[/size]
[size=-1]Toronto is 60km away, and its hotels will be filled with the overflow of our spectators, but they ignore the event - except for the bad news, of course.[/size]
[size=-1]Back in the day when Ernest Hemingway wrote for The Toronto Star (the famous novelist was also a newspaperman) he covered cycling for them on occasion. He even wrote a story called "The Pursuitist," which uses the track as a beautiful metaphor for a man's struggles in life (remember that the pursuit once did not end until one rider caught the other ... if you have a job, you know the feeling that Mr. Hemingway was trying to convey in that piece).[/size]
[size=-1]A little beer with the hot dog and bull...
This lack of media attention in Toronto is even more frustrating and ironic because the sportswriters who gorge themselves on freebies in the press skyboxes at all the big-league games every night and lament about how big-league sports have been hijacked by players' obscene salaries, unobtainably expensive ticket prices and greedy owners are the very same sportswriters who completely ignore non-big league sports, like cycling. You can count on one hand the sportswriters across Canada who might take the trouble to cover our sport. They do it out of personal interest and usually have to fight to get the copy past their editors.[/size]
[size=-1]Of course, things are no better in the U.S. and may well be even worse.[/size]
[size=-1]Look at Sports Illustrated. Lance Armstrong is their Sportsman of the Year. How many North American cycling events does Sports Illustrated cover? How many other Euro' events? Do they think Lance competes alone in only one event per year? Tyler Hamilton wins two big races in a week! Has that been mentioned by the commercial press?[/size]
[size=-1]While I'm ranting on the media, especially that of Toronto, let me mention their latest and costliest fiasco. That would be Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Canadian Mike Myers (Austin Powers) was on the "Tonight Show" last week and he pointed out that about the only way to catch SARS in Toronto was to break into a hospital, illegally enter the ICU wing and then kiss a patient. Mike might have overstated the case, but he was close.[/size]
[size=-1]You can't catch that from here
The media created the SARS scare in Toronto by not bothering to point out that all but one person of the 20 or so that died were elderly, most of over 70 years old, and already sick in a hospital. The reporting in Toronto was unbalanced, sensationalistic and irresponsible. Then it was picked by everybody else, including channels like Fox in the U.S., already out to bash Canada because they didn't understand the Canadian position on Iraq, and the World Health Organization acted on that.[/size]
[size=-1]WHO lifted its travel ban a few weeks ago. Then they removed Toronto from the affected area list. SARS here is over. There has been another reported case, since then, but - again - it involved a patient who has been in hospital all spring.[/size]
[size=-1]Mickey Dolenz (of Monkees fame) is now in Toronto, acting in Elton John's production of "Aida" (haven't seen that one yet). When he was interviewed on Canada AM, he stated it well: Asked about SARS, he said he knew nothing about it. What he did know about was something he like to call "SMORS," Severe Media Over-reaction Syndrome.[/size]
Hey, hey, he's insightful!
[size=-1]So don't believe everything you read in the papers.[/size]
[size=-1]Go to Toronto. While you are there, ask the newspapers why they don't cover cycling.[/size]
[size=-1]Come to Hamilton. We didn't have a single case of SARS. If you are really paranoid you can fly directly into Hamilton via West Jet; it's cheaper than Air Canada.[/size]
[size=-1]If you so desire, shuffle off to Buffalo. It's an hour away and you can gamble (legally) at Niagara Falls on the way, refilling the Trillium coffers in the process.[/size]
[size=-1]Okay... enough of a rant. We will resume our regularly scheduled technical stuff next week.[/size]
