Tag Archives: BMX kids

Parkfield Regional (or not)

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Feel a bit lost really, almost cheated in someway, this is about the time we would be back home from the first South West regional race, going over the days events, analysing Sqorz timings, comparing, contrasting, what went right what went wrong, who impressed and who’s dropped off. New bikes, new teams, new kit, new helmets, having to re educate yourself to recognise those you normally follow, who’s racing up? Why are they doing that? Why the delay? The first race nerves, the tension, excitement, novice first timers, parents screaming ‘PEDAL’, Sharon screaming ‘Louis, Zach, Max, (sorry Sharon) a warming cup of something resembling tea from a poly cup, the smell of GT85, the smell of portaloos, the smiles, the cheers, the tears, the tantrums, the cash I’ve spent to never win a raffle prize again, see you next week for round 2 at Burnham!!!!! Instead of all that there was no alarm wake up call, leisurely tea and breakfast in bed for Vic (mothers day and all that) re runs of ‘ Cant pay well take it away’. Walk to town for some food shopping and grab some milk for my elderly neighbour. Unpack the shopping, coffee, get my cruiser out and have a go at Cornwall BMX clubs Track stand challenge (Totally crap at it now but will prove to you that practice pays off as huge progress was made in just a few hours today) Roast, and then sitting down to blog. Now some would feel like the way today played out would be lovely, but its been odd, really odd and sadly a feeling I think for the short term foreseeable future, we will all have to get used to.

At this moment in time I’m still fortunate enough to be at work, however I have already been thinking of ways to keep myself entertained over the impending lockdown weeks to come, and let’s not be naive, they are going to come. I’m thinking that as we have a major shut down of some huge sporting events, maybe we should re-create our own and share them with you. Oxford, Cambridge boat race was due to be next weekend, The Masters golf, The Grand National and London Marathon to name a few. I’ve also thought maybe a should broaden my sporting horizon and look into new things, for example after a very quick internet search last night did you know that they have a championship event for HOBBY HORSEING!!!!!!!!!! No word of a lie, head to Youtube and search ‘hobby horse competition’. Check out the 2019 Finnish championship edit, the funniest thing ever, I’m considering doing a voiceover/ commentary to this, what do you think??? There was a whole host of other random sports I found but I will keep those to myself for now as potential upcoming projects/entertainment/boredom killers. My excitement over these findings however has unnerved the wife a little her words were something like ‘ GOD if this is what you’re like whilst you are still able to go to work I fear for us all when you have to be at home……….’ no need for that I thought, just rude!!!!!!

Ive seen a significant number of businesses on social media tonight announcing that they will be closing now for the foreseeable future and given the apparent lack of understanding from significant numbers of people who chose to go out like we’ve just come out of isolation today, I think we’ve got a week at best before Government pull the plug completely. Please remember to try and be mindful with what you do in your time, we love our bikes and we love to be out on them. Ride, but ride in a manner which will drastically reduce the risk of you needing a hospital visit, they just don’t need you in there right now and lets be honest would you really want to be there???

Lastly something new, its important to keep the brain as well as the body active so I have a little teaser for you. Nothing to win, no place on a plane, just bragging rights at getting it right, try not to spoil for others by commenting the answer just let us know if you think you know. Here goes. Always old, sometimes new, never sad, sometimes blue, never empty, sometimes full, never push, always pulls. What am I ?? Answer in the next edition. Cheers all, stay healthy.

2020 Season Preview, Transponders, Money and Kai

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The new official race season is fast approaching.  In traditional fashion things kick off under the roof and lights in Manchester at the home of British Cycling for rounds 1&2 of the HSBC National Series, can Birmingham retain their club title, can Crucial fight off Pure again and keep the Elite team trophy and can anyone stop Alan Hill winning another series!!!!!!

As far as venues go there are a few changes from last year but no complete newbies to hosting a national weekend.  The Scotland round in May has been switched back over to Cumbernauld, and Peckham and Bournemouth have been replaced with Gosport and Telford.  The Brits will be hosted by Leicester.  One thing that will be new to the National Series this year however is the introduction of transponders.  Being based in SW we’re pretty used to this system now and I’m sure a few other regions have adopted the technology.  For me it’s fast, efficient, accurate and informative, a big step forward in the sport and I praise the people who were involved in the decision to introduce it this year.  I’m sure as with any change, there will be folk who will disagree and completely hate it.  The one thing I would like to point out to people is that running transponders needs a change in software, out goes the old eBoard etc and in comes the new Sqorz system.  This works very similarly, HOWEVER has one significant difference, which I have now found has been published by BC in the latest series regulations but in my personal opinion needs to be highlighted more.  When racing gets into the knockout stages the previous system allocated gate pick order based on finishing position, whereas the new system allocates on lap times. So what this means in theory is that you could finish a 1/4 final in first place (normally giving you first or second gate pick) but if all top four finishers in the other 1/4 finals, finish with a faster lap time than you, you could send up with 7th pick!!!!! Likewise finish 4th in a fast 1/4, all other qualifiers post a slower lap time and you could suddenly find yourself with second pick for the semi. When you really take time (many minutes in my case) to think about the implications this could have you’ll perhaps understand me thinking this hasn’t been addressed with enough importance by the powers that be. Consider the scenario, you/ your child are unaware of this new change, in your quarter there’s a crash and 4 riders are out, dependant on how deep into the race the crash occurs it would be very easy for all 4 qualifying riders to take their feet off the gas and finish 1,2,3,4, but ease off too much taking a comfortable win and find yourself with 7th pick in the semi, you’d be raging, you know you would, obviously you won’t now though because you know and when this new found info plays into your hands you can thank me by buying a T-shirt 😜

The other significant change that has just come to light is the prize money for elite has taken a whack. First place finish is still holding a £300 prize but all other positions have a real drop, so much so, that if you podium in third your prize money is £10 less than finishing 8th last year, what the hell is that all about. I’ve thought for a few years that considering the physicality of elite racing the prize money wasn’t enough, and now they’ve cut it. I’ve tried to have a quick look around at what some of the other cycling disciplines offer up as prize money to compare but struggled. I managed to find a cyclo-cross document which showed the following……………….Elite men’s prize list (all rounds): Prizes to first 20 riders – £305, £160, £105, £80, £75, £70, £65, £60, £55, £50, £50, £45, £40, £35, £30, 5 x £20. Elite women’s prize list (all rounds): Prizes to first 20 riders – £305, £160, £105, £80, £75, £70, £65, £60, £55, £50, £50, £45, £40, £35, £30, 5 x £20. Prize funds appear to be greater and they also extend prize money down to 14 year olds. I guess fundamentally it has to come down to individual disciplines and their financing, entry fees, sponsorship monies and event costs, monies in Vs monies out. Until these sort of things are readily available to the likes of you and I then really we can only theorize. That doesn’t mean to say that the current situation is right or wrong, as I said earlier I personally think it’s shocking to hit the elite purse with such a cut. Maybe you have to look at other sports in comparison, the likes of football and rugby. There are distinct wage/ prize money differences, but monies in to football say will be considerably higher than that of rugby. It’s ready to go on and on with this one, I just hope a happy medium is reached soon and who knows if one day the SUB22 sales take off, I’d certainly consider sponsorship!!!

One final note for this edit goes out to the Sakakibara family. I can’t image what you are all going through right now, I’m sure you are surrounded by people to help and support and we send our thoughts and best wishes for a healthy recovery for Kai. #kaifight77. As ever please feel free to comment with your thoughts about the subjects raised, give us a like, a share and make sure you follow to ensure you never miss an edit.

SEE YOU ALL IN MANCHESTER

SW Champs 2019 Bideford BMX Club

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Has to be said it was probably the best day weather wise for a race at Bideford that I have ever attended!!!! Yes the wind was blowing a bit but it was dry and the sun made an appearance at times. It was a shame that original plans to hold presentation and camping on site had to be changed but I believe this was completely out of the clubs hands and I think they did amazingly well to re organise given the circumstances. Unfortunately due to Henry picking up a knock in his second moto, our evening resulted in us ordering a pizza delivery to Barnstable A&E instead of attending the presentation, and I will take this opportunity to apologise to the all in the hospital that evening who then had to endure the mini wave of food deliveries which we seemed to instigate!!! I’ve seen a few videos and pictures on the social media rounds and it looks like everyone had a good time. I will throw out huge credit to whoever came up with this years regional trophies, they are MINT and the Champs trophies again were great, those laser cut designs are brilliant. Congratulations to all those who took home the SW1 titles.

As has been the case for pretty much the whole regional series racing ran super smoothly which has to be attributed to the transponder system and all its associated race software. The new gate is a massive improvement, the revised first straight looked to ride well, another huge plus for the region with tracks evolving to meet the needs of our riders. The legend that is Scott Dick made the journey along the M4 to help Neil out and give the day a national vibe. Cal, Eddie, Josh, Haydon, Emily, Leo and Harrison battled it out for the very nice elite purse that was put up by Burrington Estates and Connected Electricals, along with 4 Holeshot prizes donated by Clarity Copiers. It was just a shame that it didn’t attract a few more riders so it wasn’t grand prix but still it didn’t stop the show piece race being just that, and if you’ve ever watched Eddie Moore at any race meet you know that like The Artful Dodger he’ll always be there to pick a pocket or two!!!.

SW Champs always throws up the issue of race categories, where often you find that riders who have raced up age groups all year in the regional series come back into their age appropriate race category for the Champs. Personally I have always said I don’t agree with it. We have always been fortunate enough that Henry’s age group has always been a good competitive group, but, I do understand why it makes sense for certain riders to race up age groups for the competition. When anyone comes back into their age group though for the Champs I always think its a case of “my class doesn’t provide enough competition for me all year but I’ll race it just this once to win the SW title” Now don’t get me wrong I’m not saying it’s right or its wrong and I don’t think it’s something that will ever please everyone, but what I will say is I don’t like hearing when parents/ riders kick off about it with each other. These are the rules and those that do drop back are perfectly entitled to, if you have a problem with the rules then please take it up with those who put the rules in place and not those who are simply playing by them. Interestingly enough though I noted that at The Brits, those who rode the National series out of their natural class had to race The Brits out of their natural class and were not able to drop back into their natural class!!!!!!!!! It would be interesting to know how other regions approach this.

So that is officially it for another year, although as we all know there’s always a race going on somewhere. True to form the first round of racing under the roof booked up in next to no time and caused many a heart attack moment for parents desperate to get booked in. If you haven’t already done so the vast majority of SW riders transponder chips will need their subscriptions renewing here’s a guide as to how you can do this

So that’s about it for another episode. I have also produced a small edit from the Champs which is available to view on our YouTube channel now if you’ve not seen it already, CLICK HERE to view now. For those of you who voted on our last post regarding next years Brits rumour mill it was a landslide victory for Leicester to host next year. Our best wishes go out to DT who is having a short spell in hospital at the moment, I think I can comfortably speak for the BMX community in wishing you a speedy recovery and look forward to seeing that cheeky little smile back at a track very soon. Lastly I forgot to add on my last blog post how camp life at times can be educational. In Derby I learnt the Welsh word for 100. I was also then taught that if you recite said word three times in quick succession it comes out as something quite different, Google it and you’ll see what I mean!!!!!!!! Answers on a postcard as to which child was the teacher that day……………………. Cheers all