David E. Belcher said:Depends on the area - in the East Mids it seems to have a big
following, attracting large fields (so much so that sometimes, as I
understand it, it's been necessary to have F1-style "gridding" based on
ability/previous results in order to avoid traffic jams out on the
course!)
Participation in the Notts and Derby League has dropped quite a lot in
the last 2 years, typically now we have between 75 and 100 in the main
race. 3 or 4 years ago there was talk of limiting the entries, as so
many were turning up, 165 at one race. Yes, there is still gridding at
the start, this has gone down quite well, national and top 25 riders in
the front, league positions 25-50, and national ranked in the 2nd box,
50-75 league positions in box 3, and any one else in box 4.there is a
roughly 50 yard difference between box 1 and 4.(so, the top riders dont
go so far!) If you dont agree with where you should be starting from,
then you can have a word with the starter/commissaire, and ask if you
can go up a box etc.
I think the West Mids league may now have more participants overall than
the N&D, as the W.Mids have separate Seniors and Vets/ladies races.The
W.Mids was struggling 5 years ago, it is doing really well now - over 50
in the vets/ladies race regulalry.
Despite, or because of, the high numbers taking part, the N&D committee
stood still, and said there was no need to divide the field into 2
races, and so we still have the aged 70+ riders (and me!) on the same
course as GB team members who do at least 2 laps more than mere mortals.
The results show this vast difference in ability.The bottom 20 places
are nearly always taken by the Vets and Ladies.
Numbers dropped a lot last year when the entry fee went up to £10 for
all races, coupled with the fact that there are absolutely no facilities
at some courses(you want to go toilet - "where do bears go?"😉, then you
can see why some people dont bother any more.
There was also a lot of acrimony between 'fast' riders, and slower ones
being lapped.Because there were so many on the course, the fast riders
would be lapping 50+ people during the race, some were quite polite
'coming up on your right', others just SHOUTED 'RIDER', expecting the
slower one to get out of the way completely,by looking through the eyes
on the back of their head to see which way to go.
The slower riders were all paying the prize money for these people, and
were getting a little resentful at the abuse they'd get if they
inadvertently got in someones way.(Prize money was getting good back
then - £100 for the winner in a few races, and cash down to around 25th
place).
It took a few weeks of talks from the starters to get order back in the
field - a couple of people were banned for pushing others off, and one
was banned when he threw a punch at one of my team mates.
With the drop in numbers, things have settled down, so it is now quite
nice to attend these events again, more of a family atmosphere again,
where everyone says hello, and with the drop in attendance, there has
been a drop in prize money - the best thing the N&D committee did was to
stop paying so much out on the day in prizes - any excess goes into the
prize fund for the league, so now down to 50th place gets something at
the end of season presentation. This drop in race prize money has
deterred many of the riders who would just trun up for the prize money -
it was this type of racer who had no affinity with the league, and only
turned up to win, that caused a lot of ill feeling.
One of these 'top riders' fell off in front of me at one race, he had
misjudged a corner, and went straight into a tree, breaking a shifter,
because he was leading, and had less than half a lap to go, I offered
him my bike to finish the race, he refused, and instead of just getting
up and running with the bike, he pulled out.Even with a slow jog, he had
so much time in front of the 2nd palced that he would easily have won.
I was rather surprised then to see the race report in the local paper
that week, when he was qouted as saying that he had been 'taken out by a
backmarker' and couldnt continue because of an injury sustained. I
thought, "what a lying [censored]". I told this story to a few other people
afterwards, and they all said the same about him - good ability, but a
real [censored].
Alan.
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