[font=Bookman Old Style]In terms of competitive cycling British Columbia is the most dynamic province in Canada. It has Canada's best road team: Symmetrics. It has Canada's best mountain bike team: Rocky Mountain. It currently has Canada’s only covered cycling track: Burnaby (London's Forest City track coming this month). It will once again host the Canadian National Road Cycling Championships: Kamloops.[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]Yet BC has never had a President of the Canadian Cycling Association (CCA).[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]Saskatchewan has, and has always had, the worst competitive cycling scene in the country (the Sports Editor of The Regina Leader Post described it as "less than vibrant"😉, yet the current President of the CCA Bill Kinash is from Regina, Saskatchewan.[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]What's wrong with that picture?[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]It makes no sense. Why should a guy who spent 20 years with the Saskatchewan Cycling Association and in that time held only one national road race, a Master's Nationals in 1991, be in charge of running the sport for all our country?[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]British Columbia has THE best candidate to be the next CCA President: Lesley Tomlinson. Ms. Tomlinson runs the Rocky Mountain Cycling Team, probably the best in all the country. She is an international calibre rider in her own right and has been for 15 years. Only last year she won a World 24-hour Endurance Championshp. She launched a BC High School Cycling program that has over 1500 participants, again the most successful in Canada. She is actively involved the Sprokids program and one of its biggest proponents. Ms. Tomlinson is also on the CCA Board of Directors (don't hold it against her!).[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]The media in British Columbia should be looking to Ms. Tomlinson as we head to the national championships in Kamloops at the end of June. British Columbia should use the Nationals to promote Ms. Tomlinson as a candidate to the 700 or more athletes who will attend the national in June.[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]Riders, team managers, race organizers and volunteers in the sport should get involved in the selection of the next President of the Canadian Cycling Association instead of the choice being made by ten provincial president nobody knows at an annual meeting basically behind closed doors in Whitehorse, Yukon next November.[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]For the last three years the CCA has been a shambles.[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]It squandered a $15,000,000 marketing opportunity in the 2003 Worlds Road Championships in Hamilton walking away without one new sponsor. A disgrace.[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]The CCA has embarrassed and insulted the sport by selling all four national championships (road, mtb, track and BMX) and the National Team to Tim Horton’s for $100,000 (this is a best guess estimate because the CCA refuses to acknowledge or admit what the exact figure is).[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]The CCA has been paralyzed by inaction. [/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]CCA President Bill Kinash told Judy Monchuk of Canadian Press in an interview carried nation-wide that he and the CCA have no plans to market the Olympic Gold Medal by won by Lori Ann Meunzer in Athens in 2004. No plans! [/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]Furthermore, it took CCA President Bill Kinash two months to phone Ms. Meunzer to congratulate her. Prime Minister Martin did it the day she won.[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]Numerous CCA employees including three coaches have resigned. [/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]The former (or current, depending upon who you talk to) Director General Pierre Hutsebaut is in administrative limbo, hiding on sick leave for a year or more to avoid being fired. Mr. Hutsebaut was well enough to attend the Quebec Provincial road championship and to be photographed at the awards ceremony by the podium, however.[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]The current Chief Operating Officer of the CCA association has no formal cycling experience.[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]The Marketing and Communication Director position has been left vacant for two years. How can you find new sponsors if you have nobody even looking? The CCA has go so far as to remove any reference of the position from its web site. It used to say "vacant", now the position is gone completely.[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]That might explain why both the CCA and Ski Canada get about $1,200,000 in annual funding from Sport Canada but Ski Canada has a total budget of $13,000,000 while the CCA has a budget of merely $1,600,000. Ski Canada can find about $12,000,000 in sponsorship and other funds. The current CCA can manage only $600,000. Another disgrace.[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]The CCA-Hamilton Foundation, touted in December 2003 as supposed to find new sponsors, partners and donors has not even been officially formed yet. Its first annual report due back in December 2004 has yet to be made public and most likely has not even been written.[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]Cycling in this country cannot afford to be "led" for another three years by another policy-wonk, bureaucrat who proudly cites a brainstorming session in a hotel conference room as a highlight in his 2004 Annual Report or Christmas Greeting.[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]It is British Columbia's turn to lead the sport of cycling in Canada and Lesley Tomlinson of BC should be its spokesperson.[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]Ed Arzouian,[/font]
[font=Bookman Old Style]St. Anicet, QC[/font]