DaveB said:Bleve said:Really though, even a full elite licence is only around $215, which is
dirt cheap compared to most other organised sports. You get access to
DISC, track, road racing, crits ... all for how much? We used to have
to pay around $500 a season (4 months) to play ice hockey and that
didn't include much. Given that with a CA licence you can race
pretty-much anywhere in the world, and certainly almost everywhere in
Australia and un zud, it's worth having.
If all I did was cycle then I might invest in the CA license. But crits
are something I fit in around triathlons, duathlons, and running races.
I aim for a race of some kind each month (or slightly more). With that
in mind I might do 3 crits in a good year. Excluding the HCC cheap
membership, I could get the day license for $20 (ok that was 3 years ago
so it might have gone up) and could do 9 crits in a year and still be in
front. It's the same reason I don't get a TA license for tris/du's, I
would have to be only doing them to do enough events to justify it.
I reckon we need a multisport license (dream on).
It would make a lot of sense, yes. Even something as simple(!) as
combining MTBA with CA and the vets would be a big win. At least MTBA
and CA have an agreement and you can get crossover licences at a
reduced rate.
Quoted message said:You say technically you always needed a CA license for HCC Crits, but if
it's true, obviously that has never been enforced. Is there any change
this year?
You may or may not have had a CA licence, if you did, it was a very
restricted one. At least, that's my understanding of the club licence.
The Blackburn website says the following :
Quote :
A Club Only licence will only allow you to ride at club races. This
means that if you purchase a club licence you can race on club days at
the track, and at the Club Championships on the road (all other road
races in the fixture are classed as combines). We do not recommend the
purchase of a Club Only Licence as it is very restrictive.
end quote
The full schedule of fees for Blackburn is here, including a breakdown
of how much the club gets and how much CSV/CA gets :
http://www.bbn.org.au/membership/fees2007/renewal_instructions.pdf
and CSV's site :
http://www.vic.cycling.org.au/Membership/scaleoffees.htm
Note: HCC crits are combine* events, NOT club only events, as they
allow riders from other clubs to compete. Additionally, the HCC
'licence' at $25 was almost definatly not a licence (an elite club
licence for 2007 costs $142), but just club membership, which provides
you with precisely nothing in terms of a licence, you still had to buy
one. Other clubs generally include the licence in their membership
fees and are up front about it. What certain HCC members were doing
with the $25 thing, was deceiving people into thinking that's what it
cost to go racing. It wasn't, it was what it cost to join the HCC,
which wasn't ever enough to get a racing licence.
* crits are a bit interesting in this regards, they're really more like
opens, as there's no enforcing of combine member clubs only at them.
As to it being enforced, I suspect it's more a case of it being made
clear to HCC that they were at considerable risk if they continued to
allow non-licenced riders to race, but I haven't seen the
correspondence between HCC and CSV so that's conjecture. My housemate
is a committee member of HCC (what there is of a committee, HCC has a
rather interesting structure, it's an arm of the Hawthorn citizens
youth club or something and not a standalone club like most of the
others) and I'll ask him about it when I next see him and get the whole
story.
