A couple of days ago Nick Bird posted a note about the Hawthorn/Blackburn ITT at Kew on the Bicycle Victoria forums.  This prompted a number of healthy questions, and a subtle bomb from an ATTA (Australian time trial association) member, I suspect. 

So what's the problem?  If you're a racing cyclist in Australia (let's leave out the triathletes, MTB'ers etc for the moment, just roadies for the sake of this polemic, and yes, MTBA is a special case, and a good one ...) there's now three different organisations vying for your membership.  Each one has infrastructure to a varying degree, each runs races.  Healthy competition?  No.  Why?  Read on ...

I need to establish some basis for what I think is valuable in context before I go on. 

First and foremost, racing cycling does not exist in a vacuum.  We race on public roads, closed velodromes, car race circuits, special purpose built tracks (eg Casey Fields) and so on.  Each of these types of venue has unique requirements, but of all of them, roads are probably the most difficult to organise access to, once the venues are built, that is.  It's important for a racing cycling peak body to invest in racing venues.  It's also important to invest in other infrastructure to support racing.  This includes training of officials, so we get fair and consistant rules and their enforcement, training of coaches to provide a development path for riders who wish to improve, junior development, age group racing support, managing insurance requirements for races, officials, racing organisers and coaches, managing licencing and grading and so on.

Doing all of that is a big job.  It's fair to say that Cycling Australia is far from perfect, and it's rare to find someone that hasn't butted heads or been frustrated by CA at some time, but the organisation exists, is mostly democratically run and it provides a lot of infrastructure support.  Of course, this means it costs money.  In the overall scheme of things, not a terrible lot and CA seems to me to be reasonably cost-effective in terms of what it provides compared to what it costs.

I think the service CA provides is very important and I do not complain about my membership fees to race.  I know that the money I pay is being used to support not just my racing, but racing across many disciplines.  This is, I think, important to remember.

Along comes the ATTA.

What does the ATTA do?  They run time trials.  That's all they do.  No development, no coaching, no training for officials, no infrastructure. Happy to use CA's infrastructure though, but not contributing to it.  They're cheap to join - I think it's $20 to join, so for most of us, that's 10% of a CA licence.  The ITTs they run are cheap to enter, $7 at this time, I believe. In WA, according to the ATTA website, they are affiliated with CA, but each state body appears to be intependant.  What is the state of play in Victoria?

To be fair to the ATTA, in Victoria they do appear have a significant amount of membership overlap, but that just adds to the crazyness of the situation.  This means that a racing cyclist who wants to do regular ITTs has to join yet another organisation (and one that provides very little to the racing community save to run these races).  Yet another licence.  Woe betide the rider over 35 who has three licences now, thanks to the ATTA, the Vets and CA all being different.  I'll leave the Vets out of the picture for the moment, that's the subject of another essay on stupid sports politics that costs us all.

The immediate problem for those of us who race is that there's two (or three, if we're over 35) bodies that we need to be licenced with if we want to do ITTs and mass start races.  It's inconvenient and it's more expensive than it should be.

The structural problem is deeper, and arguably more important. The ATTA and the Vets are essentially taking from CA while at the same time competing with CA.  CA provides the infrastructure to support racing cyclists all the way through from juniors to masters.  Vets and ATTA riders train on CA provided infrastructure (who pays for the upkeep of the velodromes you all do intervals on?), they copy from the CA rulebooks, CA clubs have organised permission to use roads and established precedents and so on.  ATTA and Vets clubs organise competing events using the same roads, so CA clubs and Vets clubs and ATTA events have to compete for the use of the roads through local councils etc. Fields get split between competing bodies in the same regions which means the standard of racing is compromised. The world won't cave in and the sky isn't falling, but this is far from ideal when it comes to seeing our sport grow and prosper.

So what would be the sane thing to do, given the three organisations?

Here's what I think :

Roll the Victorian ATTA body back into CA if it isn't already.   It should be if it isn't.  If the ATTA people want to just run ITTs they can run them through CA clubs.  Clearly there's a healthy demand for ITTs. Rather than buck CA, work with CA.  That's what I'm doing with the Trek Summer Sprint Series, and everyone will benefit from it.  It took some politicing to get past some club stalwarts who had reservations, but it can be done and everyone wins.

Roll the Vets back into CA as well.  Not likely?  Why not?  All it takes is some sanity and a recognition by the Vets clubs that CA provides infrastruture that lets the sport grow and that that is something that all racing cyclists should contribute to.  The Vets, without junior development, will become extinct. They need juniors, so there's people old enough to race against in 20 years who have a clue about bike racing.

What does CA need to do to make this happen? 

Review the licencing system and talk with the other organisations. 

The licences need a revamp, there's the mostly useless 'Ride It' licence that CA provides (and many of my non-racing and vets licenced riders have a Ride It so they can attend my training sessions).  Ride It needs to be upgradable to a racing licence as a first step.  It's dumb that you can't upgrade it. 

Revisit the masters licencing fees, and talk to the Vets clubs about some level of licence parity - MTBA and CA have a swapover licence system now, which while not ideal is at least a step in the right direction. Many riders in the current generation of the Vets are dual licenced, it's just dumb. AUDAX can do it, MTBA can do it.  Why can't the Vets?

Introduce a cheap CA ITT-only licence that's then upgradable to a full racing licence.  There's a huge opportunity to grow the sport by mining triathalons and the Beach Road wannabes and poseurs and ITTs are a great way to get people involved.  Bunch racing might not be for everyone but ITTs will get these people mixing with those who do bunch races and some crossover is bound to happen accordingly. This is a market that the ATTA has tapped into and CA needs to pay attention to this.

And finally, get the CA licences to be valid for 12 months from date of payment, not the current archaic system it has at the moment.  This is 2007, membership records are computerised. There's no excuse anymore.

And wouldn't it be nice if Bicycle Victoria had licence/membership links with CA too? One can but dream ...