March Meeting

We will be having a meeting at 5 pm at 145 Pacific on March 11, 2010, the new home of cycling (and other sports)in Manitoba.

The agenda is as follows:

1. Designating Cup events for the 2010 season, hopefully including cross events (will only do if there are a minimum 3 cross organizers present) – and rules.

-proposed rules: Scoring should be higher for first place: 30 points first, 25 second, 22 third, 20 fouth and then the rest go down by one point.
-If a the designated organizer does not race at his/her race but does attend as organizer then he/she would be credited with third place points. (The idea is to not penalize an organizer of a race if he/she needs to help out at own race)
-Should we have drop worst result as with last year? The argument for this rule is that if a person misses a race because of personal reasons, or DNF’s, they would still have a chance at winning the overall. The counter argument (and I note that I won last year largely because of the dropped result situation) is that this is to encourage participation and therefore dropping a result is counter to that idea.

2. Discussing the Road Forms
3. Discussing the commissaire issues: It is difficult to put to fine a point on this, but here is the situation: Last year there was no new commissaire training in Manitoba on the road. This year we have a possible course to put on but need to gauge interest before I can determine cost and whether we put it on. One possibility is to use Skype to save a considerable amount of money by not having to fly in the trainer.
Yes, you read that correctly, fly in the trainer. This is a major problem because currently there is only one person as I understand it in Manitoba who has the proper CCA approved qualifications to train commissaries. This is a MAJOR problem because we have essentially put all of our eggs in one basket. This year we are unable to use the local MB trainer so we must look elsewhere and are doing so.

Cycling needs four things to work in this, or any other Province: Athletes, Coaches, Commissaires, and Volunteers. If one of those four pillars collapses the other three will collapse quickly thereafter. Each club which is an “A” level club commits to having, as part of its agreement to get Bingo money, to having a commissaire. That can be met by a commissaire in one discipline, i.e. Road, Track, or MTB. A part of this means ACTIVE commissaire. Commissaire are paid positions at races. This means that if a club has a volunteer commissaire (as an example) the club can pocket the money which would normally be spent on the commissaire.

Please ask within your ranks as to whether anyone wants to be trained as a commissaire. The reality is that without commissaries there cannot be any racing.

4. I would also like to discuss moving between categories.
Proposal one: Each racer moves up or down at end of year based on Road Cup results – I see a problem with this in that attendance can dictate results (many of the people who did not do well as an example in Cat 3 Cup last year still need to be Cat 3);
Proposal two: Chief Commissaire Road, Provincial Coach and Road Rep will discuss movement between categories. The problem with this is that Cup race results would be potentially on the line in a move up. One possibility is that a rider could keep their points from before but be in ellgible for an overall win, (this unfortunately means it could effect results in the lower category), or the person just forfeits their points and moves up. Moving down could be done in a similar fashion.


If you already have people in mind, or people are interested and want more information on the process please contact me at this email address, or bring up names at the meeting on Thursday.