The ProblemI am only new to the club a year ago but it seems to me from the many discussions I have listened to including two general meetings and personal experience at race meetings that for too long now, the Race Meeting Marshalling load has been carried by a small group of Club Officials & Members with a number of Members not putting their hand up often enough.
The goal of this document is to begin the process of coming to a long term solution for Race Meeting Marshalling where the marshalling role provides all riders with the safety and support of good marshalling, is fair and not too much of a burden to any one person or small group of riders &/or officials.
Note: This is not for one minute an attack on the efforts of the current or past race officials. On the contrary, those officials do a brilliant job and have to do too much at each race meeting. Because not enough riders have been prepared to do their fare share, our officials have been burdened with carrying their load. This document is a riders input as to how to solve that problem and as you read on you will appreciate, I don't have to be as politically correct with my views as the officials might feel they need to be.
The SolutionMarshalling ManagerThe managing of the Marshalling duties is crucial to the smooth & safe running of a Race Meeting, there are close to 100 riders and up to 40 races to administer, not a simple task. It is my view that one person should take on the role at each Race Meeting of planning & managing the Marshalls. With this proposed format, there would be 7 marshall changes in the day, not 1. This will take management and I believe too much of an extra burden to add to the clerk or presidents list of things to do.
Who should Marshall? All riders should be obligated to carry the Marshalling Load. Many hands make light work.
The only way a long term Marshalling solution will work is if a palatable solution is tabled and all riders agree to do their fare share of the Marshalling load. Take your average 80-100 riders at a meet, divide them into 8 Marshalling groups and each group Marshalls for 1 x approx 1 Hour long session.
Club officials donate enough of their own personal time to club activities and Race Meeting duties and should be excused from Marshalling duties on Race Weekends.
Any Riders who are not willing to do their fair share of marshalling should at a minimum be exempt from earning Race Points. In my view if you want to race and have others look after your safety while you ride, you should and I mean 'should' be prepared to give up an hour of your race day to return the favour to your fellow riders.
The role of MarshallingWhat should the Marshalling role entail?
Apart from the obvious , watching the racing from your allocated vantage point and providing the appropriate flagging, it is my view that Marshalling has been seen as a burden by many and the main reason is in its current format the time spent Marshalling has been too long.
I propose in this document a modified system where each rider is only required to Marshall for 1/8th of the race day or meeting approximately 50-60 minutes. If all riders Marshall, this can be achieved, and rather than the task of Marshalling enduring 10-11 races , it would cover a maximum of 4-6 races.
I believe the club should purchase 10 Eskys and each day 10 bags of ice to put into those Eskys to keep cold drinks available at each Marshalling point.
I would encourage riders to take a friend with them while they Marshall. If there are enough friends family & riders, then I think 2 people should be allocated to each Marshalling point. This provides extra assistance in the case of an accident and having someone with you to do a bit of bench racing while you Marshall will make the time pass very quickly.
The impact on those who race many classesAs you can see, I have attached a proposed Race Format to go with this Marshalling Proposal. From the many conversations I have listened to regarding the Marshalling issue, it seems most riders are open to a system which provides a solution, but the main sticking point is many multi class riders do not want to miss out on their races. Fair enough!
In this proposed Race Meeting & Marshalling Format, a rider can race 3 out of 4 classes without any marshalling duties interfering with those races. If he or she chooses to race the forth class, all he or she will have to do is swap the Marshalling duties with another rider for that race in the 4th class. The Marshalling Manager for the Race Meeting will just need to be notified of the 'Swap'. This could also be the solution if you need time to fix a bike problem.
The Race Format In the accompanying Race Format, for the purposes of illustrating how the marshalling roles would be allocated, I have included all classes with proposed laps and apprx time duration. If all races were run and no classes were combined, we would end up with a 40 race and a 8-9 hour race day. We all know though that the club does not fill all of those classes and on the day it makes common sense to combine some classes. This race format is there purely to illustrate the principals behind this proposal and the task of Race Day rationalisation to match the entry list & bring the format down to a manageable one of 20-30 races would be the role of the officials at each race meeting. The principals of dividing the day into ears & spreading the load over all the riders entered still remains the same.
I have deliberately spilt the day into Eras. Many riders it seems stick to their era so this will help in the Marshalling duties not interfering with many rider's racing. The Eras are also in sequence from early to late to allow the older bikes the benefits of the smoother track conditions earlier in the day and the later bikes the choppier conditions later in the day.
I VolunteerIt’s about time we sorted this out and stopped relying on the few riders and officials who have been carrying most of the load. I watch Carl and Kel struggle to get volunteers at each race meeting and even though I have never heard them complain, it is not fair to them to carry this burden each and every race meeting. This document is only a start to trigger discussion and feedback and the final system we settle on will I am sure be different. I do believe it is possible though to do much better than we have been doing and I am happy to take on that role of Marshalling Manager for the next few meetings to test this system and refine it.
Let’s get this thing fixed. I invite constructive comments and concerns. Surely collectively we can come up with a system which is fair and workable.
Kenneth Swan
Racing Number 222
