And as far as costs go - maybe MA should look at some of the fee structure then as well?
Absolutely. The Nationals fee structure makes sense in the context of modern MX - with paid riders and transporters and media and all the rest.
We make a fuss about our Nationals (and with god reason!), but we're not in the same league as the moderns, or even historic road racing.
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I don't dispute that pre-75 is strong - overall, there's no doubt that it and Evo are our two strongest classes.
However, pre-70 is weak and the older classes are very wobbly. So the strength of the pre-75 class is balanced out by the weakness in the older eras.
The HEAVEN club groups the pre-78 bikes with the older bikes in their race format and 'special events' (ie: Canowindra, Crawford River and Evo Challenge). It works well - the two groups (pre-78 and older vs Evo and newer) are about equal in size.
I'm fairly sure that this split also minimises the overlap of riders across eras - when it comes to the split Nationals, this means the minimum number of riders who are 'forced' into attending both events, or minimum number of riders who will miss out on riding pre-78 because its been grouped into the Evo+ Nationals (that they weren't planning on attending).
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A late observation because I've got time to fill in....
Who has entered both Pre-78 AND Evo/Pre-85 at the last three Nationals?
I can think of only a handful of people - including myself. I entered Evo 125 at Broadford only because my pre-70 bike wasn't ready and the Evo125 class was short on numbers. When the Evo bike was unreliable, it didn't worry me.
Others that I have entered in both eras:
Brad 090, Donny, and Snowy 76.
Young Luke from Tassie? Others?
In any case, its a pretty short list.