I transferred this over from the
THE THIRD BIKE IS NOW READY PICS OF MY HELPER AS WELL thread as it's more relevent over here.
Yep sorry I missed you Col, love to put the Championship back the way it was, we miss the younger guns and their enthusiasium at our Dirt Track Championship. Can it happen? It did not work with the MX and funnily enough no Club wants to run the later, ie post 1978 classes, as a Championship either.
Very simply the idea of a seperate championship is no good for Dirt Track, somebody changed it, can they put it back and save our younger lads ( post '78 riders) from burning their bikes and leaving the Classic movement forever. Peter Lee 52
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Pete, one of the big misconceptions here is that clubs have to observe the split. It's entirely up to the promoting club as to which classes and format are used. The split was introduced to enable a club to fit all of the classes at the vintage motocross Nats. That event had grown to the point that it was becoming very difficult to fit every class from pre 60 through to pre 90 into the one weekend. The only reason there was a problem with the split in the motocross side was the odd decision to race the inaugural Post Classic Nats in geographically undesirable Tasmania. The Classic Nats for pre 78 and earlier in Queensland was an outstanding success and if the Post Classic Nats had been held on the mainland I have no doubt that it would have been equally as successful. To say that "it did not work with the MX" is not quite right.
I've been told that the Canberra club wanted to run the full gamut of classes but MA presented them with an extra $2000 permit fee to run both divisions together. Faced with an expense they didn't want the club opted to run the event only for pre 78 and earlier...Classics. It's a bit unfair to blame the instigators of the split when the actual villain was a permit fee double dipping MA. Col Metcher and the Commission are well aware the splitting of the Nats is not yet necessary for the dirt track side of our sport yet that message seems to have been lost in the beaurocracy.
Having said that, the "split" had little, in anything to do with the piss poor entry roll up in a number of classes. For the previously well supported pre 70/250 class to be cancelled for lack of entries, for pre 65 to only be able to rustle up two or three entries, for only two sliders and three sidecars to enter and a number of other classes poorly supported one would have to look deeper into just why the racers stayed away. My mate and I did a mental tally and came up with almost fifteen racers who hadn't entered the pre '65 and pre'70 classes alone. That the meeting was a success despite the weather, low entries and split problem was a credit to the Canberra club and the dedicated officials who made it happen.
Let's hope the glitches can be fixed before next years event.