Firko, What are your thoughts in regards to the re-structuring?
I can only make an opinion based on observation and past experience as I'm not privy to the inner workings of HEAVEN or any other clubs.
I reckon that there are too many rounds. 8 or 9 round series have, for various reasons, all failed in the past. In the beginning everyone is gung ho "
Yeah!, gimme more rides!!!'' but after 4 or 5 events a number of racers invariably get tired of the quick turnaround and bored with the "same old same old". You'll always find that the younger racers are initially the keenest but the first to start picking events. Nothing personal, just an observation.
In the old Penrith days when the club actually gave a shit, we settled on three motocrosses and three dirt tracks as being the perfect mix. We had the advantage back then of having perfect venues in Amaroo Park and Dargle, both superbly pre 75 friendly tracks, so we had one round each at Amaroo and Dargle, two dirt track rounds at Nepean and the big Condoblin Queens Birthday weekend Greybeards meet which had a dirt track on Saturday, a motocross on Sunday.
The beauty of that series format was that all of the events were within the Sydney metro area except for Condo which was the only 'away' event, ensuring maximum participation. If you added both the motocross and dirt track Nats and a non series motocross at Mt Kembla you ended up with a full and varied year of racing.
Now, I realise that it'd be pretty hard to replicate that format considering the lack of suitable venues and the seeming lack of interest in dirt track by the new generation of vintage motocrossers. A decade ago a good proportion of the motocross racers raced dirt track, it was a natural flow on to what they'd been brought up with as back in the 60s and 70s everyone rode both without question. Having dirt track as a part of the series added much needed variety to the equation.
Another thing was did that seems lacking today is to promote, promote and promote. I personally called as many racers as possible between events to see how they were going, ask if they had any problems with the past event and to drum up the next event. We gave the next event a bit of a push with pre event in ADB, AMCN and Revs.
With todays vastly improved electronic media access it's unforgivable not to be hyping the next event and sending the occassional email or phonecall to racers to enhance the club/racer relationship. As I found, everyone likes to be treated as special so a personal email or phonecall is always well recieved. I'm often told by oldschool vintage racers that my personal touch phonecalls were a major factor in them remaining keen. We also had flyers printed which we distributed to as many bike oriented businesses as we could to be left on the counter and placed in shop windows. We even had rock band style posters printed for both of the early Nats, both dirt track and VMX that Penrith promoted. The midnight runs to place them on telegraph poles added a bit of cloak and dagger fun.
To ensure that as many racers
want to compete at any given event, the meeting has to have a certain desirability factor. By brushing off an event as just plain
"round 3, motocross, Clarence" instead of something like say....."
A Day in the Dust, the Clarence Challenge" or something a little less tongue in cheek. I realise that it was tried to jazz up the last Clarence round as the Evo Challenge but there didn't seem to be much heart in it. HEAVEN has got it right with the Crawford River Classic but it still needs to by hyped up to the hilt. The Ray Ryan/Roy East/John Hine/GE trophies need to be pushed to become Holy Grail trophies and the great social aspects of the event need to be highlighted.
So, assuming that a dirt track option is never going to catch on with HEAVEN racers, my idea for a well laid out race year is 4 motocross rounds at 4 different tracks with each event taking on a "Something Special" personna. We already have the CRC at Buladelah which leaves three events to be formulated and hyped. A catchy title needs to be thought up for each round with a showcase class or feature race pushed to seperate that event from the others. The EVO Challenge idea is great and you could really push next years by perhaps drumming up the Damo v Carl, /Young Gun v Old Fox aspect
or something along those lines.
The 10th Anniversary Canowindra event is especially unique being a stadium twilight event and it should have been hyped to the hilt, not just with the usual suspects but in the Canowindra and surrounding local press for weeks leading up to the event. Local papers are hanging for local interest pieces and you can get unbelievable
free promotion via sports page or general interest articles. Photos and 'colour' pieces can be pre written and submitted to the papers and any local riders interviewed by the local "ace" reporter for a bit of local input. The benefits of this are many, the downside zero. You'll encourage a lot of locals to come out and have a look and possibly encourage new entrants from among those locals. Invite the local mayor, councillors, service clubs like Rotary and Apex and business leaders along and push that you'd like the event to become an annual event and that you'd like to work in with the town to make that possible. The end result could then become another Condoblin where the Shire Clerk and many of the towns business leaders were the actual people pusshing that meeting. The Condo Greybeards was in actuality a Penrith club/Condoblin club/Lachlan Shire council three way promotion.
These are just a few random ideas garnered from my 22 years in the vintage motocross business. Granted I haven't been involved in a hands on way since the end of the last century but the theories that we used then are still relevent today.
