THE MISSING LINK
Making the transition from Junior to Elite is hard enough, but it isn’t good when your own governing body forgets you. Oh yeah, and a pandemic too. The sport of mountain biking is so young that we have yet to collectively go through a period of time like so many sports before us have travelled. Everything from the Olympics through to Formula 1 has had to deal with global events that shook society as we know it to the core. Wars and even pandemics preceding this one had forced sporting codes to suspend all competition for periods lasting years, and each time, I presume, they have learnt from it.
That’s not to say, just because our sport is young, we can’t learn those lessons from other sporting codes which have already tried to navigate such things. Most sporting codes around Australia are beginning to make sense of the new normal and put together plans for safely returning to competition. But what would that even look like for mountain biking at a National Level? It wasn’t even in existence before the pandemic hit. The largest and best run events were commercial ventures that were barely recognised by the governing body or run at a state level by a committed few carrying the workload of many.
So where does that leave the next generation of Juniors looking, hoping, and dreaming to graduate to the professional ranks. Only a rare few manage to make that step into a professional career, and not without significant investment from factory teams, and more often than not, family money. Only the “Aliens” of which I can count the total on one hand, have managed to make that jump into the professional ranks and continue competing at the sharp end like it was another Junior race.
Bike racing, mountain biking in particular, is generally considered a good class equaliser, it’s up to the individual to want it, and he or she has to decide on whether they want to hit the brakes, or not, when that next turn or tree is fast approaching. Now having said that, the “space race” of bike development has upped the financial investment, coupled with the pandemic the mobility market of bike buying has made the gap between the haves and have nots the greatest it’s been since the sport’s inception.
With club events coming back to towns across the nation, the participation levels have been through the roof. Recent gravity events in Victoria have been selling out overnight to capacity, with the field limited to 250 competitors, half of the field is made up of under 15 and under 17 riders. If that isn’t a statement to the newly amalgamated governing body, AusCycling, I don’t know what is. It’s time for a national conversation and a national competition to be setup. The recent formation of AusCycling as our governing body is still in its infancy, yet its first public announcements are not encouraging for mountain bikers, particularly our Juniors.
One of AusCycling’s first public announcements was to announce athlete contracts for the 2020/21 season, same as Cycling Australia used to, and shame on us for thinking these might be different. These contracts were based on Podium, Podium Ready and Podium Potential candidacy. Out of the 65 contracts available, only one went to mountain biking. I don’t think we should be competing against road and track, but compare the road results at the 2019 World Championships to the mountain biking. The Aussies at road champs did really well, a gold and silver medal in Elite events, both to Pro riders, a top 20 for another Pro rider, with two top 20s for juniors. So all up pretty darn good!
Based on only 1 mountain bike rider getting a contract, surely they smoked us? No. We had a Gold in a Junior event, 3 top 20s again in Juniors, another top 20 for a Pro and two more medals for another 2 Pro riders. All up, we had more Juniors in top 20 positions, and more medals overall than the road team managed, and yet, only 1 contract. Yes, we have a pandemic, and it makes racing difficult but not as difficult as a governing body who doesn’t even recognise its members – and would be members.