Alberta Provincial DH - official word

The official word is in and as of noon thursday, we had 9 registured in the DH, 5 in the DL, compared to 180 in the XC. Most of the riders who have registered were women, one from Japan, the National Champion. We will have to cancel/postpone the DH and the DL Due to the lack of interest from the Commuity. The XC will go ahead. The race will be rescheduled, as well, DH8 which had already been moved(from the 15th), and was scheduled for Sept 8, will also be cancelled/ postponed, and both races will happen on the weekend of OCTOBER 5-6th .Provincials will be the ABA race and DH8 will be an open race for anyone to enter. Also the dual will run after the DH on Sunday, this will be ABA and an Open Race.

Why move DH8? In the next 4 weeks Golden has 3 races (one on the 7th&15th)and we, a small hill, cannot compete will the likes of a mountain, no contest. Anytime a DH or XC is somewhere else close by we loose, and we have been working very hard, as the ABA, not to confict with other races. it just doesn't make sence to pull, an already small community, even smaller. For some reason Cycling BC and Kicking horse, didn't take into consideration alberta and its races.

Please understand this is not an easy thing for use to move races around that have been planed a full year in advance. Its also not easy on the DH community. It costs a large amount of money to put on a big race, and if you actually new how much we make off of a race you would be shocked, there is no money to be made in race organizing, and a select few at COP who support the sport. So why do it? we do it for the people and the community, Calgary has a lot of good people and good MTBer's, and at the some time some bad, that's another story.

Sponsors are also affected by this change and cancellation. They have given cash and prizes to a race no one wants to go to. It's going to be very tough to find sponsors for the OCT race, not to mention, trying to keep the ones we already have for the provincial and DH8 Race. Next year it will be a given that no sponsor will want to sponsor a race knowing that there could be the chance that no one will want to go, because there is a better race somewhere else.

This year there has been 2 races in alberta, one at COP in june and Rocky in Aug, 2 races! what does that tell you about DH in alberta.

BC is not supposed to sell day licences, it's against what the CCA want's, so we don't do it in Alberta. The race in June was an ABA and an Open race, we can do that because we have our own liability insurance, Rocky couldn't do the same as we can. Provincials is designed to be a event for ABA rider's only, not an open event. Can you imagine what it would be like if you were the leader overall in your catergory and some yahoo comes in and buys a day license and wins the race and steals the title away from you. Would you be happy? probably not, thats why they don't sell day lisences at provincials (if you were wondering)

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