Promoter question: Now's you chance

[endoquest]

Promoter question: Now's your chance

What's more important to you?
There have been a few threads about the differences between GNCCs and AMA National Hare Scrambles. IMO, GNCCs and the new WORCS series are catering to a more spectator freindly/ sellable type of format with short loops and lots of class races during a two day period. There is no doubt that this is good for the sport by getting it in the public eye but I think that the racing itself is suffering. I don't mean to bag on these series' at all, as a matter of fact, I support them wholeheartedly and have contributed my resources recently and will continue to do so in the future. On the other side of the coin, however, is the racer's viewpoint(my own), which wants to have a true off-road race that isn't like a motocross track or six hundred-quad old freeway by racetime on Sunday.
In the next few years the Northwest will have a merging of off-road entities, rumors of dual-sanctioning and combinations of series' will come to play as the powers that be look for new venues and marketing strategies.
My question to you, the riders and racers just like me, is:
Will there always be a place for the true off-road race or should we cater to the public and expand the sports potential?
The OMRA (Oregon)Cross Country Series needs recognition but would suffer from "sharing" it's great races with NASCAR formats. Any opinions?

 

[Tom H]

I understand your frustration. Why isn't there room for both kinds of racing?
It sure seems to me like cross country races are spread too thin anyway. It would be nice if both types of races could peacfully co-exist.
I realize that it is difficult to find land to race on. ORV parks that have Hare Scrambles usually fit the spectator friendly type course, and are ridden on so much that they do not have many technical sections that haven't been carved into a freeway of sorts.
My favorite type of riding is on mildly used, fairly difficult single track trail, up and down hills through the rocks and trees, across creek bottoms; and going as fast as I can go on it. One of my favorite riding areas that fit the above description, in my opinion, suffered serious damage this year when a enduro was staged across it. All the corners are now wider, the ruts deeper, the brush was cleared. In plain terms, I can ride the trail a lot faster now, but it's not nearly as much fun.
My point is that it tough to have your cake and eat it too. One extreme of cross country racing is the impromptu race with three or four of your buddies on your private, little known riding area. But that isn't really racing. You can stop when you get tired, and there are no trophies!
The other extreme is when you take off with 300 other bikes on a mass start on a big race. (What a rush!). Just don't expect your technical little single track trail on the second lap though.
The smaller the race (in terms of number of entries), the better the chance that the track will be fun to ride. But promoters won't make much money that way. Maybe some clubs or promotors will throw making money off to the side and stage a few races purely for the rider's delight every year.
Don't count on it.

 

[wheelie4strokeB]

My vote would be for spectator type races. The general public are the ones that will help keep riding areas open and might understand more if they can actually see us once and a while coming out of the woods. A race is a race, some are better than others but we are all used to that. The joy is for us to have a good series to ride and lots of races. Let the spectators see us, lets get some more exposer, we might be riding on their land someday:D