[2006] Region West Atlantic: USA East

[John Gilmour]

A lot of skirmish for points Major, Main, prime basic.

my .02

A race series is always stronger than separate races. A race series benefits from (hopefully) even spacing of events + Sensible logistics, consistent rules and organization etc etc etc.

So for Promoters. If you want more attendance you can either rotate the status from year to year with other promoters within your series.

Here IMHO is what motivates most top racers.

1. Prize Money + Prizes.

2. Great race surface and hill and orgaization

3. cheap decent accommodations and easy airport access.

4. Temperate weather- little likelyhood of rain.

5. Killer after party.

Many top racers would be want to attend ones with prize money to make their hobby more affordable. A set of wheels doesn't cover airfare or hotel.

Good accommodations for less money in a good area means...bring the family. It's a mini vacation.

Easy airport access means you can expect some racers from far away to attend and add some International flavor.

Is it going to be rainy, or 40 degrees or 110 in the shade? If so I'm either going skiing up North or hitting the beach instead. The fam won't come to freeze or roast by the race side.

Killer after party? This the main attraction for skaters that haven't won prize money yet.


So my advice to promoters is to take an honest look at what you are offering (course- hill surface, party access, prizes) and talk with other regional promoters and sort it out.

I am for breaking down the Main and Prime status within competitions. Only if the hill dictates. So if hypothetically looked at The Gathering...Lots of racers BUT only
...OK hills for TS, AND nothing Main status about their GS hills.

IMHO Don't confer high status to contests on poor hills with bad pavement.

If you can form a series with other promoters in your region all attendance goes up.

I think a great fear of a promoter is that if his contest gets Basic status..that attendance will suffer. And IF there was a MAIN contest on the same day or following week....this could happen.

SO I would suggest that Promoters select dates according to the quality of the race venue and organization first. Giving those promoters with the best sites the higher status and rights to select dates first. And don't put any on the same weekends.

Those promoters should then select dates with the concept in mind to have racing in temps between 65 and 75 degrees. (Ideal spectator weather). So Northern most promoters would have races in the hotter months. More southern promoters would have races in the early spring and late fall.


That way the Prime and Basic races will not be in conflict- date wise with Main or Majors and should not suffer attendance drops.

Giving the USA races more Main status races means Europe has to the the same and in the end we just end up bumping everything up. IMHO it accomplishes nothing.

Its good to have Basic races for the locals in harder to get to locations without major airport access and Main/Major races with easy airport access where we draw racers from far away. It is fine to have many BAsic races across the coun try on the same dates so long as they are not in the same region.

IMHO it should be possible for a racer to do well in a regional series. And fly to a Major and perhaps either drive to 2 mains or fly to one of the two mains and have all the points he would need to be champion.

Total weekend warrior travel allotment 2 long week ends away from home. 2-3 regular weekends driving some distance. and a couple local 1 day races within a easy drive home for dinner.

Now that same racer could get more points by attending both Majors and not have to do as many small weekend races.

Finally the way to look at dividing the USA into regions should be done according to skater populations and airport access. Figure out where the pockets of slalom exist and divide that way. We can always rearrange later.

Give special notice to contest with gateway airports. for instance LA, NYC, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, ...any airport hub where there is a significant slalom population deserves consideration. Unless you get free gas you'll find that discount flying in the USA is often cheaper than driving when you add up wear and tear on the car, the extra hotel night, speeding tickets, and lack of hot foreign stewardesses on the roads and your time. I can fly to St. Louis for $167 roundtrip fro Boston. Florida is $79 each way.

So travel access is more important a determining factor for dividing up the USA than distance. For instance It is far far far easier for me to fly from Boston to Salt Lake City than to drive to drive back home to Boston from the Gathering on 1-95 on a Sunday afternoon (last time I think it took about 14-18 hours with TK).

Only Mollica and Claude and WT are the road warriors that will drive more often than fly. Though the west coast skaters end to drive a lot farther before deciding to fly. (So they need more local series)

Here is the simple easy way to figure it all out with fancy math.

So get out a map- start sticking pins in it.

Put Big red circles in for gateway airports. (the circle diameter is a 90 minute drive time to the airport.
Put thumb tacks in for the races (if the race/racer lands in a red circle it is close to a gateway airport).

If a race has a great GS course rate it with a number of yellow push pins right on top of it. If a race has a great TS course put in a couple of white pins.

Now start sticking in small sewing pins for racers. top racers get special pins ...lol.. There are not so many american skaters to make this hard. (take a picture of the map and post it).


Pretty soon you'll get a visual picture of which races should be which status and when those races should occur. You'll also see what racers have access to airports.

Keep in mind that racers with nearby gateway home airports are in less need of local races because they would gladly change their weather to fly cheaply to another gateway airport race.

Local Basic races are most important in areas without easy cheap gateway airports.

For instance...regularly In November I actively look for races in California and Florida to beat the dreary North East Doldrums and would have little or no interest in attending a North East race in cold windy dark wet leaf November.

You can bet a Texan in 105 degree July starts looking with great interest at a race in Cool crisp Maine. So do skaters from the humid areas like DC and NC.

I hope this helps.

[Hans Koraeus]

JG, great to see that you are starting to get in shape again. Both physically and post wise.

Great ideas. I'm looking forward to see what comes out of it. For next year maybe.

I do think though that Prize money is only a big carrot for a lucky few. And racing pro can equally be a non-carrot for many since they just pay double entry fees to be able to race.

The idea with the WR points was to give everybody a carrot. I think that carrot is bigger than what you might think. Of course there are those who say they don't care about it but funny enough it's often those same people that just have to say "I don't care" all the time. Which means that they do care because why else would they put down the energy to even make comments on it.

WR points is not everything of course but any carrot we can through in to the slalom scene to give people more motivation to train, travel and pay time and money to meet up with slalom friends to race is good. For me, just an amateur, the higher the status the more I will take time and money to try and go to that event. It may not always turn out that way but it's a big factor in my early year race plan.

[John Gilmour]

Yes... La Costa should not be a basic- almost purely based on the talent pool it attracts- I think that promoters should work together out of respect for one another and cough up the status of their competition if they feel the other one will have higher level courses, more prize money, better organization, and a deeper talent pool attending. This should not happen at the last minute. And for now- certainly the ability to change a Main to a prime or vice versa should be there. Majors....they should not change status, but venues should change each year if possible. Promoters should work together because the statuses should rotate around if possible to keep the venues fresh.

IMHO I think 3 months prior should be the absolute limit for changing the status of a competition upwards and 2 months prior should be the limit for changing a status downwards. If the promoter hasn't started about thinking about his race 3 months in advance... it probably won't be well organized and wouldn't merit an increase in status.

Hans- I also find it odd when people say "they don't care about points and that the WR system is flawed, and that no one cares about points"...... then when statuses are assigned for contests those same people really start howling. Perhaps they should start trying to figure out the ranking for a races in Latvia, Austria, Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, Russia, etc.......and do it correct the first time.

Which is fine...and the WR will sort itself out over time. Perhaps World ranking- RIGHT NOW is too strong a name? Mostly becase there are a few anomalies in there where a person is ranked way above another that the higher ranked skater has never beaten historically. You could call it "World (Cup???) Points Leaders" for now...and later when if through, corections and modification, it very very closely reflects actually ranking...then I think you could change the name to World Ranking.

No one is argueing about Mollica or Luca's placings in the WR... it's the people further down- and as points quickly drop off for placings, you see the Ranking and the Points starting to skew from one another. That means that either contest or the drop off in points for placings are not weighted correctly. Frankly it will never be exact- but I do believe it will get closer. Also you may have a skater that Sucked 2 and 3 years ago and now...just this year...he is doing extremely well (and no I can't think of any examples)...and that skater is complaining about his ranking not being current...well the rankings again are longer term cumulative rankings and skaters have to realize that before they start to get upset. It's a MULTI year snapshot in time...and just because it gets updated regularly...it is still a 3 year old snapshot, just updated a month forward. It usually won't reflect CURRENT ability levels unless the skater has been on top for years. People just don't seem to get this point.

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back to statuses...

I do feel that certain things have to be done to make skaters travel and be able to afford to travel.

Mains and Majors should always been somewhere within an easy drive of a major airport. What's an easy drive? Well...one that you could do with an injury for instance. say 2 hours or so. One that would allow you to get home the same day (make hte last plane) after the competiton to save on hotel charges- or certainly catch the earliest flight out the following day without having to wake up in the dark.

It is fine to have things difficult in the beginning, but by now I hope we have learned from mistakes.

One way to help promote this is to have deadlines for Majors, Mains, and Primes. With the Major deadlines being selected first, then mains..a month later , then Primes. You want to throw a World Championship...well you should have hosted at the very least a large succcessful prime/Main event before and be planning a year in advance.

Basics...hell- announce them any time you want. they don't need to be near any airport, or offer lodging, because they are usually 1 day events. They SHOULD be spontaneous- they should occur when the stoke moves people to have them.

Basics should be local contests with Longboarding fundamentally included as a requirement for basic and be designed around pockets of slalom. They should be for kids to be introduced- and I think having highschool grounds as race areas would be Ideal. I've been thinking about coaching for a local highschool- hell....they might even pay.....lol.

[Marion Karr]

John Gilmour, your last two posts were great.

The good news for the DHB is that we can stand up to the Status we have received based on your criteria.

For this year we are working on more cash prize money for the top racers but we have the other things you mention:

1. Good surfaces (Camper World is a 7, Court Street is a 9, and Hobby Park is a 7, out of 10....Hobby Park's speed makes it more like a 9....the only 2 problems, is it could be longer and the guard rail is sketchy.)

2. Good organization (we spent a great deal of time on this component of our race planning).

3. Access to two good Airports (Charlotte 45 minutes and Greensboro 1 hour...all interstate drive).

4. Hotel accomodations are great and one is located at the base of the Friday Night Outlaw course. (Statesville Convention and Tourism Board is one of our sponsors and is funded through the hotel occupancy tax).

5. Weather is typically dry here in North Carolina the last two weeks of October and early November. Temperatures range from 50's to 70's with little humidity (After Nov 15th or so it goes all to heck)

6. After Party- The DHB were born to party.

7. (One I think you forgot) Racing in front of a crowd. (Our Saturday dual lane tight/hybrid is in the middle of a fall festival that brings in 20000 people into our downtown)


The only major negative we have is the fact that we are forced to limit the field of participants because of lack of daylight/close of the festival.

Look forward to riding on the same hill as you JG soon!

[Lynn Kramer]

Corky, can you post the cone-weights of races on slalomranking.com to match what is on this site? I'm planning my travel calendar and I see that Ottawa is a Main on slalomranking, but not listed here. Is there an official list somewhere?
Thanks
Lynn

[Hans Koraeus]

Lynn,

The status decisions are made in each regions forum.

Canada region decided (Canada region here) that 3:rd Dovercourt Open 2006 will have Main status this year.

I try to update the outcome of all discussions in the region forum for each forum and on www.slalomranking.com. What cones/statuses that are registered on the homepage at www.slalomranking.com should be correct.

There is also an overview at www.slalomranking.com but that is not completeley updated I noticed. I'll try to update it this weekend.

Otherwise the SS calendar or the NCDSA calendar is a good resource.

[Lynn Kramer]

Thanks Corky, for updating the best and most complete ranking system we have to date.
Lynn

[Marion Karr]

RACE ANNOUNCEMENT:

Downhillbillies May Slalom Showdown
May 19, 20, 21, 2006

May 19- Hybrid/GS CamperWorld (or possible new Course) Statesville, North Carolina

May 20- Dual Lane Tight/Hybrid on the now Famous Court Street, Downtown Statesville
(Here's your chance to ride the Dixie Cup Course before November)

May 21-Park Slalom at the new Grayson Skatepark in Charlotte, North Carolina
(Approval Pending)
Watch for further details on the Down South Forum


Corky, can you please put this on the calendar and accept our request for BASIC points status?