Oceania Continental Circuit at an all time low.

[Red Ace]

Who’s at fault if Cyclingnews.com doesn’t cover the most important UCI Continental event in Oceania?? The New Zealand Cycle Classic finished today with hardly a ripple in the Australian Cycling media...
The UCI Oceania Continential Circuit is on its knees with the NZ event and Canberra’s Oceania Championships the only 2 races currently on the circuit. Sure Australia’s TourDownUnder dwarfs the NZ event but our top Australian Conti teams made sure they had strong teams in NZ, and its these teams that are providing the stepping stones for local riders... Huon Salmon Genesys investing alot of time &money into the event knowing that it will decide the Oceania Rankings. It seemed a good investment with the team winning the tour however very little profile the No 1 ranked Aussie team would surely counting the cost of doing the event, and even publicly asked why the cycling media didn’t acknowledge the race...
The local papers report Oceania new president Tracey Gaudry has been in Adelaide securing the TDU's future in Adelaide!!... Surely she should be in NZ.. there is enough cycling Administration on the biggest cycling junket of the year to hold the SA Government hand.. personally I am sick of Adelaide using the TDU as part of their long standing gripe about losing the F1 to Melbourne.. and for the good of the sport there should be a TDU stage in Victoria’s Ballarat in 2015.

 

[hughmoore]

Who’s at fault if Cyclingnews.com doesn’t cover the most important UCI Continental event in Oceania?? The New Zealand Cycle Classic finished today with hardly a ripple in the Australian Cycling media...
The UCI Oceania Continential Circuit is on its knees with the NZ event and Canberra’s Oceania Championships the only 2 races currently on the circuit. Sure Australia’s TourDownUnder dwarfs the NZ event but our top Australian Conti teams made sure they had strong teams in NZ, and its these teams that are providing the stepping stones for local riders... Huon Salmon Genesys investing alot of time &money into the event knowing that it will decide the Oceania Rankings. It seemed a good investment with the team winning the tour however very little profile the No 1 ranked Aussie team would surely counting the cost of doing the event, and even publicly asked why the cycling media didn’t acknowledge the race...
The local papers report Oceania new president Tracey Gaudry has been in Adelaide securing the TDU's future in Adelaide!!... Surely she should be in NZ.. there is enough cycling Administration on the biggest cycling junket of the year to hold the SA Government hand.. personally I am sick of Adelaide using the TDU as part of their long standing gripe about losing the F1 to Melbourne.. and for the good of the sport there should be a TDU stage in Victoria’s Ballarat in 2015.

How will having a stage of TDU in Ballarat help the New Zealand Cycle Classic?



Hugh

 

[Red Ace]

How will having a stage of TDU in Ballarat help the New Zealand Cycle Classic?
Hugh

Directly it won’t – Sorry Hugh I am drawing a long bow – The TDU is a wonderful event all praise to the promotors - The point is that the TDU is quite insular from the rest of Australian Cycling and organisers sadly are a bit guarded and even competitive with other events in Australia. To put it bluntly it is a worry if race organisers are getting a morbid satisfaction from dominating the Australian Cycling Scene especially when you consider it is a UCI sanctioned event.
Clearly the UCI should be looking to promote their general development objectives which are based around having health Conti Circuit... Something which is simply not happening in Oceania..
The History of how the Oceania Continental Circuit fell apart is interesting given the head of the TDU and Oceania was the same person until this year.. could it be that the sport is being Hijacked... I guess I am saying shouldn’t the Australian UCI sanctioned World Tour Event be the Tour of Australia, or at least have a process for a state to bid to host a stage.
So the point is whole Oceania Cycling Structure has to be looked at.. This week Adelaide has been applying pressure to Tracey Gaudry that the TDU management monopoly remains after the 2015 licence review -prior to the coming UCI review; Surely we should be trying to get the TDU to fit into the general domestic cycling continental circuit.

I also am surprised that the last standing UCI promoter in Oceania is Jorge Sandoval... for many years they have tried to tame Jorge, with Oceania bring him to the 2008 Herald Sun Tour to teach him how to run a UCI race. It is worth considering that his New Zealand Classic race remains but the Herald Sun Tour has only been contested 2 times in the last 4 years and is not even a NRS level race now. We need to completely review the sport.

 

[PCutter]

The TdU survives in large large part through the support of the SA government, so its no surprise that the SA government isn't too keen on giving a stage to a different state. SA and the promotors have spent a number of years building up the event, from a time when no-one else cared about cycling, 15 years ago there were no MAMILs lining up for sportiv's and no CEOs and CFOs buying a $15k starter kit and looking to shout their workforce a new jersey for the latest cancer fund raiser. It was a race of a mix of Australian teams and a couple of European teams (usually with Australian's on board) to add some glamour. It didn't begin with crowds of 100,000 it built up a fan base, and a product people liked, pity no one else in Australia has done the same.

The TdU, its organisers, its sponsors and the SA government have spent a long time developing a product which is attractive to sponsors and the sporting public, and got it televised on free to air television (no small feat) and now a lot of johnny come lately's want to try and grab a slice. If the Victorian government want to build a cycling race, perhaps they should commit to the sport for 15 years and develop their own race. The TdU didn't start out as a WT race, its was a long process so perhaps you should be directing your anger at the Victorian government's lack of commitment to build the Sun Tour into a better race.

Yes Turtur has neglected the Oceania tour on his watch, though I suspect it was more due to a desire to roll it into a broader Asian tour (which would be the best thing the NRS teams could have occur for them), but its hardly like there are a line up of promotors dying to commit to the races, nor governments ready to commit to building a race up from scratch, no, its much easier to just try and steal South Australia's thunder - and Im from Queensland, so it would be better for me if they moved the race up here. And the reality is the NRS has only had any form of following the last couple of years since cycling has become popular (yet still most races are badly attended), so as for Turtur letting the Australian race scene fall away, the TdU has done more for the race scene than just about anything else (other than SBSs commitment to the tour on TV). The NRS (or its forebears or Australian road racing in general) has always been patchy at best. It is the change in government fee pricing structures which has done more to hurt the Australian race scene than Mike Turtur (ie the charges for police services, road closures etc) FFS, the Victorian government wouldn't even close the roads for the Australian TT championships until this year (and even then they had to move it), so again, get Victoria to commit to the sport by reducing the hefty financial penalty they place on race promotors in their state.

If you're so keen to see WT teams in Victoria, start convincing the Victorian government to build its own race up, rather than venting at something that another government helped make successful.

 

[Ferminal]

Yeh, funny the TDU gets blamed for the non-existence of an Oceania confederation. Turtur maybe, but that isn't directly the TDU. As though if the race in Adelaide didn't exist there would be a dozen UCI races in the region.

 

[PCutter]

And frankly, which brain surgeon of a race promoter thinks "gee, there's 52 weeks in the calendar, I think I'll put my race on the same week as the only WT race in the Southern hemisphere, thats a good way to get media coverage for my sponsors"?

 

[Jono L.]

And frankly, which brain surgeon of a race promoter thinks "gee, there's 52 weeks in the calendar, I think I'll put my race on the same week as the only WT race in the Southern hemisphere, thats a good way to get media coverage for my sponsors"?

Event organisors do not enjoy great leeway in regards to the timing of their events if they want UCI status. I thought the Sun Tour was evidence enough of that.

 

[Red Ace]

Yeh, funny the TDU gets blamed for the non-existence of an Oceania confederation. Turtur maybe, but that isn't directly the TDU. As though if the race in Adelaide didn't exist there would be a dozen UCI races in the region.

Certainly you have a different way of looking at it PCutter - sure the SA government deserve all the congratulations for creating a great event but let’s not get to melodramatic. Sure it might be fair and just that the UCI bow down for the SA Government because they created the event - but this business - and the UCI role is the police the development of the sport - not carry premier Jay Wilson Weatherill around on their shoulders feeding him grapes and toast the wonders of Adelaide..
PCutter you might get a bit of a shock at the money and commitment Vic Events was putting into the Sun Tour - and how the growth of the SunTour and TDU came down to a fairly dirty the fight for the use of the ProTour riders; the SunTours spot on the UCI Calendar and SA wiliness to pay the biggest drug cheat the world appearance money...
From past posts I know that Ferminal doesn’t like to skim to far below the surface on most issues and certainly avoids any conspiracy stories... however PCutter -please consider to this point in time the TDU has had plenty of assistance from the UCI (and maybe that was because of the alliances of the past Oceania President???) so I am just suggesting it’s time for the UCI to focus on its own objectives and start considering on the development of the general Oceania conti circuit.
Strangely my initial post wasn’t aimed at the TDU – I luv the event – It seems to have drifted onto the subject –Initially I was just amazed that cyclingnews.com didn’t cover Oceania’s only continental circuit tour!! The Site didn’t even post a result for the NZ NZCT Classic!!
Long time Oceania administrator Graham Sycamore believes the UCI needs to relax the rules to develop a network of respectable races in the region. It seems Cyclingnews.com has evaluated the New Zealand Classic as not worth covering... so maybe the editor should have some input into which events the media believe should become the UCI events in Oceania. Because by not covering the event it sinks the boot into the race anyway.

 

[hughmoore]

Certainly you have a different way of looking at it PCutter - sure the SA government deserve all the congratulations for creating a great event but let’s not get to melodramatic. Sure it might be fair and just that the UCI bow down for the SA Government because they created the event - but this business - and the UCI role is the police the development of the sport - not carry premier Jay Wilson Weatherill around on their shoulders feeding him grapes and toast the wonders of Adelaide..
PCutter you might get a bit of a shock at the money and commitment Vic Events was putting into the Sun Tour - and how the growth of the SunTour and TDU came down to a fairly dirty the fight for the use of the ProTour riders; the SunTours spot on the UCI Calendar and SA wiliness to pay the biggest drug cheat the world appearance money...
From past posts I know that Ferminal doesn’t like to skim to far below the surface on most issues and certainly avoids any conspiracy stories... however PCutter -please consider to this point in time the TDU has had plenty of assistance from the UCI (and maybe that was because of the alliances of the past Oceania President???) so I am just suggesting it’s time for the UCI to focus on its own objectives and start considering on the development of the general Oceania conti circuit.
Strangely my initial post wasn’t aimed at the TDU – I luv the event – It seems to have drifted onto the subject –Initially I was just amazed that cyclingnews.com didn’t cover Oceania’s only continental circuit tour!! The Site didn’t even post a result for the NZ NZCT Classic!!
Long time Oceania administrator Graham Sycamore believes the UCI needs to relax the rules to develop a network of respectable races in the region. It seems Cyclingnews.com has evaluated the New Zealand Classic as not worth covering... so maybe the editor should have some input into which events the media believe should become the UCI events in Oceania. Because by not covering the event it sinks the boot into the race anyway.

So your saying the NZCT gave Cyclingnews results/writeup of the event and Cyclingnews refused to publish it?

So TDU used dirty tactics to get the international riders to not come in October for the Sun Tour, instead come to TDU in January. What were these dirty tactics?

SA made heaps out of having Lance, he was a bargain at $3M

What should be done to develop the Conti circuit, what events are in the conti circuit now?

Hugh

 

[Red Ace]

So your saying the NZCT gave Cyclingnews results/writeup of the event and Cyclingnews refused to publish it?

So TDU used dirty tactics to get the international riders to not come in October for the Sun Tour, instead come to TDU in January. What were these dirty tactics?

SA made heaps out of having Lance, he was a bargain at $3M

What should be done to develop the Conti circuit, what events are in the conti circuit now?

Hugh

Im not getting anywhere with this - Its just a waste of time