CI Road Commission

ragazzo

Cycling Ireland is pleased to announce the re-establishment of a Road Commission which will take up the responsibility of all road racing activities for Cycling Ireland. The Road Commission will act as a sub-committee to the Board of Cycling Ireland, and their responsibilities will include a review of the racing calendar with a view of increasing the overall standard of domestic competition...

http://www.cyclingireland.ie/cycling-news-item/cycling-ireland-road-commission/2189

A positive step for road racing with 4 top men appointed. Hopefully they can work together for the benefit of Irish cycling.
Best of luck lads!

morana

it will be interesting to see what they come up with. I remember in the past there was a suggestion of minimum distances to add a bit of length to races. I think the avg A1 race is 70km.

The reintroduction of development squads will also be interesting. The lads know a bit about road racing so I am sure there will be some great ideas.

Beasty

Dunno - one of them looks a bit ropey......


:pac:

Beasty

I do think getting representation from all 4 provinces is critical to ensure all areas of the country properly input into and feel part of the process. That does create a bit of a logistical issue as 3 will always need to travel for meetings (although maybe they will be able to do a lot of their work via conference calls). Hopefully all 4 will be able to find the time (which is not going to be easy) to devote to this.

wav1

Lots of work to be done,and the body of people can but try.
Nothing mad all at one go or anything like that,but a gradual tweeking of various stuff can help I feel,and its important to cater/facilitate for all of those who wish to be road racing cyclists.Probably looking at moving upwards the distance of races particularly in the early and summer months of the season.Most of the races now are in kms what they used to be in miles in old money.This will be as I said a gradual thing,so as not to scare off anybody.
The creation of a new [totally different]and easy to read national league will also be on the agenda,with fewer events and a meaningful league.
Creation of development squads at a level below high performance/elite is also exciting.Looking forward to doing what we can.

harringtonp

morana wrote: »

it will be interesting to see what they come up with. I remember in the past there was a suggestion of minimum distances to add a bit of length to races. I think the avg A1 race is 70km.
.

70km ?? You mean 70 miles...

morana

harringtonp wrote: »

70km ?? You mean 70 miles...

no i am sure when it was analysed before it was 70km maybe thats changed since i was involved

Eamonnator

wav1 wrote: »

Lots of work to be done,and the body of people can but try.
Nothing mad all at one go or anything like that,but a gradual tweeking of various stuff can help I feel,and its important to cater/facilitate for all of those who wish to be road racing cyclists.Probably looking at moving upwards the distance of races particularly in the early and summer months of the season.Most of the races now are in kms what they used to be in miles in old money.This will be as I said a gradual thing,so as not to scare off anybody.
The creation of a new [totally different]and easy to read national league will also be on the agenda,with fewer events and a meaningful league.
Creation of development squads at a level below high performance/elite is also exciting.Looking forward to doing what we can.

Best of luck to you, whoever you are.

Beasty

In my view wav the key to this is getting a tier below Commission level to delegate a lot of this to. There are plenty out there who volunteer at club level and I think the Commission should try and tap into that "resource" while ensuring it has oversight and control over what's going on.

jinkypolly

Will these guys also be responsible for Women's racing?

harringtonp

Would be nice to revisit the A3/junior thing again, I know it has been discussed to death on various threads here.

From an A3 perspective, its a bit like a season of 2 halves. Last 2 open races I did were A3 only with very few juniors and most A3s could actually "race" in them a bit if they so wished. In early season races where the young guns turn up in force, you're just trying to hang in for as long as possible.

Rather than artificaly keeping them in A3 (bar a few late season exceptions) would it not be worth just raising the points threshold to something like 20 or 30.

ragazzo

harringtonp wrote: »

Would be nice to revisit the A3/junior thing again, I know it has been discussed to death on various threads here.

From an A3 perspective, its a bit like a season of 2 halves. Last 2 open races I did were A3 only with very few juniors and most A3s could actually "race" in them a bit if they so wished. In early season races where the young guns turn up in force, you're just trying to hang in for as long as possible.

Rather than artificaly keeping them in A3 (bar a few late season exceptions) would it not be worth just raising the points threshold to something like 20 or 30.

The A3/junior topic. I miss the old days when fortis and righteous tom et al used to lend their weight to that debate.
Where has everyone gone?

I think the idea of an Espoir/Junior squad below elite level might help to alleviate some of this junior pain for many A3 riders. Between exams, squad training/preparation and representative racing, many of the top juniors would probably not grace the A3 bunch too often.
A loss for the racing A3 riders, in my opinion, but relief perhaps for others.

It will be interesting to see the ideas materialise into reality and hopefully the financial and time committments, of the various involved parties, will not become obstacles to progress.

Something needs to happen with the A3 grade regarding bunch size, safety and behaviour on the road. The general level of racing experience in large A3 bunches coupled with the seemingly mistaken belief of superpowers is a recipe for disaster every time.
I am not sure how this can be tackled without adding extra burden onto the shoulders of race organisers.
I have lots of ideas which work perfectly in theory but I could not actually see them transferring to reality.