G-Bikers are people 2

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Premium MemberPermalink Reply by Steve on May 29, 2010 at 16:42

Yes it does, I apologize walrus. I don't want to tar all G bikers with the same brush. Like I said before, Yes its a bummer your discipline wasn't included. I would be dissapointed too. My point is complaining and bitchin about it and carrying on like a pork chop won't help at all (and this is not directed at you at all Walrus). As Ryan said it makes all G bikers look bad, but don't worry I'll give you a lift back up the hill...

walrus said:

check the members list i am a paid member of asra i think that at least lets me put in my 2 cents

Steve said:

Its funny, you would never see DH longboarders complain on another gravity sports forum for not being included in a race organised by an association not catering for their disicipline and that they are not even a member of!

I have nothing at all against G bikers but the decisions been made. Lets accept it and move on.

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Permalink Reply by Guff on May 29, 2010 at 17:19

So you are not allowed to voice opinions or complain seriously how do you get heard. Is there any point in a forum..

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Permalink Reply by Robbo on May 29, 2010 at 20:34

ASRA is not a Centrelink office think about who you are complaining to, 3 guys that work all year round on this stuff. That never get a practice run at an event cause they are picking up cones or selling t-shirts or running timers. Don't get to compete at the only legit race in the country because they put it on for everybody else. Spend each night deleting spam off this site and updating web pages. It all sounds a bit boring but its done without hesitation, until a few people get on this site and start mouthing us off.

Intentionally stirring the pot gets a bit boring and is not very constructive.

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Premium MemberPermalink Reply by Ching on May 31, 2010 at 1:10

ASRA is run and managed by a handful of guys with full-time jobs, its actually amazing the kinda things they've done so far. i think its fair if we should give them some breathing room guys. videos of the gravity bike runs from newtons are posted up along with every other discipline. what's the problem? i don't see that many videos/photos of womens downhill im not complaining.

but that sucks that gravity bikes arent in this years newtons :( i know the indonesian g-bike team were planning on hitting newtons this year. they were pretty bummed when we told them the bad news.

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Premium MemberPermalink Reply by sidecar nic on May 31, 2010 at 13:14

Robbo, you guys did an amazing job for newtons last year and no one is disputing that at all. We all know that the event wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the huge efforts of you guys and it was because of this effort that i decided to supported ASRA by volunteering my time to help set up for newtons and becoming a financial member. At the time ASRA said that they "were the representative body for gravity sports in australia" .

To simply cut one discipline from newtons like this without explanation leaves a very bitter taste for gbike people who've supported ASRA and put enormous amounts of effort into preparation for the event, are you able to at least offer some insight into the logic behind this decision please?

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Premium MemberPermalink Reply by Grits on May 31, 2010 at 22:05

A bit of a bummer if some internationals like the Indonesian Gbike crew were planning to come.
Australia seems to be the place where all the 'other' disciplines like luge and gbike are seeming to flourish and prosper a lot faster than other parts of the world.

It sounds like the gbike field would have definately grown again this year, just like i'm sure the luge field will grow again this year. The luge field was one of, if not the biggest in the world last year.

My first question is,
Is it ASRA's call not to have gbikes? or is it Newtons Nation call not to have gbikes?
As it says on the newtons nation site, that Gbikes will be there.
http://www.newtonsnation.com.au/zones/default#gforce

After learning from years gone by, the effeciency of running an event just gets smoother, surely finding the time to accomodate this field isn't an issue. Getting them back up the hill isn't an issue, as they use the same logistics as the luge riders.

I mean if these gbikers are ready to put their money where their mouth is, and there is only maybe 12 of them, then for asra, at $250 a rider, and only requiring a few heats and a final, wouldn't it be worth the money to have them at the event?

Robbo please correct me if i'm wrong.

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Permalink Reply by Robbo on June 1, 2010 at 0:41

Its not a number or money thing. We are pitching this event as an international World Cup event which it is, its not the Australian titles, its not a club day and its not a freeride. Last year we dropped all demos and only made a very late decision to run with G-bikes, this year we decided not to have the category. We will also likely restrict the number of total riders this year. G-bike has extremely low world wide participation and is not recognised as a world cup discipline. As a demo it doesn't add anything to our event, its doesn't add participation to our main sports or their own. As a demo it alienates a great portion of the people in our target group. We have very limited resources (mainly our time) its not about the quantity of disciplines its about the quality.

If there were more races at a lower level in Australia this would not cause any issue but relying on our feature international event to present an extremely low participation demo is not really our responsibility. If somebody wants to put on a local event and have all sorts of experimental disciplines like G-bikes, side-cars and billy carts I strongly encourage them to do so, but these are very niche sports and don't relate well to the wider audience we are trying to target. Bathurst is a World Cup event with World Cup Series competitors racing for World Cup Series points and we would like to focus on that. 5 years ago all you had to do to race in one of these events was to show up on race day. Times have changed, there are now more World Cups and more people riding at this elite level. There is incredibly strong competition in these events and we would like to promote that to a mainstream audience as legitimate international sport.

To focus too widely is to neglect and undervalue the main sports we promote. It may be fine to play with different things at small events and ride days but this works heavily against us when we pitch for real events. It works against us when we try for government grants as they require a much tighter focus then to say we represent everything that goes down a hill. You simply cannot get money off the back of that, you need to prove you have real participation, real growth over a period of time, and a real future that brings benefit to many stakeholders. All these things require a lot of money and the only reason we have been able to achieve what we have is because we do a huge amount of work for no money. We need to pick the winners not fail everything. Our focus is to support what we can promote as legitimate sport and put all our limited time into trying to make a success of that.

At the World Cup this year we are focusing on the events that are part of the World Cup Series, that have industry sponsors behind them and that we can pitch to a national media audience that will understand them. If people would like to push these other sports than they need to get up and do that. It is not sufficient to add 10 guys each year to your sport, that is not flourishing in anybodies language. In Downhill skateboard and longboard we are winning that battle with enormous growth, in luge and slalom it is much more of a battle but we are trying hard.

I would appreciate if people could respect our legitimate decision and allow us to get on with the enormous task of organising this event.

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Premium MemberPermalink Reply by Ian Coggan on June 1, 2010 at 0:54

robbo, i swear your darth vader man, your a machine.
true as true can be.

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Permalink Reply by Abdil Mahdzan on June 1, 2010 at 1:27

Robbo, thanks for the explanation. Before I go into my lengthy explanation, let me just correct your statement saying that gravity bike is not recognized as a world cup discipline. It actually is.

Here are my 200 cents worth (this is lengthy!), having raced at IGSA events since 2001 back when I was still studying in the US, and observing the growth of all gravity sports.

Back during the X-Games days, street luge far outnumbered standup riders. There were a few downhill skateboarders like Mark Golter, Darryl Freeman, Dane van Bommel, Rick Kludy, and some of the lugers were also standup riders like Biker Sherlock, Lee Dansie, and Todd Lehr.

Street luge started "dying" out when the X-Games dropped street luge in 2002. Marcus Rietema lost his contract with ESPN, which caused him financial troubles and he had to go back to being a horse dentist full time. This piece of bad news was also detrimental to his health, as he fell very sick.

At the IGSA World Cups I went to from 2001-2005, standup was always the minority discipline. We had a bunch of inline skaters and gravity bikers at these American races, in fact gravity bike seemed to have a larger participation base compared to inline skating.

In 2005, when I went to compete in my first European race in Sweden, I was overwhelmed with how many standup riders there were. The years 2005 onwards were really the culmination of a discipline that used to be the minority worldwide. There were a lot more disciplines being competed in Europe. Inline skaters were mostly French and Italian, the dirtsurfers were mostly Swiss, German, Austrian, and skullboarders were exclusively French.

The IGSA awards world cup points to the following disciplines:

Downhill Skateboard
Street Luge
Classic Luge
Downhill Inline
Gravity Bike

In 2005 (this was on the old IGSA website), Marcus announced that fairing gravity bikes would no longer earn world cup points. They would only be awarded national points at a world cup race, if they chose to show up. The reasoning behind this? Two gravity bikers, Fermin Rodriguez and Dave Kessler, would travel with their 100 lb (or is it kg?) bikes with fairings, diving weights, etc. It was a nightmare traveling to Europe for Hot Heels with these bikes! I was told their bike boxes were like refrigerator boxes and I believe they had to send them via cargo!

So the reason (there could be more) that Marcus made this decision was to discourage people from paying huge logistic costs to transport their bikes to the World Cup races all over the world. However, the Gravity Bike discipline (which was called the stock class back then since they had no fairings) still retained their world cup status.

Dirtsurfer was another discipline recognized by the IGSA that used to earn world cup points, now they don't even earn any points at all since no races last year offered dirtsurfer as a discipline! You can check by looking at the 2009 IGSA World Rankings. I still believe that there are more dirtsurfers worldwide than there are gravity bikers.

As for skullboard, this is basically street luge headfirst (think of skeleton), started by a French man named Claude Gesta. He believes his sport to be just as safe as the other gravity sports, and I know he's pushing his sport very actively, building boards and getting riders into it (mostly French and Swiss), but Marcus doesn't recognize skullboard as an IGSA discipline (he's seen too many broken ankles in street luge, if he endorses skullboard, he'll see too many broken skulls!). Therefore no points are awarded to the skullboard category, only their finish positions are recorded on the race results at that event. The Graveyard Call in France this year (and almost all French races) include skullboard, just to cater for their niche group, because I suppose they support their fellow French man.

I know that Eimer Mayer (IGSA European steward) has raised this issue about inline, gravity bike, and dirtsurfer, and what their fate would be.

On another note, the past 2 Newtons (2008 and 2009) had more gravity bikers than inline skaters, so to say that gravity bike isn't flourishing is misleading. The only IGSA World Cup races this year that have inline skating as a discipline are Graveyard Call in France and Padova Grand Prix. Plus any races in France. I don't believe downhill inline is practiced widely all over the world, as there are way more street lugers than there are downhill inline skaters.

I'm not trying to reverse the decision that has already been made, I'm just telling you the facts that I know from my own personal observation. I understand that event organizers ultimately make their own call whether they want to include certain disciplines or not. And having a quality event (due to time constraints and logistic issues) is your utmost priority, which is a perfectly good reason.

For what it's worth, I hope everyone understands where I'm coming from and the point that I am making. I hope I am not stirring the pot (or rocking the boat)! Thanks for listening!

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Permalink Reply by matty leadfoot on June 1, 2010 at 7:52

wow, great and informative post Abdil.

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Permalink Reply by Robbo on June 1, 2010 at 8:52

Thanks for your input Abdil. I'm fully aware of the long history and all its detail. 10 years ago luge was king but there was still very low participation in all of these disciplines so the foundation was never very strong. You could still just basically show up at a race and have a go, the competition was strong at the top but weak in the knees. The reason skateboard has flourished is not because of the people at the top, but because of the huge industry and participation beneath it.

With regard to numbers from 2001 Street luge and skateboard had similar numbers between 140-160 riding WC events with luge having the greater numbers by about 10-15 guys. Beyond 2002 skateboard just increased year in year out. Inline has always had about 50-60 each year from 2001 till now gravity bike tended to sit between 15-25 riders.

Fast forward 10 years and skateboard gets about 650 riders on the World Cup now all the other disciplines are at about the same numbers as they were in 2001. That kind of zero growth is troubling and gets you thinking about where your priorities, cash and free time lay. To pat oneself on the back and say we have strong growth because we have increased G-bike numbers from 12-18 is living in a dream world, the numbers now are still lower then they have ever been and from a worldwide participation standpoint they are simply embarrassing numbers. Street luge has at least remained stable at a competitive amount and we would like to increase that.

The reason we do inline is because we believe there is still potential there and the general public relates better to it. The reason for this is it has its own industry behind it and has a large participation in general inline. This is not dissimilar to skateboard which has a huge industry behind it and huge number in general skateboarding. G-bike is based around 2 dozen guys around the world tinkering in their sheds. This is a pastime for a few people and like every other event organiser in the world we don't believe it belongs at World Cup events.

At the moment G-bike is a recognised WC discipline inside the IGSA book but with no WC events. The idea that it has ever been anything but a couple dozen guys having a few races each year is fanciful and I'm sure everybody here understands that. We are not really into this kind of charade because it is a waste of our limited resources. What we are into at the World Cup events is to put on show elite riders, not just a few mates who want to have a run down a hill, there are other events for things like that.

For ASRA it is all about growth, we don't want to sit still nor slog away for years for no improvement, we are always looking for targeted groups withing the community that can be converted across. We have recently been in touch with members of the Australian Winter Olympic team in luge, snowboard and downhill skiing about doing some general cross-over events and in particular competing at Newtons. For skateboard we would like to continue to leach numbers from general skateboarding as the number are massive and we are currently having significant success at that. We would like to create the basis for profitable industry support and get to a situation where events can be run by organisers that don't have to sacrifice half their yearly income to do it.

We are comfortable with the decision that has been made for all of the reasons that I have mentioned in my last 2 posts. This is similar to the thinking of event organisers all over the world and that is not just a mere coincidence, the reason for this is because we slog away in this community and industry day in day out and we understand the trends, we understand where effort gives no reward, we don't look at everything through rose coloured glasses.

In the last five days I have received all sorts of vindictive emails and PMs, been called all sorts of names, had my newtons page near defaced and for what? because we made a decision that has already been made all over the world and for very legitimate reason. The work we do is often a thankless task, it costs us heavily financially and kills our relationships, but we carry on because we like to do it. We make decisions based on sound foundations not on fairy land stuff. But to remain in a static status quo with the amount of effort that goes in is not an option.

There is a place for G-bike in the scene but that place is not the World Cup

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Premium MemberPermalink Reply by sidecar nic on June 1, 2010 at 10:27

There were demo runs last year - there's footage of a gravity wheelchair. Was that guy even competing at Newtons???

Robbo said:

Last year we dropped all demos. As a demo it doesn't add anything to our event, its doesn't add participation to our main sports or their own. As a demo it alienates a great portion of the people in our target group.

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