This was posted recently after Todd was ousted as the VP for Road and Track on the Coast Website. http://www.coastalraceclub.com/ This is a pretty negative statement itself, I felt as if Todd was not listening at the meeting. He even seemed alarmed to notice that the average age of the BC Elite level road racer was 37! This should have set off alarm bells before he stepped aboard when the average age was probably about 35. I'd have been worried if the age crept over 25! Remember that Masters starts at 30.
Well, you can read his comments below but he seems to think that Cycling BC's sole purpose is to create national level athletes. This does not fit into any Long Term Athlete Development Program at all. Take a good look Todd, Elite don't build a sport, they are Elite because of a healthy sport system that starts young and services a larger core that's Elite members.
Below is Todd's post:
_2012 AGM Cycling BC
Well the meeting that people thought would never happen finally did. The large crowd stood in line in the rain to get into the building. Thank
goodness for me I was a director for 3 ½ more hours so I was able to cut the line!
The start of the meeting was informative with the President reading and making some big announcements. Plans for a new multisport facility were unveiled, this would include a state of the art Velodrome. This is a project that has been in the works for a couple years and has just been moved forward by
municipal and regional government. CBC was asked to provide artist rendering for concepts and the next step is a shovel ready plan. This will
undoubtedly change the landscape for cycling in this Province for years to come. Providing some one is left to do the work?
One of the biggest issues facing the AGM was the overwhelming negative mood of the membership. Much of this could be attributed to poor communication the biggest factor though was the work behind the scenes spreading malicious and erroneous misinformation about staff and management. When you have a
situation with a donor interfering with the operations of a society this should raise a red flag with membership. When Bernard Leroux stood up and asked where
his money went I just about fell out of my chair this is a man who runs a security firm asking where his money went? The man made a charitable donation for
which he was provided with a charitable receipt. It took chutzpah to stand up in public and ask a question like that. The point I make is that these kind of relationships are not ethical nor would they stand up to CRA scrutiny. The other item I will point out is that Mr. Leroux insisted that we have the auditor present at AGM that was a cost to the association of $1000.00 for his time to be there, Mr Leroux did not ask the auditor one question.
I would hope that future solicitations of donors would be handled much more professionally and that a special fundraising arm be set up through cycling BC to work with donors and that a proper channel is set up for donor to association relations. This is not transparent enough!
Other issues that people were grappling with were, should it be Cycling BCs job to host events? I guess folks could ask the question should we be pumping money into a money loosing Velodrome? The short answer is yes sometimes it is important to make investments in your sport, one has to weigh the advantage over disadvantage but the bottom line is the board did a good job handling those issues.
Where does this leave the membership? Well with a full new slate of directors anyones guess is a good one. My hope is that some of the information that I and others delivered didnt fall on deaf ears. I raised an alarming concern with aging statistics for the sport. When I was racing in the early 80s the median age for elite male was 26-27. The current median age for the same category is 37. This tells us a couple things first racers are getting older and secondly theres not enough youth coming up from the bottom. The sport is going to have difficulty with sustainability in Elite Male category if the erosion isnt handled.
Cycling BC has made some inroads with reaching out to youth in BC schools. From March 2012 to current they have put 1000 kids through cycling programs in schools. These are kids 8-12 yrs of age with the focus on skill based training and fun. This kind of programming needs to continue and with the help of clubs and other stake holders we can then have some future programming including competitions and Learning to train (LTTs). I have found that many of the career coaches are not that interested in this kind of outreach they are preoccupied with the sole purpose of finding the next star as this is what provides them with their point of relevance. Cycling BC mandate is and should continue to be growing the sport for all and this includes kids!
Our job is to get athletes to the national arena then CCA takes over. There seems to be conflict amongst the membership as to what our role is in development? In the short future we will have no place for U23 to develop in racing if the Elite category continues to erode. Thank goodness for time trials!
Last thing I will address is Richard Wooles. I was asked by Axel Merckx why Richard was not brought back to Cycling BC. If people only knew how hard
we worked to try and get an outcome that was amicable for him. I can assure you that not one business owner would have taken the steps we did in trying to keep Richard. I wish him all the best in whatever he chooses.
People ask me if I am I tired? Yes I am tired but I was happy to help out where I could. The fight is now for the next board to come to grips with the reality that faces the sport, negative publicity and the lack of youth involvement and the dwindling number of race organizers.
I can now put my feet up and watch the new board lead the way.
Cheers, see you on the road!
Todd Hansen
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