by
Rob
Tue May 15, 2007 8:12 am
Well, I've sent the national secretary the following email. It rambles a bit, but hopefully raises the relevant points. We'll see what comes back.
Dear Phil,
I am writing to your in my capacity as the Club Captain of Clifton CC York and am asking if you would give your perspective on a strange dichotomy that currently exists in the world of Time Trialling.
Firstly we’d like to congratulate the CTT on their inspired idea to encourage the promotion of “come and try it” events at the Tour Prologue distance in July. This fits superbly with our own ethos of encouraging new riders into cycling in general and we have planned a quiet and safe circuit in the lanes very close to the city of York. We are organising a HQ and hope to run a presentation, potentially with the help of one of the club’s Olympians. We plan to get strong and positive press coverage as we already have a good relationship with the local paper. We are the largest club in the area and are growing strongly and events like this are a key part of our strategy.
It is against this backdrop that we are horrified to hear of a new event to be run on a new course this weekend. You may be unfamiliar with the roads used for the revised V330 so I’ll try to paint you a picture. The course is entirely on the A64 dual carriageway which links Leeds with York and runs on to the coast at Scarborough. There are intersections also with the A1 and M1 and traffic conditions are invariably heavy. Indeed the road is notorious locally for major hold-ups and serious accidents. From the start at Tadcaster the competitors are expected to ride east past three major slip roads, the third of which being where Pete Longbottom was killed, and on to a major roundabout which serves as the turn at Hopgrove. Here the dual carriageway narrows to single and the coast-bound traffic backs up, sometimes for many miles. The return leg involves the riders running the gauntlet of 3 more slip roads before the finish. We would be very interested to read the risk assessment that has been completed for this course.
Now, I have ridden courses like this in the past and understand the desire of riders to travel fast with the assistance of the traffic, but times have changed; traffic is heavier and we all have a deeper sense of social responsibility. While we are obviously concerned about the safety of this course it is more the image of our sport that it portrays locally that is driving this letter (indeed, I am well aware that there are courses similar to this in regular use on the A1 at Dishforth and Ranby). The A64 is synonymous, in local opinion, with accidents and travel chaos. If (I can’t bear to use the term “when”) there is an accident involving an event out there, there will be howls of protest locally and eyes will turn to us as the largest club in the area to explain. In the meantime, the best case scenario is that all the riders in the event look completely irresponsible to passing motorists. Since time trialling on main roads is the only branch of competitive cycling that most of the public actually witness, then this irresponsibility is used to label us all and works directly against our work to promote the sport through the Prologue TT in July.
Could you therefore please?
• Allow us to read the risk assessment as this may allay some of our fears
• Commit to review the use of this course and ones like it in the future
I will post this email and your reply on our web forum as the subject is currently of great interest to our members.
Yours in sport
Rob Osman
Club Captain
Clifton CC York
