I thought the EOI allowed splitting of rounds.
The rounds are still up to clubs that want to run these events as I understand it. Last year clubs found the financial burden versus rewards as ..... not desirable.
Yeah, that was what was originally discussed, but I was surprised when the EOIs came out to see that only one round made this available as a possibility, and only on two particular dates. This is surely not what some clubs would have had in mind.
According to the MTBA's information for clubs hosting national series events there is no provision on the schedule for incorparating additional classes. I may be wrong here but so far I cant get any info from MTBA about this issue at all.
I have not heard anything along these lines either - the mention of it here is the first it's ever come up that I've seen or heard.
I'd be interested to know how many people who have raced XC in the past WONT be going this year.
As I said, I might do Buller and Glenorchy if they get a round, but that's about it. There's other tracks in there there's no way in hell I'd consider racing in with Elite though. A large part of this decision is the fact that I can book accomodation there, and ride to the venue (and be there within about 15 minutes). FWIW, there were only 7 people across all categories who did every round, of which three of us were in Sport Men (1st, 2nd, 4th); two others were in Expert men from memory (2nd and 3rd).
But on the safety side of things, you only need to look at the time differences between what we were doing in Sport and those in Elite. At Illinbah, in the mud, AJ kept plugging out 24mins, our times sat around the 37mins, and Nathan, Simon and myself almost collected each other on different laps on the muddy descent where none of us had any control. Similar story with the rest of the guys at the You Yangs (my times at that round aren't very representative
. There's no way I'd want to be in a situation like that in front of Elite riders who can handle those conditions just fine.
Perhaps something MTBA should consider is just awarding series points to Masters and Vets based on the Elite race, like they do with U23. Give the winners of those categories a trophy at the end of the season.