Important 2011 XC racing information

Firstly – Happy New Year to you all!
And don’t worry about all your various Christmas indulgences – a few hardy XC spins will shake all that excess off you in no time.

With the New Year comes a few updates and important changes:

The following information has been communicated to, and majority-accepted by the 2010 XC race hosting clubs.

2011 Race Calendar Updates

• Cycling Ireland have informed the UCI that they are not in a position to proceed with the 2011 European Masters Championships in Killarney in 2011
• Racing 795 Leinster League Round 1 has been moved to 20th March
• The Mountainbiking Association of Dublin (MAD) will not be running an NPS round in 2011 and instead will focus their efforts on the two-day King of Three Rock event in July.
• There will be seven rounds in the 2011 XC NPS

XC NPS Category Changes

As previously communicated, the following changes will be introduced in 2011:

• A reduction in race time / lap count for Elite Men
• The introduction of an Expert Women category

In addition to these changes, the Master & Expert categories will be replaced with two open Senior categories (Senior 1 and Senior 2) for 2011.

These new categories will be based on ability rather than age-group and the intent is to create two similarly sized categories of closely-matched riders. Both will be full-league categories (with trophies etc.).

Example race scenario

• Sport: 2 laps (avg. 0:45hr racing time / max. 1:00hr racing time)
• Senior 2: 3 laps (avg. 1:15hr racing time)
• Senior 1: 4 laps (avg. 1:30hr racing time)
• Junior: 4 laps (avg. 1:30hr racing time)
• Veteran: 4 laps (avg. 1:30hr racing time)
• Elite: 5 or 6 laps (* corrected as follows: avg. 1:30hr / max 1:45hr racing time)

Ideal Outcome of These Changes
Overall, it is expected that these category changes will lead to a balancing of the categories in terms of abilities and numbers.
With the reduced race time for Elite Men, top riders from Master, Expert, and Veteran will ideally be attracted to move to Elite Men providing a larger Elite Men field.
Top riders from Sport, and riders from Expert, Master, Veteran who currently finding these categories too difficult will be attracted to move to Senior 2.
Sport category will become more appealing to beginners with the more competitive Sport riders moving to Senior 2.
Senior 1 will then ideally be comprised of mid to upper end (not top-end) riders from Expert and Master.

These changes will also apply to any provincial leagues which are part of the NPS, or any provincial leagues that wish to align their categories with the NPS. The changes will not affect the XC National Championships which will continue to be age-based.

We will not be introducing rider grading, promotion/relegation or mandatory category assignation for the 2011 season – these will be considered for 2012.

We request all clubs to advise their members as to what the most suitable category would be for them in terms of ability.

There will be no additional administration overhead for the clubs with this change, the various league tables, online sign-on and sign-on sheets update will be handled by the commission.

Online Registration in 2011

IMPORTANT: All riders should use the Online Registration for XC events in 2011 when provided.
If you do not use the online reg. then you may miss out on points in the 2011 XC League tables:
In the 2010 league tables, there were many instances of the same riders, but with different/incorrect spelling of their name which took many hours to be manually adjusted and corrected.
You must enter your name (and licence number if you have one) fully and accurately to be assured of being assigned your correct points in the league tables.

Attendance Requirements at XC NPS Rounds

We aim to attract as many riders to the various NPS rounds as possible, while acknowledging that riders must consider aspects such as family commitments and summer holidays, not to mention the odd mechanical, therefore the best *5 out of 7 races will count to the overall league positions.

* Note that for medals placing, a rider MUST compete in a minimum of 5 races.
A rider who does not compete in 5 races or more is not eligible for medals placing.

The only exception being Youth categories from Under 16 and younger where a rider must compete in a minimum of 4 races to be eligible for medals placings.

Other news:

The Offroad Commission have created a new website to consolidate the information feeds and news items from all the current websites (eg; irishxcmtb.com. irishcx.com, irishdh.com, mbi.ie).
This new site is intended to be a centralised resource for all offroad activities (XC, DH, BMX, CX) as well as trails/access news and updates.
The link to the new site is as follows: http://www.offroadcyclingireland.ie/

Please address any questions to offroad.commission@gmail.com