William

I agree with this. In NJ we had a "TT Cup" where ten time trials over the course of the season were run at different venues, by different promoters, but all with the same general setup. Everything was pre-reg, and a start list was guaranteed in advance so that you knew when your starting time was and could plan accordingly. All riders in a given category would have similar conditions (being grouped together, so no mixing of juniors and P/1/2 riders), and the riders would go off in reverse order of cup standing. There were always "X" distance to go markers, and results were up within a half hour for everyone. All categories were grouped together and the riders were awarded overall points toward the cup prize (similar to BAR or maybe the Oregon Cup?). There was a 15 minute protest period and then all was a wrap. And yes, in order to promote more interest in the TT for those who were afraid that the only people who win are those who have 15k set ups, there were also mens a
nd womens "Eddy" Categories. These were all huge events back east, and frankly, I miss them and would like to see something like that out here. For those who liek the aero goodies, there would be the regular cats, and for those who wanted to ride without them, they could compete as well.

I guess in my experience with TTs here, while you have a lot of them, the quality of how well they are run varies from promoter to promoter, and I just think it can be done better.

Will

Yes, but it depends upon what you perceive to be "improvement".

Like many, I see an improvement as something that would increase the number of participants. Getting results right in a timely fashion is important to all types of individual competition. With or without that factor, as it sits with Time Trials at the moment, the isolated tt event is kind of a pointless pursuit unless you're willing to throw gobs of cash at a time trial bike.

Promote a "Merckx Rules" (or similar) TT series and you draw from a much larger pool of riders. Make as many people as possible feel like they can be competitive on their existing equipment, and they will come.

Those with deep pockets and wind-tunnel tested tt bikes available to them may opt out of such and event, but you'll get more racers.

-Erik

> Date: Sun, 1 May 2011 13:57:10 -0700
> From: DrAxeman1@cs.com
> To: obra@list.obra.org
> Subject: [OBRA Chat] Can we improve TTs?
>
> I know that many of you don't consider time trails "real racing," but for me, the race of truth is as real as it gets. I am not trying to complain, and so before all of the hate comes in about, "if you are so smart, do it yourself" I will say that I post this in order to do exactly that. I would like to try to see if we can improve TTing in Oregon. Maybe even to the point where real racers will enjoy them!
>
> The big problem I have right now is the fact that it seems damn near impossible to get any sort of timely results for these races. I am not sure what the problem is with that, but in my opinion, it needs to change. Who wants to race and then find out three days later if they have won or lost (exaggeration, but you get my point)?
>
> When I raced in NJ, I was part of the TT cup committee and we did our best to create the best organized TT series in the country. I would be happy to assist and share my knowledge so that we could perhaps do something like this in OR. In addition, I can look into a very simple Excel program that we used in NJ with much success to get timely results to the racers so that they could know their placings, or, if there was an error, they could actually enter a protest within USAC's 15 minute protest window. Most results were posted within 30 minutes of the category finishing, and many times, in significantly less time than that.
>
> I don't know if anyone has thoughts on this, but I am willing to donate time and resources to seeing some changes for the better.
>
> Thanks.
>
> William J. O'Donnell, DC
> Chiropractic Physician
> Vertebrata Chiropractic
>
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