Us Club Resources And Rules

[dbrown]

Happy New Year! Here is one new years resolution for the US Motorcycle Trials Association members (and you should be one): we need to get to work on the committees for competition rules and club resources! The competition rules committee will include rules for scoring and section marking for a competition event for clubs, which will be submitted to the AMA for approval and inclusion in the AMA rulebook. This committee (or perhaps a subcommittee of it) should also develop guidelines for defining names and skill levels for classes (as is done with enduros & other forms of motorcycle competition) that can serve as a suggested standard for individual clubs. We should also include some rules guidelines for alternative competition events, such as peer-scoring, or a non-competitive "fun trial" or vintage event or gate trial (maybe other subcommittees). The written rule guidelines developed by this committee should serve as the basis for clubs around the US, with the idea that clubs will only need to add their own special or region-specific rules (like number of events to count for championships, work requirements, etc.).

The club resources committee is to develop guidelines on how to start a club, organize a championship series and individual competitions, and host other fun activities for club members (with some suggestions for these). The product of this activity will be written materials that we can post on the website and via printed materials for distribution, also perhaps using AMA resources to get this out.

This is our chance to organize ourselves and set some nationwide guidelines within the AMA umbrella, so if you are willing and able to contribute, please respond via the contact us link on the USMTA website. We

[wayne thais]

Dan,

One thing that I would like to see incorporated in the class rules is a system that would move riders who accumulate a certain number of points/wins up a class. They did this in bicycle racing when I raced. It keeps a rider who "sandbags" from staying is a class and winning all the time when he/she should move up.

There will be "much" opposition to this unless you let the rider who really does not want to move up ride in the class of his choice for "fun". He/she would not accumulate any points or be eligible for any prizes, he/she would just be riding for fun. Their score would be posted but in the "fun" class.

Wayne

[the artist formerly known as ish]

This is our chance to organize ourselves and set some nationwide guidelines within the AMA umbrella, so if you are willing and able to contribute, please respond via the contact us link on the USMTA website.  We’ll establish a chair for each committee to get them organized and get it done!

Dan Brown

www.usmotorcycletrials.com

p.s., discussion of the topic on this board is welcomed!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm just going to throw some questions at you Dan, I will get them thrown at me at the next club meeting if I proposed our club became part of the USMTA.

I think many of the questions will cover concerns most of the clubs will have, but the bottom line is why would our club want to change.

Very few AMA members in our club, as we get our insurance from another source.

Why would our club members/officials want to add an extra $120 + for a father and two son's and a lot more extra paperwork and hoops for event organizers to go through ?.

We have four classes in our club and it works fine, why would we want to add more?.

Who knows what is best for trials in the USA, the people on the west cost, east cost, or the clubs in the middle, the same area in Europe would not only have many different rules and situations but also many different languages.

At this time our club is working well from trial, error, and lessons learned over many years, the current format for the club is based on what the members in this area want, now! what works for us in this area may not work for other clubs in other areas, what would the benifit to our club be?.

The NATC/AMA national championship, is the basis of how many clubs operate in the US, individual clubs can choose what/and if they want to follow some or all of those guidelines, what makes USMTA any different?

Our club has it spot on, if the rest of the country use our format then we can be part of the big picture sounds daft, then why ask it.

Ishy.

[alan bechard]

I cannot answer for Dan, but I will throw in 2 cents.

Your club may decide not to change, but the positive aspect of changing to a standardized system would be that it would make it easier for riders to ride between different clubs and groups. It would also aid in the progression of riders towards the national level and allow some form of standardization of things at a national level to determine where a person fits.

Your club is one of the lucky few still able to obtain private insurance without going through the AMA. That would certainly make a large impact on your decisions. Many clubs have found themselves with only the AMA insurance as an option. As a sidebar, I believe all riders should support the AMA and their work to keep our riding area's open, If it has not impacted you yet, it will in time, and the more momentum that the Green and the Government have, the more precedents that are set, the harder it will be to keep your riding area's open. (I know it is a sidebar, but thought it appropriate to mention)

As to the classes, if 4 classes meet the needs of your riders, than that is all you would run, just because the class is available, does not mean you must find a rider to fill it. It would be handy though if as you rode in different area's of the country, if the class levels, structures names and relative difficulty were constant.

Who know's what is best? I do not think anyone does (except for maybe Lane) I think the idea of the USMTA is to pull together and look at ideas from all around our very large area of land and see if other area's cannot benefit from experiences and success had in other parts of the country. We need to take the disadvantage of being spread out over an extremely large land mass and capitalize on it as best we can.

The NATC has no interest in promoting trials or establishing guidelines for local competition. Their mission statement clearly defines that they are there for the sole purpose of running the national series and they have actively stuck to that position. The USMTA is more on the side of trying to promote trials and make it a larger and more popular sport in the US. That is it's stated mission and it intends to accomplish that initially by the different committes providing some standardized resources for clubs to work with.

I am impressed that your club has it spot on. I am sure that the rest of us have something to learn from you then, unfortunately I have difficulty finding this information on how yours is done, could you point me in the right direction and share this information?

[dbrown]

Ish,

I hope you or someone from your club would participate so that everyone could benefit from your experiences. The point is not to make any club follow any set of rules, just to try to establish a set of guidelines and have these posted into the AMA rulebook instead of something that is out of date. There is not active participation in the AMA rule-making process unless we volunteer, step up and do it. Then if someone is starting a new club there are published rules & materials to help.

We hope that clubs will participate in USMTA just so that we can all have a forum to act cooperatively whenever it is in our interest to do so. I think most who have joined would like to see the sport grow and are willing to work together to try to make that happen. There is no cost to any individual or club to belong or participate. The small costs that we have incurred have been paid by the founding members.

I happen to believe that there is value in belonging to a national organization like the AMA, and that working within AMA can be helpful in achieving our goals. But there is no requirement to belong and you don't have to be an AMA member to access information and rules, etc. from the AMA website.

So, we don't force any member to follow any set of rules or anything, the only rule is that you love trials and want to help see the sport grow. We're so liberal that we accept fringe elements from the left coast, or transplanted Englishmen, or even (gasp) lunatic fringe elements from the left coast who are transplanted Englishmen!

And speaking of lunatic fringe elements, Ringo stopped by the TTC the other day and had a chat, and he is not the total loon he's made out to be. Well, maybe he's a little different, but aren't we all? Last I saw of him, he was driving off into the sunset with the Yeti in their new mobile home.

dan

[the artist formerly known as ish]

I am impressed that your club has it spot on.  I am sure that the rest of us have something to learn from you then, unfortunately I have difficulty finding this information on how yours is done, could you point me in the right direction and share this information?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I was just posting an hypothetical question, truth is our club is in the same boat as many other clubs, same few people year in year out trying to keep the job afloat.

On standardizing the classes, in my mind there is only one way I can see this being achieved nationwide, in the UK a Yorkshire center Novice, could be an southern center expert, same applies in the US.

The only series that covers the whole US is the nationals, until riders are ranked on ability as Wayne points out there will be no way to measure what a novice or expert's ability level is.

The overall support scores posted on the NATC results page do place a rider in ability position and standing for the year, if the support classes were divided in to 15 ability classes rather than fifteen agenda classes would the riders buy that or take the ball home because they can't call themselves national champion in some obscure class ? in my opinion 5 or six support classes would create a lot better competition and a series worth competing in, but could you sell it to the sand bagger ?

The consistency of rules across the country seem to be very close to most, if not all running the current FIM/AMA/NATC rules, (no rolling back, stop with foot down = 1 dab) providing the FIM don't go full no stop in the future, I don't see too big a problem in that department.

NATC's intentions or not, they are the guidlines on what rules and classes clubs use in the US.

[brendan]

Why can't the USMTA find some other insurer other than the AMA? I have been told the MANN organiztion in Nevada runs all of their races with some other insurer, and they are not AMA members. The ama is a worthless organization to off-roaders. There is not one single land rights issue they have won for us (although they do take credit), and there have been many times that they have been petitioned to provide lawyer help here in District 36 and elsewhere, and they refused. But, wait till a steet bike issue pops up, like helmet use or loud harley pipes, and they will be all over that like flies on poop. As a D36 enduro racer, I have to join the ama, or I don't race. I hate signing a check over to the ama every year. There are many other enduro riders who feel the same way over here. The notion of the AMA helping off-roaders, is nothing more than an urban legend, a complete myth. It is organizations like the Blue Ribbon Coalition, that have truly made a difference.

The AMA is one of the major proponents behind the evil bill, H.R. 3247. If I remember correctly, one of their lobbyists helped architect this. I hope no one or their kids are ever caught accidently going down some unmarked, "illegal" trail that our government would never miss marking as such. The environmentalists were pretty happy with this, but fortunately it has been stalled.

H.R. 3247 SUMMARY AS OF:

6/30/2004--Reported to House, amended, Part II. (There are 2 other summaries)

Trail Responsibility and Accountability for the Improvement of Lands Act or TRAIL Act - Amends the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, the National Park Service Organic Act, the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act of 1966, and other Federal law to provide that: (1) any person who knowingly violates or fails to comply with any of the provisions of such an Act or any regulation issued under such an Act concerning the management, use, and protection of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands, National Park System (NPS) lands, National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) lands, and National Forest (NF) lands shall be guilty of a Class A misdemeanor, subject to fine and/or imprisonment as provided under Federal criminal law; and (2) any person who otherwise violates or fails to comply with any of the provisions of such an Act or any regulation issued under such an Act concerning the management, use, and protection of such lands shall be guilty of a Class B misdemeanor, subject to fine and/or imprisonment as provided under Federal criminal law. Permits requiring persons adjudged guilty of a: (1) Class B misdemeanor on BLM or NPS lands to pay all costs of the proceedings; and (2) either a Class A or Class B misdemeanor on NWR or NF lands to pay all costs of the proceedings.

Amends the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, the National Park Service Organic Act, and other Federal law to set a minimum fine of $500 for fire usage violations on BLM lands, National Park System lands, and National Forest System lands, if the violation was the result of reckless conduct, occurred in an area subject to a complete ban on open fires, and resulted in damage to public or private property.

[msj239]

Amen brother Brendan, AMA - worthless $35 dollars a year

And I think we all know the rules on trials riding.

MSJ

[mich lin]

The AMA may not be the perfect national organization but they are much better than most national motorcycle organzations affiliated with the FIM. If you want to ride the ISDE, endurocross, Scottish, International trials or the US Trials Championship, you must be a part of the AMA.

Our local trials club the ITS has a website with some pictures of members riding over some rocks. Our non-AMA insurance company went to the website, they insure MX events mostly and other forms of racing. When they saw the pictures of riders going over rocks they cancelled us, it looked sooooooo dangerous!

We now use the AMA insurance program, otherwise we would have no events.

[ridgrunr]

Amen brother Brendan, AMA - worthless $35 dollars a year

And I think we all know the rules on trials riding.

MSJ

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No disrespect to msj239 or anyone else who has responded to this, but I dissagree on both cases.

#1 We went AMA in the Wasatch Trials Association (http://www.geocities.com/utahtrials) last year, and the costs for our club insurance went way down from the private insurance we had been using, but were no longer able to get. We are required to have insurance to be able to have the meets we hold on BLM land. If we had not been able to get AMA insurance, the WTA would be history. We looked everywhere. Nobody will risk insurance on any OHV competition. Because of the AMA we are still able to exist.

Also, as an AMA member I get a discount on every road bike and ATV part I buy from company's like Bikebandit.com. I easily made back the AMA fees from last year on those discounts.

#2 Nobody knows what the rules are. Every club in the U.S. is "doing their own thing" when it comes to rules, scoring, and classes. There is no agreement on any of these items and nobody knows what the rules, scoring or classes are. We are all fumbling around arguing that our way is better than your way.

I wish I had a buck for every time someone has said, "we've always done it this way, and it works just fine so we're not going to change." That's one of the ideals that has held Trials back as a whole for years. It's like when the movement came a few years ago to call the sport MotoTrials. Everyone was up in arms about changing the sanctity of the sport. Bunk. Ask someone on the street what trials is and they'll tell you all about ENRON, Michael Jackson and OJ.

Trials has to change to survive. Some folks may think their club is all healthy and going good, and if it is it's because there's been a core of guys who have worked hard for thirty years at it. But those clubs are no bigger than they were thirty years ago. Most are smaller. Problem is, those guys are getting old. Some can't even ride anymore and us old guys can't keep running these clubs forever. As a sport, we are going to have to change and adapt and come together as a group if we are going to entice new riders to come into the sport who can and are willing to carry on when we pass on the torch. Without some sort of guidelines to follow and entities who they can call on for help and advice, they will fail as they do not have the experience that we have to draw on. This means the clubs will fail. We need a foundation to build on. That's what trials lacks in the U.S.A.

We need some guidelines so that when someone says, "Rider A is the #1 Advanced rider in our club and won the class last week," that will actually have meaning to rider B and C as they'll have some frame of reference to make a judgement by.

The lastest issue of Cycle World has a neat write up on the new Scorpa 175 fourstoke. It's a good write up on a neat bike, but the more important part of the story is the editorial of why Trials never became the "next big thing" even though it has been posed to do so off and on for the last thirty five years. As it states in the editorial, we have been and continue to be our own worst enemies because we are so focused on our own little slice of the pie that we can't see that the rest of the pie is rotting. It's obvious to them. They see it. Why can't we?

The USMTA is an idea for ideas that has been proposed before. It's an idea that we all better get behind or our sport will continue to be the oddity that the rest of the motorcyle world still considers us to be, even after almost forty years of trying to convince them of how much fun it is.

Sign me up.

Florin Owens

Edited January 3, 2006 by Ridgrunr

[wayne thais]

Florin,

I agree with you totally, we need to have a strong national organization and we need change! Right now the AMA and the USMTA are the best we have, I think that if the USMTA grows it could and maybe should replace the NATC.

You should have quoted more of the Cycle World article; here is the part that I found interesting,

[barcota]

There was a time when anyone who described the sport as Trials they would be ostracized forever. The correct name for the sport was Observed Trials. It seems that all forms of motorcycle competition have changed so much and there are so many versions of each category it became necessary to roll with the punches. Personally I still prefer the term Observed Trials but at the same time I think there should be a standardization of classes and a standardization of riding rules and regulations.

[mich lin]

Wayne, you really hit the nail on the head with how the Japanese were treated by US trials. It's funny, everyone wanted the bikes but not the sport needed to keep the Japanese in the game.

[msj239]

To Ridgrunr

Very good responce, Ok you have convince me to join this year, maybe.

I would like to know how anyone or 'The Trials Leaders' could turn down the Japanese help.

If the Japanese thought they could make money here, very few people

could stand in there way.

P.S. Please tell them to make a 125 or 200 four stroke that does'nt cost $5000.

MSJ

[the artist formerly known as ish]

Am I missing something here the only purpose of the NATC is to organize the national series, and provide help to the few who do host a world round.

The purpose of the USMTA is to promote the sport of trials, and from what I see most of the people involved with USMTA are involved in the NATC.

The FIM will only recognize the AMA as the US governing body for motorcycle sport in this country, now that the AMA president is vice president of the FIM we could see more FIM events in the major motorcycle sports, but when it comes to trials, they couldn't even manage to send a AMA rep to the Duluth world round, that in itself tells you how far up the ladder trials is.

Why isn't trial's big time like MX, because as stated many times the people in trials are so nice, the sport takes patience time and a level headed approach, that is just what attracts that type of person, no quick fix or speed in trials

in fact it is boring to watch for the none enthusiast.

I think you have to ask yourself why do you like the sport and why did you get involved in the first place, if you want more people to participate are you/your club willing to put 20 events plus a year, how many people will buy a $6500 bike if the can only compete on it 6 times a year in a 200 mile radius of their home.

Ringo, did post a truth in one of the forums ? [we both know nothing will change]