The middle of August must be about the most difficult time of the year to write about trials – not because there are none taking place, but because new news seems as scarce as chickens’ teeth
Regular readers of this column will be very familiar with the fact that I like road racing, indeed, I enjoy just about all forms of bike sport, but road racing is definitely second only to trials. As a result, I ventured over to Ireland for the third time this year to see my first Ulster Grand Prix – and the Dundrod 150 race meeting which preceeded it by two days. Thirteen races over two days, great, it’s hard to beat.
I won’t bore you with the details as I recognise that this is a trials column and perhaps the bulk of readers have little interest in racing, but each time I go to a race meeting it never ceases to amaze me how much money is spent on sport via sponsorship, and the question I ask applies equally to trials sponsorship, even though it is minute in comparison.
Quite simply, what is in it for the sponsors?
You could rightly argue that sponsors fund racers and trials men as a valued way of advertising their products. That may well be the case if a business is assisting a trials rider with a small amount of cash or goods in return for van advertising. But the money pumped into road racing seems phenomenal to me, and with the best will in the world I simply can’t see what any business gets out of it.
To some extent, sponsoring a meeting provides some sort of value for money as the Ulster sponsors this year were a local skip hire/recycling company and I can see that being the title sponsor must bring its rewards.
But Fred Bloggs joinery company, pumping thousands into John Smith’s race activities hardly seems to add up to me, for as I see it, businesses these days are supposedly struggling, therefore one presumes there’s not much spare dosh around, and what cash there is available is to satisfy one man’s needs to risk his life racing between hedges and walls at 130+mph. Rather selfish I think.
But I might well have got it all wrong, and those companies that do sponsor sportspersons can see a quantifiable return, or alternatively, the funding is provided by benefactors who simply do it for the love of the sport.
All this got us talking on the long, laborious ferry journey home as to how we would spend our cash on sponsorship, assuming we were rich enough individuals to be able to afford to do so.
We were in general agreement that if cash were available, we would put it into an aspect of the sport that saw benefits for as many as possible. In our rose tinted world, individuals would lose out, but we would put our cash into safety improvements or organisations that saw the sport with a wider vision and could use funds to improve the sport for all.
All immaterial of course, as we are as poor as church mice, but it helped fill a long journey home, yet the arguments apply equally to trials as it does road racing.
Not a column full of red hot trialing news, but hey, I hope I’m allowed to venture down the occasional stray path to fulfil my commitment to a column each week.