="ck1racerx, post: 643244, member: 11127"Some of the things I seen and heard today do not make me sad I have to call these people fellow motocrossers. It make me sad we call them humans.
All 4-6 classes need to be eliminated from motocross. The "parents" have ruined it for the kids. Look, just because you bought your child a motorcycle, does not make you a good parent. F bombs, throwing umbrellas, throwing water bottles. Screaming. Cussing at the Christian motorcycle club. "Help him, he is only 5 years old". As soon as someone did "help". BAM. You guessed it. Protest.
Oh wait I forgot. It's help your kid. Not the other kids.
You have just now realized this??? Its one thing to be screaming for your kid cheering them on, I get that and I do it. But its a whole different thing when the yelling is profanity, anger and turns to violence. last year and towards the end of the year before that ( when we first started in the pw class ) I got into 3 altercations with parents simply because I told them to lighten up. Whats more sad than the parents is the total lack of caring by officials. certain parents at that time were known to have major melt downs on their children and everyone , except me it seemed, turned their back to it. Kind of like the pit riding problem. Or the 5 kids I saw jumping the finish line table on a yellow flag when a rider had crashed on the landing of it. The rules exist but nobody has the back bone to enforce them.
We had an absolute blast this weekend. The kids were riding and playing, eating junk food and riding hover boards. No generators to be heard, grass every where. CTMX has a fantastic facility and puts on a fantastic event!! Putting on a regional for the first time has to be a massive undertaking and a learning experience. The program did run a little long saturday but Sunday was much quicker. All in all I think they did ok.
The only issues I had were , you knew it was coming,
#1 The cost..... FAR more expensive than any regional Ive been to. $50 and night for camping when it normally is $30 for the camper hookups. They did change the primitive camping price from $25 to $10. I wonder if they gave refunds to the people who paid $25??? But seriously, even $10 is a rip off. NO other track I have ever been to charges you to primitive camp, that is what the admission fee for the weekend is. For me and my 2 kids it was $250 to get through the gate thurs evening. Im sorry but that is outrageous. Then the escore ..... I bought our transponders last year so this year I renewed them at Ironman for $58 each. At CTMX the renewal fee at the escore trailer was $70 .... WTF? Then add the $10 for a printout of the classes with all the riders lap times.....yes $10 for 6 pieces of paper over the weekend for one class with practice after paying out the nose for a transponder. Everyone wants to say money isnt killing mx, it is. For one class at a regional the entry fees and gate fees ended up costing me $398. Thats not including parts, fuel, transport costs, ect, simply entry and scoring fees. There are a lot of people who arent as fortunate as us that can afford to do this. My parents couldnt have when I was young, I couldnt have when I was in college. When I tried in the mid 90's it wasnt much more than a normal local race.
#2 The track just inst regional caliber. It is far too narrow for groups of riders running close to the same pace to pass on. Pape is correct, regionals should be held on national tracks only. For local racing its great, just not this size of race. I didnt hear any nice comments from parents or riders either. I think for local races and Area qualifiers CTMX is fantastic! They put on one hell of an event.
#3 Most importantly for me was the safety on the track. Flaggers have always come under fire for any race. At this major event I heard about and witnessed myself multiple times flaggers watching riders come in their direction instead of going away from them and over the obstacle they are to be watching. The spectators were yelling at flaggers to wave too many times. Now lets talk about the 4-6 classes and 7-8 classes..... Those kids need help when going down most of the time. Since parents arent allowed on the track usually you have many track personel helping. Last year at NCMP they had about 8-10 employees on quads policing the track to help downed riders quickly. CTMX had one quad and one side by side. I saw more than a few kids down for a minute or more before any attention was given to them!!! 2 times I personally saw, my son being one, kids needing help less than 50' from a flagger and nobody even saw them until the crowd was able to get the attention of a flagger. Like I said earlier, there was a downed rider on the landing of the finish line jump in the 50cc 7-8 class, the flaggers did a great job of putting the yellow flag out right away yet the next 5 kids, all on the lead pack, jumped on the yellow flag! No penalty was given or even mentioned.
We had fun but I just think this was a bit over whelming. All in all Id still say it went well for a first shot. Fantastic facility just not a track for this size of an event. If it were 10' wider everywhere and a little bigger I think they could make it happen really well.