|
MLRC Forum
https://www.mlrc.ca/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl General >> Rally >> Lanark Highlands - no spectators? https://www.mlrc.ca/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1241522728 Message started by ErikO on 05/05/9 at 06:25:28 |
|
Title: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by ErikO on 05/05/9 at 06:25:28 How bizarre/dumb. Does anyone have a reason as to why they aren't allowing spectators? I hope they have lots of marshals at the start of the stages to send all of the pissed off fans home. I was planning to bring a few friends and spectate, but I guess not anymore. Erik |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by mattman_4444 on 05/05/9 at 08:40:16 This year, unfortunately not. |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by Anthony_T on 05/05/9 at 12:45:44 I could understand why - but a backup plan might be a good idea. Spectators are not always obedient. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out and what kind of precedent it sets. |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by jgardhouse on 05/05/9 at 14:07:27 No permission from land owners = Trespassing spectators = grounds to disallow road permissions next time around. So I'd say, as much as it sucks, follow the rules. |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by Robert Roaldi on 05/05/9 at 14:10:58 Simple explanation, we're not trying to establish any precedent or end spectator support. It's this committee's first event, we didn't have much time, and we're constrained by a road in which it's almost impossible to find a clearing where we COULD put a spectator area. Much of the adjacent land is privately owned and fenced with no access. We're looking into possibly making arrangements at a couple of spots for future years. The logistics will be difficult because there is not much room to park, so we'd almost certainly have to arrange bus service to any spectator area, there's no way to allow spectator cars into the road. There was no time to make all those arrangements at this first event in the time frame we had. It's disappointing, we realize, but we couldn't commit to a spectator area this time and be sure that everything else worked out. |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by Craig_Hamm on 05/05/9 at 14:37:35 First, what Robert said. It was announced a long time ago on the web that viewing opportunities were very poor, unless you signed up to work in the stage. We have about 60 marshals, most of them will enjoy seeing 5 passes of about 25 cars. And then we feed them. Pretty good deal. This is a new event, a new org team, a new road for OPRC, and a lot of details to hammer out just to run the thing the first year, only weeks after the snow has opened the road. Our priorities/goals for the Year 1 of this event are to provide an A+ event to the competitors (the #1 stakeholders), and a safe event for all those involved. As we build a good relationship with the township and the locals, and landowners, we WILL try to open the road up to spectators. If more people took the time to volunteer for an OPRC committee you'd find out quickly that no decision like this is taken lightly, they are debated at great length for more hours than it takes for you to drive from home to go spectating. We never compromise on safety so something else had to give this year. I wouldn't be so quick to judge us. There are radio supervised locations along the route at publicly accessible junctions where people can probably get a glimpse of cars, but this is just a normal part of monitoring / blocking junctions. There are absolutely no designated 'spectator areas.' An example of this at Tall Pines would be the Detlor Road crossing, but the viewing at LHFR isn't as good as that at Detlor. We don't make the roads, we just close them. Craig Hamm LHFR Clerk of the Course |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by RallyHondas on 05/05/9 at 14:52:12 maybe next year you guys can find a way to talk with some of the land owners about possibly if anything a couple spectator points for a couple $s a person which would go to the owners for allowing spectators to get a glimpse. to charge it would have to be a nice spot with a bunch of passes but hey its just a suggestion. i plan to race next year but if i were spectating id put up a few $ to watch. |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by Anthony_T on 05/05/9 at 19:32:15 No spectator sounds like it makes sense. Really, it sounds like it would make things way easier for all events. |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by Dave Cotie on 05/05/9 at 19:54:47 JFrancis wrote on 05/05/9 at 14:52:12:
The minute you charge money there is an implied higher level of liability. That is why most rallies avoid any sort of "admission". Even VIP programs only charge for the services provided, not for the spectating. |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by ErikO on 05/06/9 at 11:12:23 I hope you're joking Anthony. I understand the reason in this case, if the private land is limiting access, etc... Rally is the only sport that demonstates this type if ignorance to people who just want to watch the racing, and not have to worry about responsibilities or having to be stuck in a forest all day. Perhaps this is the reason why rally in Ontario is barely getting any bigger. Alienating the people (and potential sponsors) from seeing the cars in action is the worst step you can take to build the sport. Seeing the cars in service, at the start on a ramp or driving by on a transit is boring. If you intend on growing the event to be something great (and I've heard the roads in this area are great), you have to open the event up to people other than workers and competitors. They will not grow the event as much as reps from companies or sponsors or friends of participants. If using different roads or allocating marshals to crowd control (which at a regional rally, only requires 2 or 3 heavies) is the necessary step, then do it. The long term gain of exposing the sport to new eyes is greater than the inconvenience of having people standing at the side of a stage road. "Making things easier", or "keeping things simple" are not good enough excuses. Do the hard work, and see the reward in the end. I understand the challenges of controlling a spectator area, but it should not be enough to write it out of the event. |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by Robert Roaldi on 05/06/9 at 12:43:25 Hi Erik, I understand what you mean. If nobody see what we do, then it limits how much you can grow the sport. If nobody is there to see, then how do you convince sponsors that rally is worth backing. There are very few free public access events. There are things like public jazz festivals, and that Red Bull manned flight displays (great event, btw), and those events are basically funded by one or two large corporate backers and usually some government support in some form or another. But, by and large, everything else you have to pay to watch. For some reason, we have stayed away from paid admission in rally. It would be an interesting experiment to try. Offer paid-for admission to a spectator area, say for $10 (or $20), and see who shows up. (Imo, $10 is a trivial sum of money; people will spend much more than that on gasoline and food to attend a rally.) With paid admission, you would then have some budget to hire crowd control, security, toilet, etc. Also, you would quickly find out whether people are REALLY interested in the sport; that is, if it's not worth $10 to people, that says something in itself. If we don't charge admission, then looking after those spectators is a problem that's not easy to solve. Most events run at break even or close. Do competitors want their entry fees increased to cover the costs of crowd control? More and more, legal and insurance aspects enter the picture. Once you let spectators in, you have major responsibilities. Those responsibilities might one day be beyond the scope of grassroots motorsports clubs to handle. Pretty soon, you end up not organizing a rally, which is what we want to do, but you end up organizing a public spectacle, and once you do that, you're an event promoter, and the rally just happens to be providing the show. At that point, it seems to me, you cross the line of amateur motorsports into something else. The question is, do we want that? Put another way, should a rally club be an event promoter? Is that what we should be doing ? I haven't been on the Pines committee in years, but my guess is that their effort is probably 50%-75% event promotion nowadays, and the rest is the actual running of the rally. Nothing wrong with that, if that's what you want, but you should be in no doubt that you're no longer just organizing a rally at that point. This is taking this thread way off topic and I apologize. It is probably a question that needs discussing at other levels of the sport. What happens at one first-time regional is a small part of the picture. |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by Jeff_Hagan on 05/06/9 at 14:16:23 Robert Roaldi wrote on 05/06/9 at 12:43:25:
BTW - for the past several years, the CASC-OR regional championship events have been free public access events... with a twist. If you just show up on race day with no ticket you'll still get charged admission, but you can order complimentary tickets online, print off as many as you want, bring them with you to the track and get in for free. AFAIK, the change from having spectators pay to giving out complimentary tickets was based on a combination of two factors: - charging admission didn't bring in enough revenue to make it worthwhile. - attracting more fans would be good for the organizing clubs, teams, sponsors and the sport in general. I know that road racing isn't rallying and not everything translates directly between the two disciplines, but I think it's interesting to note the approach that other, substantially similar sports and organizations are doing. Robert Roaldi wrote on 05/06/9 at 12:43:25:
It's an experiment that has been tried. IIRC, all the events that Anders Green now organizes (Sandblast, Rally TN) charge spectators admission. Not just a fee for parking or the bus, but actually an admission fee for access to the spectator areas. I haven't heard a full evaluation of it, but he'd be the person to talk to if you wanted to know how it's worked out. |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by Craig_Hamm on 05/06/9 at 19:53:34 The other experiment is to charge admission, but to donate it to a local charity. For one, you might see who's willing to cough up the change to see a rally. Two, the locals benefit, and three the rally comes off looking good in the eyes of the locals. Not 100% altruistic, but win-win all the same. Isn't that a good thing? There are a lot of angles to 'growing rally' in Ontario. Many of the people working the stage events are from road rally, these are the real supporters. So, why not grow road rally? Regardless, of HOW we grow it, we have to ask "why is growth good?" How much growth can we handle? How many teams of organisers are willing to take on a regional that could attract 40, or 50, teams? There goes your 1 day regional format that helps budget teams compete, which grows the sport. Leave that up to the Nationals. Growth is always assumed to be nothing but good, but it's got to be *sustainable*. Once you exceed the 'carrying capacity' it dies. e.g. how many willing sponsors are there to assist all these teams in a larger sport? How many events can teams afford to enter? Do we have enough communities willing to grant access so often, or to so many? The questions go on and on. The myth of growth being nothing but good has gotten our entire economy is a knot (how's that for a parallel?!). Unconstrained growth in a person is called cancer. It's not sustainable. Last year's GCFR had 22 cars, WOW! LHFR has 23 or so, WOWSERS. Where's the problem? Where at half a National, and we're probably bigger in entries than some existing Nationals. I agree with Robert re 'event promoter' versus organiser. In my other secret life I have organised two professional musical concerts in the last 15 months (one was a Juno nominee and CFMA award winner). I can tell you, 'event promotion' was 80% of the job, the other 20% was a breeze: Book the artists, book the hall, get insurance, book the sound, show up, listen to music, pay the artists, pack up. One gig made $x00, the other lost all of it. Until YOU do it, you just have no idea what's involved. Finally, calling us 'dumb' is not how to influence people to a positive outcome. Maybe is just the way the hip kids are speakin' these days and us old squares just don't get it. Maybe it means we're brilliant. ;) |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by Anthony_T on 05/06/9 at 20:58:33 Erik, I never joke. wink wink, nudge nudge. Seriously though, I do believe in KISS, not the band but in Keep It Simple (Stupid or Dummy) and it does seem like spectators can be a pack of trouble. But you're right, if no one saw rally, no one could know that they would want to get involved. It would slowly disappear. (sorry, I guess I didn't add anything to this conversation) |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by Craig_Hamm on 05/06/9 at 21:23:34 Don't get me wrong, I like free stuff. I'm cheap. But there is another angle to the paying for rally thing, or paying for anything, thing. When you think you have something good to sell (includes selling the idea that rally is good) but decide to charge nothing, the message you can inadvertently send is that it's actually not good enough to pay for. If Coldplay charge $5, instead of $100, wouldn't you wonder what THAT'S about? Aren't they really good? Aren't they worth at least $50?? Did they get so sucky they can only ask $5 now? Are they desperate? Did you miss some news about the band? When you undervalue your product or idea, you can devalue it. If we think rally is THAT good, why isn't it worth a ten-spot for hours of enjoyment? Hours of fresh air in the country, in the sun, the rain of nature on your face, the laughs of your friends in your ears, the click click of cameras catching the awesome action. I mean, hey, it's freakin' awesome, right? Isn't it simply the coolest motorsport out there?? $10 is cheaper than a crappy summertime movie! When you look at the real stakeholders in rallying, spectators are pretty low on the list (no personal offense to spectators, been there myself, I've flown places to be one). Competitors (and sponsors by proxy of the competitors) are #1, volunteers, and their collective safety, and then the spectators who are a passive bunch. They're not putting into the sport like all your rally buddies, and they're not even paying for the privilege. |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by DaveP on 05/06/9 at 21:29:29 Sorry guys, but I've got to chime in. I do not think a few hundred spectators will make any measurable media impact/exposure to the sport. It just means that 300 hangers-on, will get their jollies and pictures. But 300 people trapsing through private property, or 150 (or more,) spectator cars plugging local roads may inadversely affect public attention. (Particularly during the early part of the year when soil conditions are still soft.) I suggest that media exposure efforts be directed towards online information, blogs, and especially, traditional print media stories. Write a story, and submit it to your local regional newspaper. Be sure to include any local interest. i.e. local competitors, sponsors or whatever. Twenty years ago, Ross Wood teamed up with Andy Browning, running a Corolla regionally and in selected national events. Andy was a very talented, up and coming young driver, from Mississauga. (Unfortunately, Andy died in a traffic accident.) Ross and Andy implemented a media information programme feeding the local Mississauga newspapers with their progress. I dare to say, that programme was as successful to the sport in Ontario, as any national sponsor paid effort. So if you are really interested in promoting the sport, get creative. Don't sit there and think that spectator numbers are the be all, and end all. The trick is to get the information, the stories, the interest, out there. |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by RallyHondas on 05/07/9 at 01:32:43 growing the sport is a good thing. and finding communities that understand the economic implications of such events especially if it grew to 40+ cant be too big a hurdle. clearly the x games has the idea. while its not the rally we know and love its big and it draws attention and delivers a show. obviously we don't have deserts to build massive tracks but find a spot keep the event accessible to the grassroots and there's quite a few clubs in the toronto area that would jump at the chance to be apart of it and plenty of outside teams. the exposure of a big organized event would draw a crowd. with the right marketing it could draw the spotlight. find a place and make it a prelude to the x games. i know im just going off here but it would be awesome and if we could find a spot i think its definitely possible. anyone know a huge open area that could house a track and spectating? ::) its a blast for us to watch cars pass a couple times and drive an hour to the next stage but not to most non rally fans. maybe take some pointers from some WRC videos and make a pilot. half hour on tv would be cool |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by Dave Cotie on 05/07/9 at 10:06:58 JFrancis wrote on 05/07/9 at 01:32:43:
Threadjack Have you been to the Rally-X run by MLRC? They have a good open area. Also there are proposed Rally-X at Toronto Motorsports Park (Cayuga) this summer and fall. DC |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by RallyHondas on 05/07/9 at 19:40:16 no i haven't yet. stuck in NY. (moving the 29th) so we need to start promoting! hell probably half my face book contacts are in rally. i can just post a link and right there you have a bunch of American teams from the tri state area checking it out. i looked on their site but i didn't notice any date. is there an actual date considered or is this just an idea being thrown around? |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by Dave Cotie on 05/07/9 at 21:37:56 JFrancis wrote on 05/07/9 at 19:40:16:
The MLRC Rally-X is a series that is for sure: http://www.mlrc.ca/rallycross/ The plans for Cayuga (TMP) are still in process: http://www.casc.on.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=16363&page=2 |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by Doug_Woods on 05/08/9 at 13:06:31 Now, if someone happened to see me at the rally HQ, and happened to follow me when I drove away, about an hour before the start of the rally, then you might be able to see something in the forest, but only if you promise me that you will be on your best behaviour and follow my directions at all times. Doug Woods Two classes only- 2WD and AWD |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by 1morelap on 05/11/9 at 05:16:09 Dave Cotie wrote on 05/07/9 at 21:37:56:
and of course the MCO will be hosting their Rally-X events again this year at Augusta Motorsports Park, check it out, it even has room for spectators! ;) http://www.mco.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9854 first event is May30th, just off the hwy 401/416 interchange. Spectators did manage to find their way into the Lanark Highlands Forest and were eaten alive by blackflies or washed away by the rains. ;D The list of first time rally volunteers was large for this one, good growth there and now that the organizers have shown the township, the locals and the competitors that they can host a successful event, they can add crowd control to the list for next year. Rally is in good hands, congrats to the MCO for another kicka$$ event. |
|
Title: Re: Lanark Highlands - no spectators? Post by Jeannie on 05/19/9 at 11:25:37 Doug, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to convoy some spectators in to Gemills/Lavant Mill road and for explaining about rallying. Among them was a young reporter who wrote about it in one of the articles on the LHFR. As we couldn't have a specific spectator stage this year on the stage road itself, we set this one up. To date, we have had three stories in each of the local papers, The Lanark Era and The Perth Courier. And yes, Doug, you have been quoted. ;) The final story in both papers included three or four photos each, and in their previous stories the reporters had taken the time to find out what we were doing, what it was all about, etc. So we have had good stories in the local media that let the community know what we were about. Re having a spectator area, Craig and Robert have explained all about that. Perhaps those criticizing us aren't aware that this has been a *trial* year for the event -- the township is asking around to find out what people think of it, before giving their opinion as to whether it will be allowed to continue. I felt from the start that we needed to do it simply and well, and to get people onside with it. And if that meant that our road did not easily allow spectators, then so be it -- for our first year. If we get the okay for a LHFR 2010, we will be looking at what we can do better -- and differently. Bottom line -- the competitors had a blast and our poor workers got soaked and bitten. We can't wait to do it again! :) Jeannie |
|
MLRC Forum » Powered by YaBB 2.2.3! YaBB © 2000-2008. All Rights Reserved. |