G’day fellow MTB net heads, I have been thinking over the last few weeks about the amount of coverage our sport gets in mainstream media. Sure you may see a small snippet of some poor sod taking a big digger at an event either here or around the world, tucked conveniently before an ad break on Sports Tonight. Better still, we copped a few half-hour sessions on SBS late last year/ early this year as apart of their Cycling Show. But gee, in a year (last one) where Australian Mountain Bikers stepped up and took names internationally you’d think we could have raised more than the whisper that was 2002.
For heavens sake if the Americans had a success story like Kovaric and Rennie had at the start of the year, there’d be full blown Hollywood movies about it (hey can you imagine a Rennie movie????), I can see it now Kurrajong Heights School leaver and Gold Coast labourer smash the French big name dominance…there’s got to be a film in it, surely it may be more Road Trip meets The Castle in a World Cup setting, more than what Breaking Away was to road blokes, but you get the drift right? But no, we got bugger all and that’s just World Cup Downhill. We also had newsworthy results everywhere in the world of Mountain Biking. Even Millsy did it for Australia at the Red Bull Rampage, it’s unfortunate that his awesome qualifying form didn’t carry enough into the final. But there are a few lessons there about a one-guy outfit (Team Mills) going toe to toe with guys with a hell of a lot more support.
On Triple J at any given opportunity you can hear all about how the guys and girls are going at surfing events, great for them. But as the nations youth network I’d also like to hear about how all our “other” athletes are going, not forgetting that most of our Mountain Bikers on the World Cup Circuit are the exact demographic that JJJ is after. Hell, take a look at who’s on every other NORBA based team this year, it’s like Team Russel Coight over there, a bloody all Aussie adventure! I’d love to see JJJ at least give the lads a plug for a podium in their sports reports.
So what is the answer? Do we even want to see our boys and girls get the public recognition they deserve? I sure as hell do, for no other reason than 99% of “other” sports out there in the media $#!t me to tears. So with that in mind how does one start to let the powers that be know that we the cycling and more importantly Mountain Biking community know that we want to know what’s going on out there? Is it a matter of lobbying Program Directors at the various channels and radio stations via E-mail and letter writing? I’m sure Jim Trail is privy to some of the inner workings of JJJ, I’d very much love to hear his opinions on how to get the wheels of change turning. Rest assured with enough focus and enough mass interest form us the general public we can no doubt get some play in the big game. Can we look to our sports administrators (CA and MTBA) to lead the charge? I think we may be waiting a while. Instead lets start small, we should look to perhaps persuade the good folk at JJJ that we’d like to hear regular up dates on the events here and around the globe.
Who knows with enough support and focus we may be able to take the sport we know and love from the shadows of the nations consciousness to new and more exciting ground. The journey of a thousand miles starts with one pedal stoke, who’s in for a ride?
Cheers,
Colonel
Tags: cycling, downhill, mountain, red bull rampage, road trip, triple j, world cup circuit
