Mark W

Fun behind the scenes fact: Cap had a different tube in his rear tyre in every clip of this video. f**king. Basher.

I got to go film Jack Carthy at Shipley a couple of weeks before the Worlds, and to celebrate him smashing the shit out of it we thought we'd show one of the ridiculous mess-around lines Jack did while we were there. Too. Good.

Depends on the colour of the car.

In fairness, if you don't know where you're looking on the new BTUK website it can be a little confusing. Previously there was a menu across the top with "Events", "Clubs", "About" and so on which made it pretty easy to navigate whereas now it's a little less so. If being mainly involved in 'customer facing' stuff for TB has taught me anything, it's that you have to make things painfully f**king obvious so you can catch everyone.

As a more helpful suggestion seeing as my last post wasn't particularly constructive: Of the people who replied to that previous survey, 75% of those who hadn't been to a comp before said they hadn't done so either because they didn't think they were good enough (50%), or because they didn't have the info available about where they were, how to enter, etc. (25%). It's not a huge sample size, but it's worth noting for the future. There's no reason that anyone should feel that comps are too hard for them because that's the whole reason behind different categories, so if half of the people who replied felt that was the problem then it's worth doing something to try and draw them in. If people aren't getting involved because it sounds like they don't know where the next events are going to be and when then that should be fairly easy to solve too through a few more updates on either club or BTUK websites, or on any social media type pages. Behind the BTUK website, TF and FB were the places people most found out about comps, so trying to put more info up here or a simple post on FB would probably be useful (as a side note, as I mentioned in the meeting before, if you just chose a simple hashtag for whichever club/series is involved, it'd also allow people to find media/info about them much more easily too if it's posted up).

I genuinely don't understand how I can make things any clearer. I wasn't saying you thought you were the only one there, I was pointing out that you weren't. The whole "I don't like the dark star let's not go there" thing was what I was getting at. Again, you haven't understood what I meant about clubs/businesses/anything to do with that. We're not disagreeing about it because you don't even get my position on it despite me spelling it out repeatedly. This is partially why I have no interest in doing more to help because no-one ever actually listens to what's being said. Everyone's already got a fixed idea of how things should be done because that's how they've always been done, and that's it I've had to repeat myself so many times and it's clear that you're not actually reading it. You keep saying you "understand" but then start chatting about something totally different to what I've said. This mindset is partially why I went to the AGM as I just wanted to see what the process was like. It turned out it was pretty much exactly what I thought it'd be like. There's so much potential and none of it getting realised. I could set up all the centralised info stuff that I'd mentioned before in about 20-25mins, but there's zero point because I could go over again and again about how it worked, and I know that none of it would get taken on board.

I think the only thing shared between the V2 frame/fork and the V3 is maybe the seat tube. Every other part of the frame/fork is completely different.

That's for the Arcade, but that's a secret too...

So you're the only one at the AGM? You're the only one representing each other club too? From the rest of that, it seems like you don't understand my reasoning at all. I've specifically stated that I wasn't referring to the monetary side of things at all, in any way. I don't really get how I can be any clearer than that. It was a simple analogy to show that listening to what people want, but more importantly giving them a platform to actually do so, would be useful. It isn't surprising that people aren't replying to this because even as someone involved with this thread the formatting makes it pretty hard to follow. You keep mentioning it's just me and you making suggestions, 60 people replied to that questionnaire we sent out before. Not a huge number, but more than the average number of attendees for a comp so in the scheme of things not too bad. That's 60 people who hadn't been given a direct opportunity to have their voice heard before, who made the most of that opportunity. With it being pushed again this year, and with the timing being better in terms of actually having their feedback acted upon, hopefully there could be a better response this time too. EDIT: Oh yeah - this is the questionnaire thing we did before. Could be improved upon/made more relevant for the next one, but gives you a rough idea: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TLQJ2XM

Apparently "CONFIDENTIAL" in capitals just isn't clear enough.

This has all got a bit clusterf**ky with the different quotes and stuff involved, so I'll try and condense it a bit: - Results/entry stuff being more uniform: Someone acting for the Biketrial Federation setting up a template for them then clubs being able to slightly tweak them if they need to would be the way to go. Having it all going from the main body for trials in the UK sets a better example, and for other people setting up a club it means they can just go to the BTF and get all the admin stuff they need in an easy, organised form. If I was setting up a club and entering that minefield, that would be a huge help for me. As I mentioned before, having the BTF as a body that leads like that would also make it more of a tempting proposition to back too. It would help clearly define where any investment from BC could go, which is probably the sort of reassurance they're going to need if they ever get behind trials. Similarly, having some form of AGM or similar at the National Cycle Centre (or whatever they call it) will probably be useful simply because it keeps them aware that trials is going, and that there's still some form of governing body making things happen. It also gives you a chance to get one back over them by rinsing the buffet and coffee I'm aware you're not a fan of them, but to be pretty blunt, it isn't about you, it's about all the clubs and all the current and future riders. I'm not a fan of them either, but if trials is wedded to trying to appease the UCI, and the UCI and BC are as linked as they are, BC are the only way that trials is likely to get anything from anyone. Whether they help out or not, just having that as an aim and trying to act in a more professional way can only be a benefit to everyone involved really? - Comps as a business: JD got where I was coming from with that. I'm not saying you need to act like a business and start making money from it. Whether you're making money from it or not, you're offering a service/product to people. It's a transaction. People pay you an entry fee and for that they expect you to have sections for them to ride, insurance, all the admin side, etc. I keep mentioning businesses because they are typically geared at trying to grow their customer base, which is what people seem to want comps in the UK to be doing. The best way you can do that is to know what those people want, or at least get some ideas from them about things they might be interested in. That's where the research side comes in, in the form of questionnaires or whatever. You might only get limited feedback, but if it's usable feedback then that still gives you some indications. I'm not sure if we've still got the survey thing setup (just so you know, it was online only, there's no paper copy to hand out. This is a good thing though as it means you don't have to collate a shitload of information from people, it's all done automatically for you - time/efficiency being key again), but I imagine it wouldn't be hard to set up a new one again, especially with that 'Forms' thing from Google I mentioned before being pretty good by the looks of things. In terms of me helping out, for a variety of reasons I won't be (being busy isn't really one of them). I'm happy to give a bit of help/advice as and where I can if I need to, but that will be about the extent of it realistically. I'm not replying to this and suggesting things because I have any interest in comps, I'm doing it because from my outside-looking-in perspective there are some relatively easily solvable issues that at worst would make life easier for those involved behind the scenes, but at best might get more people involved with competitions in either a riding or organising capacity. Making the behind-the-scenes side of things more up to date and more easily accessible for all means that for the future, it'll be in a much better place. These are changes that are going to have to happen at some point, so getting it done now means that hopefully things can grow on a more solid foundation. Just to be clear, I don't think my ideas are all amazing, perfectly formed and should be implemented instantly. The things I've mentioned are just little bits and pieces I've picked up from the past few years that seem to me at least could be applied to comps in some form. If people want to run with them then cool, if not, no worries. I've only personally organised one trials event in the UK before, and been very loosely involved with some of the TB ones, so I don't claim to know how it all works, or have a better idea of running things than all of the clubs who've been going for years.

That's precisely why I suggested that stuff about Drive though. It's a compound saving of time. As you run a business I'm sure you're aware that efficiency is key to making things work, and that's what that offers. It would take less than ten minutes at most to sort out, but from that point on would save you a lot of time in the future, and would mean that there wouldn't need to be any website updates or anything like that for results. Once you'd got the comp results collated, they'd instantly be visible to anyone who had the link (so either the BTF website, or wherever else you might have posted it). You're saving all that time f**king around with that not just once, but for every comp you do again. You could even make it so you had online/paperless comp entries that you didn't have to do anything with, they'd just be there as a full list of who was/wasn't riding for you readily to hand. From looking at the accounts before it seemed there was a 'rainy day' fund put to one side. How much wetter does it need to get? I'm well aware of that, it was the one that kept coming up as "Mail not delivered to: ______" from that group e-mail conversation that was going on before the AGM My point before was that that e-mail address doesn't really have anything that implicitly ties it to the SBTC. If each club had an easily accessible e-mail address, and if they all appeared to be worked out together in a cohesive way, it would give trials clubs in the UK a way more united front that would make it appear that everyone actually spoke to each other and shared ideas, rather than just being a disparate group of people here and there. To external bodies that's going to be a much more attractive proposition to invest in. You missed my point - they haven't got a problem with entries and people getting into it, so it seems that "windswept hillsides" aren't necessarily a bar to people participating in something. Confirmation bias. I've seen plenty of other non-street riders chat shit about it too. Just look at the reaction Giaco got for his skinsuit a little while back. Ballerinas wear tutus but I don't think that people would just accept trials riders wearing them simply because it was the norm in ballet circles. Again, missed my point. As an aside, it is a business. You're offering a service that people are paying for which sounds pretty 'businessy' to me? I'm not implying it's a get-rich-quick scheme, but it is a business. My point there though was just that researching to find out what the end user/participants want is a standard way of doing things, and is what gets results. Trials has been run in a closed loop for a long time now and numbers are declining, so I can't see how it doesn't make sense to try and reach out to the people who are involved or who have chosen to no longer be involved to find out why, rather than guessing? You keep mentioning about your time, but surely your time is better spent by people firing answers back to a survey giving you what you need to know rather than just speculating about things and hoping it sticks? That one person was an outlier, and got massively called out for having that opinion. There were a lot of replies, and there was a lot of useful info in there. People did have their say because they were given a clear opportunity to do so. That's why I suggested trying to do it again, but this time before the AGM so the info can be acted upon, rather than after and just have it sitting on a website somewhere.

Just going back to what I mentioned about Drive before - they also have a new thing called "Forms" where you can... er... create forms, and gather info that way. I assume this means that you could probably get an actual entry form done that way if you wanted, but it'd be another way of getting rider feedback. I just did a simple, one question one as a tester: https://goo.gl/forms/trWjlR2l5t6pSjOj2

@kevind Point 1 Who is Sean? Sean Putt - he's a rider from Ireland who ran a comp over there earlier this year, and was initially supposed to be doing media/website/promo type stuff for the Biketrial Federation. Having heard more about this, it turns out that never materialised and it's been Barbara who's done everything. Point 2 Agree, It needs to be at the correct events with bikes as the main focus (Cream of the Croft was an Family Enduro weekend.) Fort William on the other hand is in my opinion never attracted anybody but that's for another discussion) I agree that BMX is more appealing to kids and probably to watch, and anybody that can ride a bike can get around (will not win but can achieve a race finish). Where as trials needs a lot of work to a new rider to even get through a section. This is another area I think we can improve on and will be easier when we are not on the side of a windswept hillside? We have two multi discipline bike clubs up here that are doing trials evenings in a barn every week with fathers helping, that's where all my new riders are coming from. I believe that kids XC races now have skill comps to get there start orders and time handicaps? Open trial I cant remember any thing about it, but if it worked then perhaps it should be discussed at club level. Although the British comps should stay as a comp. Part of the Open Trial was trying to do things differently to normal, and that included providing some media coverage of an event: That covers the format, some of the riding and then feedback from riders and observers. There was also feedback gathered after the event too that isn't featured in this video. That same format was also successfully used at Tarty Days too which resulted in an interesting mix of people riding, and an interesting mix of ways of getting through sections (so going for time, or going for a few harder gates, or whichever that rider preferred). Regarding your "windswept hillside" thing, it seems like there's no issue in the motorbike trials scene from what I can tell? A quick look at TrialsCentral shows a whole range of events from loads of clubs, aimed at all different levels of rider - almost all of them are on "windswept hillsides" too. Point 3 We have no chance then, unless we get a big minority group entries, then they will throw money at us... I'm not sure I fully agree with that. I thought there was some chat about BC not supporting trials due to BTF running at a surplus and not needing help? To me, it would make sense to reinvest that money into trials. If the infrastructure can be improved, and trials have a more professional front, then it's going to make it a lot more appealing for them to back. At the moment it would probably be difficult for them to know what that money was really going into due to the coverage of trials events in the UK being pretty fractured. It wouldn't take much to have a much more pro look to how things are done, which would also make the admin side of things a lot easier too. For example: - All clubs set up a dedicated Gmail account, with a name that's related to the club. So, for example, if you're doing it for the Scottish Bike Trial Club you could go for "sbtc@gmail.com" or something like that. Similarly, everyone else could do the same. You could, if you wanted, use the biketrialuk.co.uk domain to have the Gmail part hidden too, so it would mean that people could e-mail "sbtc@biketrialuk.co.uk" and get through to you. If all clubs do that, it means getting in touch with people is a lot easier, and it also presents a more cohesive, united front. - That use of a Gmail account also gives you access to Google Drive. Drive allows you to share documents (so you could have a more pro looking entry form that was accessible to all clubs for riders to use), spreadsheets/databases (so it'd be possible to have a consistent results sheet produced after each trial, rather than the fairly random, often hard to understand ones that come out now), photos and videos (so it'd be possible to pool all the media from different rounds, meaning that whoever's updating the BTF website has all of that ready to go), and so on. Stuff like that isn't fun, it isn't interesting, but it is required if trials is going to be more professional looking in how things are done. It would take a little bit of time to set up (although not that much, setting up a Gmail account is super easy, creating the entry form/results stuff wouldn't be hard and crucially those are things that would only need to be done once, but would allow you to reap the rewards of the easier, more efficient use of your time later), but would be a big improvement over the current system. Tying that in with the thing about the BTF budget, something that worked well at the Open Trial was the results being updated at the time. It's possible to do that offline, so if you had the comp results sheet downloaded onto a tablet or laptop, you could update the results during the day, then you've instantly got the results ready to go both for the riders on the day, but also to put online at a later date. If BTF was able to provide the clubs involved with a cheap, basic tablet, then that can be used to do that, and it would also allow easier entry on the day as someone could just use the tablet to enter all their info into the entry form (which again would be easily accessible by using Drive or by having it downloaded) and you'd have it saved away for future use. One other benefit of Drive is that you can create separate folders within it, which anyone can view, so rather than having to necessarily do a separate update of the BTF website each time an event is done, a permanent link could be left to that folder so people could just go there and have all the results from all the rounds there. As a quick example, if you click here you'll see an example folder I just knocked up: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-fMzJtpBVOxeDd5WTlSYklabGc&usp=sharing Point 4 I know, but that's demos, they give the public no image of what comp trials is about. I don't have a problem with that as pure trials demos seem to be dying, with the teams pulling in jump riders and other disciplines.Even seatless bikes seem to be moving onto bikes with token seats. Its a business and businesses have to evolve, good luck to them From what I've heard from multiple demo teams, some teams are slashing the prices they charge for events and it's basically become a race to the bottom. If a team can demonstrate they can offer better value by appealing to more people, that's more likely to get them an event rather than just going "I'll do the same thing as everyone else, but £50 cheaper". Adding value is a sustainable model for the future, whereas if you're slashing your costs just to undercut everyone else, you're screwing yourself long term because you're not going to be making enough money to be able to keep doing what you're doing, but crucially you won't be making money to update your rig, get a new website, do more promo work, etc. Compression tights on a cold day for a rider are the best thing to ware, It's only the British small minded mentality, that its my way and ever body else is wrong. How many other sports ware compression tights and don't get slagged for it. Two hours in the pissin rain and snow on a rugby field training through out the winter and these guys ware them to keep muscles warm, but I bet TT would have nothing to say to half a dozen 16/17 stone 16 year olds about it. (and no they are't fat just enormous) I have one that's eating me out of house and home. The one I saw was on what appeared to be a bright, hot, sunny day. I don't think its tights people have a problem with, I think it's just the look of people only wearing a pair of compression tights. How many of your rugby friends wouldn't go out wearing their jersey and shorts, but just some Skinz? That's beside the point though anyways... Here are lots of positive points that we can discuss, we need perhaps everybody to sit down at the BTF AGM this year (not just the club representatives) for an extra day and thrash this out, It seems to be bucking the trend up here because of one mans effort and enthusiasm. It has re enthused me as you can probably see here. If Barbara still wants to be involved with trials then lets get discussion points sent in for it and every body can attend. ( that wants to help set up or what ever, if you are not willing to help then you have no opinion at this stage) I will happily chair it as I am Scottish enough to say what needs to be said! I don't think it's a case of "saying what needs to be said". Part of the problem from the outside looking in is that the comp scene has been operating as what's basically an echo chamber for the most part. As I was saying at the last AGM, instead of guessing what riders want, why not ask them? Running that same survey we did before annually would be useful as it will give feedback on what is/isn't working, what people think could be done to change it and so on. Competitions are a product you're selling to a customer, and no-one would release a new product onto a market without doing product and market research first. Fundamentally, I don't see much realistically changing for the foreseeable future just because comps in the UK are run to be an approximation of the BIU/UCI rounds which are the pinnacle that comp riders are going to be aiming for. While that's the case, not much can really be done to change how things work. All that can be done is changing the peripheral stuff to make it better, and as I mentioned up there that's things like infrastructure, maybe investing some of the money into getting a more polished website created (there are plenty of alternatives for free website design/templates out there that could be used too), and so on. Making it easier to get information about comps (I've spoken to plenty of people on the phone who've said they've struggled to find out the info they wanted to know online, which was partially why we created our comp guide video a while back), and then removing the barriers for people getting involved such as making it easier to enter and maybe mixing up the venues will help. I can't remember the specifics from the last survey, but they seemed to be the sticking points for people so it would make sense to address that. To that end, I'd also recommend firing off a similar survey again this year, but before the AGM so the information can be acted upon then. Because of the timings of things at the previous one it meant that it was a bit like putting the cart in front of the horse as far as that went, so if it'd be possible to get the survey done first I think it'd be possible to gain a lot of useful info that could provide some signposts for which direction to try and take things in in future.

Were you listening to it on mute or something?

Kind of. I'd say that looking at them in combination is more accurate than using WB as your main reference point. Luckily most frames tend to have a similar head angle, but it's worth having a look at too. To use the Skye as an example, I just had a quick check on the backend of our site and the geo for the V1 was 990mm WB, 380mm stays, 73° head angle and 655mm reach. The V3 is 977mm WB, but the stays are 18mm shorter (so 362mm) and the reach is 5mm longer. The head angle is also 0.5° steeper, so you're losing WB from the big change at the rear end length, but also from the front wheel effectively being pushed backwards. That steeper HA, as it's being measured to the centre top of the head tube, also means you'd gain a tiny bit of front end length from your stem/bars now being tipped forward a little bit. As people are using higher front ends now that effect will also be increased a touch.

The reach has become longer on every version of the Skye they've made. The current V3 has the longest reach of any they've done. From memory the V3 is about 10mm longer than the V1. @Daviesdt - the reach on the latest Fourplay is longer than any of the Elements were, so you're essentially getting the benefits of a short wheelbase (thanks to the super short chainstay length on the new Fourplays compared to the Element), but it'll still be reasonably roomy up front. A short rear triangle with a reasonable length front triangle is a pretty good way to go for manoeuvrability/agility. The "problem" is that it skews the wheelbase, and as trials riders still insist on using the wheelbase as the main way of defining how a bike will ride it can sometimes not come across in the same way. With most street trials bikes, the wheelbase measurement doesn't even really need to be there. To give you an idea of how weird geometry is, the Arcade WB is about 40-50mm less than your Element, but the frame reach is about 20mm longer...

A bunch of good stuff all up in hurrrrr:

Also, been seeing the amount of stuff you've been posting on Instagram and thinking "It'd be cool if he just held this back and made one beast of a video from it". Kudos for playing the long game with that the whole time

Munter the Clio: problem solved. You won't regret it!

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

That's not what the Munter's saying. From experience, the heat from the gearbox when it's up to temp is enough on its own

I was under the impression Sean Putt was doing the media side of things? Or something along those lines anyway...

And the aero of a brick wall.