November 3/01 8:56 am - 'Cross Nationals, Nella Signs, Burnaby Track Update, Birthday

Posted by Editor on 11/3/01
 

'Cross Nationals

We will be providing live coverage from the Canadian cyclo-cross national championships, as usual. The Junior Men's race begins at 9:00 am local (11:00 am EST), with the Elite Women at 12:30 pm (2:30 pm EST) and the Elite Men at 2:00 pm (4:00 pm EST).


Nella Joins Division II Team

Canadian Bruno Nella has just signed with the Stabil-Graz team. The team is now moving up to the second division and has signed some good young riders from Germany and Italy, and they are in talks with Timothy Jones from Zimbabwe. The team will race primarily in the Italian pro tour with their first real test the Tirreno-Adriatico.


Burnaby Velodrome Update

We would like to thank everyone who took the time to write letters in support of the Burnaby Velodrome. We received over 60 letters from all across the country. These letters were bundled with other materials and forwarded to Burnaby City Council on October 22. We will also be using the letters to distribute to reporters, MLAs, MPs, Premiers, Prime Ministers, Queens and King impersonators. These letters are important and they will make a difference. If any of you still want to write a letter - like the guilt has been killing you for not writing - you still send the email to bigring54@shaw.ca. We will add them to the stack. Again, stating who you are, citing the uniqueness of the facility (only covered velodrome in Canada) and whether you would ever use the facility are good points to make. The most forceful letters were coming in at about two paragraphs.

The fallout from the last council meeting was the request by Burnaby Council for city staff to create a new report based on our presentation of October 22. We received this report about 9am this morning and it's stinky. We had one call from Dieppe complaining they could smell it all the way out there! So it's back to city council again this Monday night. The featured speaker will be the suave Mr. Ted Ritter. There is a 10% chance he could go completely berserk so there has been a lot of interest in attending this event. If you are interested in attending, all additional bodies will be appreciated. Be at the Burnaby City Hall at 6:30 pm on Monday the 5th. Dress nicely. No lighters. Tickets are $53 through ticketmaster or free if you show up at the door.

The current plan has three broad grooves; each groove mastered by a team of DJs.

Groove 1 is to jump all the insurance and safety criteria hoops that the city has been throwing up faster than the worst nightmare of a pop-up barrage from some porn site you found by mistake while looking for a cake recipe. DJ Massive Bob Tee has the house on this.

Groove 2 is to ensure that the terms Burnaby put out in their request for proposals are reasonable. We figure we need at least six months to put something professional together. In the same groove is spinning the business plan. DJs Rittapuchi and Prich-Lo built the house.

Groove 3 is co-ordinting with all the local and national sporting bodies and government so that we can turn this facility into a National Cycling Development Centre muy pronto, as in asap, as in months not years. Please give it up for DJs Grandmaster Five-Four and Big.

Not to make to light of all this, we have a lot of great people fighting the good fight out here. We are grateful the CCA is helping as well. I would like to say we are fighting a worthy opponent but I can't. What's worse is we need to get our enemy to become our best friend. Actually, all we really want is to have their boot removed from the side of our head. Then we need to convince the federal government and the COA to throw in some cash. To be fair, the city of Burnaby has put in at least $800,000 into the facility to date and the Province of BC $500,000.

Thanks again for the letters and apologies for not sending out an update earlier. Most of our spare time consists of dodging human resources people at our day jobs. We'll get out the news whenever we can.

David Schneider
VP Road, Track and Cyclo-Cross, Cycling BC


Happy Birthday To...

Ian Condron, tomorrow.