BMX Basics

       Here's the "deal" at certain Nationals this year - "Two for the price of three!" It came as a surprise to a lot of us, but the "2 for 3" fiasco is nothing but the further expression of some ideas expressed as early as the '97 Christmas Nationals. Those of you who attended that event may remember announcer Linda Dorsey's infamous comment, "IT'S ALL ABOUT TV, FOLKS!" and Colin Stiles' various megaphone-powered responses to that statement, but for those of you who didn't, a quick recap:

• The '97 Christmas Nationals ran extremely slowly because of the time ESPN needed to get their cameras together before each of the pro motos and semis. There was a lot of booing and hissing about this, so Dorsey decided to set the crowd straight by screaming, "We need to take this time for the ESPN folks. IT'S ALL ABOUT TV, FOLKS!"
• I'll be a two-headed rattlesnake if that statement didn't start some riders talking. It's all about TV? We thought it was all about us, the people who travel thousands of miles and pay outrageous fees to race. Not that TV coverage of our sport isn't a Good Thing, but... Does the NBL exist to provide filler time for ESPN2, or does it exist to provide a comprehensive local and National schedule for racers and their parents?
• Sorry for mentioning local races. I know some Very Important People don't like to talk about local racing. In the words of Charles Townsend, former Robinson factory rider, delivered straight to me six years ago, "You'll never be a true champion if you race locals." What kind of true champion was he talking about? Hmm...
• Anyway, Colin Stiles took the megaphone into his own hands during the Pro Main and set the announcing team straight. It's all about the riders, of course. Thanks, Colin. Guess that finishes it.

But that really didn't finish anything, of course. This year, National schedules have been shuffled, blended, and shaken (if not stirred) to make the TV folks happy. Is this a good idea?
    I have always been a little ambivalent about BMX on TV and how far we should go to make it happen. Here's my Pro and Con list, which you are free to add to (or delete from, depending on your opinion)

The bigwigs are telling me that BMX sales and participation have gone through the roof in the past year, and that it's all due to television. For that reason, they say, anything ESPN or the big advertisers/sponsors like Mountain Dew, Specialized, Trek, Schwinn/GT, et cetera tell us to do is just fine, because "it's a big pie, and there's a piece for everyone, even you, Boswell." Thanks to some ESPN2 coverage at 2:00AM on Tuesdays, BMX is Big and Bouncing!
        Not to burst anyone's bubble, but the increase in ridership has little to do with ESPN2. Here's how it works: Kids want bikes. Kids go to their local bike stores. If the local store has BMX bikes in stock, there is a chance that the kid will buy a BMX bike instead of a mini-mountain, "cross", or road bike. If the bike store sells them a BMX bike, there is a chance they will become interested in racing. Sell enough BMX bikes, and you will have a racing boom. It's that simple.
        The past five years have seen manufacturers switch their children's market emphasis from "mini-mountain" bikes back to BMX. Stores that didn't have a single BMX bike in stock in 1991 now have racks full of them. I'll cover the reasons for this in another column, because it has been a long and complicated process, but you don't need me to tell you what you can see with your own eyes. BMX has made it back into the stores at a level approximating the last BMX Boom of 1985-1988.
        However, it's not racing that powers this phenomenon, any more than it was thirteen years ago. It's "dirt jumping" and the "X-Games" lifestyle that brings the kids in. That's fine with me; in '85 freestyling was the big thing, and it helped sell decent race bikes to young riders who then became interested in racing. The same thing happens with dirt jumping today. "At the end of the day," as former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell would say, I don't care if young people are coming to bike shops to buy pink Cannondale cruisers, as long as they leave with something that they can take to a track and race if they decide to.
       Dirt jumping won't last forever in the mass media consciousness, any more than freestyle did. (Remember the Crispy Chicken Nuggets commercial with R.L. Osborn? Can't blame you if you don't--it's been a decade.) Nor does it have to. All that is necessary for the survival of our sport between now and the next BMX "fad" is for a sufficient number of young riders to get involved in racing now and stick with it through the lean years that history tells us are probably ahead.
    Let's assume for a moment that young riders are coming into the sport at near-record numbers, which is the case, and that a fair number of them have plans to race at the national and local level for the next few years, which also seems to be the case. How can we guarantee that racing will continue to survive, and even prosper, in the future? It's simple. All the NBL (and/or the ABA) has to do is provide new racers with a quality experience at the races. At the local level, that means supplying small tracks with equipment and assistance, so that everyone who wants to start their racing career is within reach of a decent local track. If local racing is strong, then a lot of those local riders will eventually try National racing, if the National program meets the needs of the racers.. New riders who enjoy the local and National programs will probably stick with BMX for quite some time, and if they do leave, they are likely to come back at some point. For confirmation of this, check the rider counts for 25-29 Experts at any National.
    Which brings me to the '98 Christmas Nationals, which were run on a two-moto transfer system instead of the three-moto system we all know and perhaps even love. I had the opportunity to speak to Mr. Tedesco (the NBL President) at length about this, and here are the reasons he gave me for the switch:

• With more than two thousand riders at this National, running three motos would cause the qualifiers to be run fairly late in the day, which does not sit well with the TV people, who don't want to hang around all night just to get the 17X quarters on film. The two- moto system permits the TV people to do their work earlier in the day.
• Mr. Tedesco decided to run six-man motos and transfer four riders out of each, instead of the four-out-of-eight system we usually have. This increased the average rider's chances of transferring into a qualifier, which means that more riders have a fighting chance of making their main.
• Your second moto counts "twice", which means that if you win your first moto but take 6th in your second one due to a wreck, you won't transfer. But hey, you can benefit from someone else's mistakes, so it all evens out.
• The two-moto system speeds up the races, so that riders and their parents can get "outta here" faster and have more time to rest or drive home.

At the time, I told Mr. T. that he should have the announcers give those reasons over the P.A. system, so that riders would see the justification behind the two-moto decision. After all, the above reasons are pretty good ones, right? The more I thought about it, the more I thought that perhaps none of those reasons were valid, and here's why:

• Sure, Nationals are bigger than they have been in a long time, and we don't want the TV crews to wait all day, but exactly how much extra cost and effort is involved in having to stay a couple of extra hours? If the answer is "a lot", then perhaps we should look at rescheduling the Pro motos, since those are usually the only motos filmed during the early part of the day. Placing Pro motos an hour apart instead of two hours probably wouldn't hurt anyone, and it would let the TV people reduce the amount of time spent at the track. If the answer is "not much", then why are the wishes of two thousand or more riders being frustrated with the two-moto system?
• Six-man motos with four transferring are a perversion of the moto system. In an eight-man moto, you must average a placement in the top half of your group, on a relatively crowded track. This permits riders with a wider variety of skills (pack riding, consistency, just plain guts) to shine. A six-man moto is usually a simple drag race, and the four-man transfer, like the extra round of playoffs major league baseball added a few years back, makes "qualifying" easier and thus less meaningful.
• Furthermore, everyone suffers when the third moto is removed and extra riders transfer. Top-level riders in a given class are forced to race extra qualifiers, thus increasing their chances of a wreck or simple bad luck keeping them from making the main. The mid-pack guys have to deal with the Russian-roulette factor of a second motos that "counts twice" and can toss them out of contention. Here's my favorite example: Our old pals Riders A and B are in a 14 Novice moto. Rider A, who is for some reason going a lot faster than Rider B this particular weekend,  picks up a first place in the first moto, while B takes a sixth. In the second moto, A gets fifth due to a "ball-up" in the first turn, while B comes in second for the same reason. Guess who transfers? B, of course--even though he has a second against A's first and a sixth against A's fifth, the "double" second moto makes him the transferee. That's kind of a rare scenario, but I've seen odder stuff happen at Nationals. Last and probably least, the dedicated moto filler, on whom the entire system kind of depends no matter what Charles Townsend and his ilk say, is faced with the depressing prospect of racing only twice each day. $35 is a lot to pay for three laps around the track, but only getting two laps for the same money is, according to my "Jim Boswell Moto Filler Cost Calculator", 33% worse.
• Sure, we all want to party on Saturday nights and drive home early on Sunday, but if convenience meant that much, why would anyone drive fifteen hundred miles to a National with a cramped minivan full of hyped-up kids?

It would appear that the only people benefitting from the two-moto system are ESPN2 and the hardcore NBL staff, for whom things are a little quicker and easier. Is that small increase in convenience worth changing a system that has worked reasonably well for twenty years?
    After all, it takes a tremendous amount of effort for an NBL family to do even a single National, to say nothing of a full season. The entry fees alone for two kids over ten weekends total anywhere from $1500 to over three grand, but that's the cheap part. You need a place to stay, something to eat, and a way to get home. Your bike breaks. Your jersey rips in a crash. Unforeseen things happen, like breaking your ribs in Tennessee and having to drive your stick-shift Land Rover through the mountains back to northern Ohio, just to pull something off the top of my head. For parents, the difference in sheer hassle and expense between being a "BMX dad/mom" and just showing up for Friday night football games is nearly impossible to calculate. Nor is it any picnic sometimes for the riders.
    The NBL has been pushing the three-moto system for a long time, claiming that it is fairer than the ABA's transfer system, rewards consistency, and provides better competition for the riders. A lot of people, including yours truly, have been convinced of the above. Why, then, abandon it in certain situations for something that demonstrably combines the worst features of the moto and transfer systems?
    The only possible answer is that someone has forgotten what makes the National circuit tick. The NBL and its seasons are built, not on the sandy ephemera of television and big-bucks bootlicking, but on the rock of the 14 Novice and his parents--the people who spend money and time they don't have to make the National dream come true for a young (or old) rider. Every decision the NBL makes must be founded on that rock. Right now, that's not the case, and two for the price of three is no deal at all.

 
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