The Long Drive Home – 2016 National BMX Championships and 12 hours of reflection

On cruiser Sunday of the 2016 nationals I drove back from Bathurst to Bris Vegas, which gave me plenty of time to reflect upon the past few days of racing and try to put into perspective how I felt about the current environment of BMX racing in Australia. Between cranking Triple J to 11, updates from my mates at the track, espresso top ups and monitoring the comments on a FB I co-manage with Big Block, I tried to thread my way between my feelings of how the hell did BMX racing go from (literally) my backyard in 1980, to the SX track in the backyard of the town where my parents met and married many moons ago?

I started racing when my parents took me to Nerang’s first track (their current track is their third location) in 1980. Coming from a small country town with a council built track (our club had yet to be formed), watching the Hayes brothers and Paul Addams racing sent me on the path that I’m still riding on 36 years later.

I don’t know how it came about, but as a 14 year old in 1982 I found myself on a bus to Melbourne to race the Aussies. I do remember being stoked that you didn’t need to qualify, or be picked by a coach to go, you could just rock up and race for an Aussie title! I can’t remember, but I probably got moto’d, though I can still recall the incredible feeling of being on the gate with the best in Australia. A little dude named Wade Bootes finished 4^th in 7 Boys and Anthony “Howie” Waye was on the podium in 11 Boys. The next year it was nearly in my backyard at Ashmore with plenty of controversy in the pro class and plenty of rain. 1984 it was Perth and Japan for the Worlds.

Why the history lesson (and a little bit of “This is Your Life”)? Because most of my reflection of how I thought about the track at Bathurst, and its degree of difficulty centres around my own personal feeling of what BMX racing means to me. And at its core is the very fact that the sport is virtually free of elitism (more on this later). You can share the gate with an Olympian at Nerang on a Wednesday night whether you’re 5 years old, or 50, and you can race the Aussies without any qualification requirement. There are not many Olympic sports that can claim this kind of classlessness.

So the calls from the cheap seats that if you haven’t got the skills, you shouldn’t be racing the national titles kind of rubs me the wrong way. Not because I don’t have the skills, but the damage I see the continuance of this style of track could do to participation in my own group of racing peers, and in the younger groups (sub 10 year olds). Yes, in general tracks have gotten much more technical, and I stopped as a pro in the early 90s partly because the tracks weren’t challenging me. We were calling for bigger jumps, but they never happened.

I get that there needs to be a development pathway for BMX racing if the Olympics are the ultimate goal, but I’m going to venture that that racing in the US is the ultimate developmental path. Let’s take a quick count of the 4 solid contenders for #roadtorio2016 and where they live. Anthony Dean and Sam Willoughby are based full time in San Diego, with Lauren Reynolds and Caroline Buchanan permanent part time US based as well. Not only is the racing the best in the world at an elite level, it cuts down on travel time from Australia to the SX races in Europe and South America.

So do we need a SX track in every state if a rider just moves to the USA anyway? Do we accept the high casualty count so a narrow group of riders are getting the development they require? We are starting to sound a little elitist at the cost of appealing the broader grass roots riders of the sport. Donny Robinson, an Olympic bronze medallist, stated early this year that he doesn’t think that the 8m hill is the saviour of the sport and hoped that USA BMX moved away from this direction.

And this brings me back to the core of the article. At nearly 50 years old, is it just sour grapes on my behalf that myself, and quite a few of my racing peers, find these tracks too much to ride? Do we accept that we should just take up lawn bowls and leave the racing up to the young’uns? Well, the answer is no. I feel we are heading down the wrong track if the sport is to continue to appeal to families and new riders. For sure the Olympics has boosted the sport. I’ve have spoken to parents of 7 and 10 year old racers and they say their kids are into it because of Sam or Caroline, but let’s not forget that at its core, BMX racing’s appeal is in the fact that the whole family can stay healthy and fit by riding a bike on a track, competing on (mostly) the same day at the same venue. And for me encapsulates the reason why BMX means so much to me. Rock up and race like it’s 1981.

About Bruce Morris #84

• Brisbane Australia
• BMX Racer – 35+ years
• Fitness Professional – 25+ years of operating gyms and training people
• Coach 84 BMX Training – Coaching the 30+ racers. Spanning performance, fitness and healthiness