Once again 2003 has been a reasonable year for the Phoenix. Membership has climbed slightly to around 40, with four new members to welcome for 2004: Rachel and David Croggon, whom I believe are friends of Jen Mitchell, and they rode a number of our evening 10’s earlier in the year as PTTs; and also Robert Pritchard and Mark Poole who have joined in the last week, hopefully we can live up to their expectations.
23 members raced at least one event, including Tom Fish, who at 89 years of age is - I believe - the oldest racing member that the Club has ever had. I count 27 Personal Bests among the final times for the year, not including Jen’s Ladies 10 mile Record, which is a best for the Club but not for her. Joe Bertorelli’s 10 let him down, otherwise he had a full house of PB’s at all the other standard distances. Chrystal Sheldon had a very successful first year of racing, and dived straight into Road Racing with the Women’s Team Series, riding the first few events in the company of Ann Bath, but crossing to Ireland as a lone representative of the Phoenix by the final event. Jackie Morgan-Smith also had her first season of Time Trialling and posted some good times. I believe that Ann feels that she has had a disappointing season, not having improved a great deal this year, but I have reason to believe that her bike handling and confidence in groups has improved greatly and she has really had quite a good year considering how thinly she spreads herself around in her eagerness to do everything. The man who has had the worst season is Peter Edwards, who has been unable to race at all this year due to injury and might not be able to come back to the sport at all. We wish him well and hope to see him again in the future.
Jackie Morgan-Smith was a new recruit whose first contact with us came via the website. We have had a good number of enquires by email this year, but unfortunately, despite (or perhaps because of!!) detailed responses to the initial enquiries, most of these folk never show up. The one exception earlier in the year had a young lad in tow, and they although seemed interested on the day, I guess that our lack of young members put them off ultimately. The latest two recruits also started out with an email enquiry.
Once again compulsory helmet wearing is on the agenda of the CTT/RTTC National AGM. We will not know the outcome of this motion until the meeting on December 7th. It has proved highly controversial (as has the argument of whether dual carriageways are dangerous or not) and the CTT have admitted that the proposition is not about rider safety, but about how we are seen as a sport from the outside, and the cost of insurance. Whilst there is some logic to wearing helmets in Road Racing, and even in Team Time Trials, where a touch of wheels can easily bring a rider down, a Time Triallist riding alone should have very little reason to fall off, unless mown down by a car, and a lump of insulation is not a logical thing to place on a sweaty head. Once again, the committee’s view is that our members are capable of responsibility for their own safety and should be allowed to make their own decision on wearing a helmet or not.
Rider safety has had much discussion in our sport this year. At least 4 riders have died whilst competing due to being hit by cars on dual carriageways. These have been widely publicised, but I know that there have been other accidents in our district, the details of which have not been publicised, so it is difficult to quantify this against other types of incident on other types of course. As anyone riding on the public roads will know, it is not safe out there, but is Time Trialling any different to any other type of riding? London West district have banned ALL courses on any stretch of the A34 in within their boundaries, this has caused a great deal of discussion and quite a few riders have expressed doubts that the alternative courses are any safer than the banned ones. Finally with Risk Assessments required on all courses for next season, we seem to be getting to the point where the subjective assessment of safety is destroying the sport.
We have strengthened ties with other local clubs in the last year or so, the sharing of the clubroom with the Clarencourt CC seems to be a success, despite concern that one or other club might lose its identity. We continue to see Festival RC (particularly Andy Avis) and Kingston Wheelers members riding PTTs at our evening 10s on a regular basis, along with a number of other riders from all over our district.
The 2003 trip to Majorca was a success again, and Jake Dodd has just booked us for 2004: a dozen or thereabouts seems to be the consistent number interested. Club Dinner will once again be at the Hotel Antoinette in Kingston, on February 28th 2004, and Jake the organiser once again.
I gather members of the committee might be planning a slight reshuffle at the AGM, but they all deserve a vote of thanks, particularly Frank Cubis who keeps on top of the day-to-day work involved in running our Club Events program - I just show how clever I am at this time of year when I scramble to get all the reports to you all so that you have time to read them before the meeting!
Best Wishes for a safe and speedy 2004
Lisa Colombo: November 2003
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