Re-born to run:
The Minnesota State Championship Series
Erik's Bike Shop rescues mountain bike race circuit
by Joel Patenaude  Question No. 1: What happens when a six-year-old mountain bike series ceases to take place but the older, individual races are held,regardless?
Answer: In this particular case, riders still had nine far-flung races to choose from, but lacking a single entity to track accumulated standings and declare champions, overall participation plummeted more than 40 percent.
At least that's what
happened after the Minnesota State Championship Series (MSCS) ceased to be after the 2002 season, causing the independent race directors to fret for the future of their sport in the state.
Question No. 2: Can the same mountain biking series be revived after the previous organizers concluded they couldn't run it as a profitable business?
Answer: A Twin Cities/Madison bike store chain figures it can afford to underwrite the series this year and possibly for years to come.
More than 2,000 mountain bike racers competed in the state championship series in 2002. The only discernible reason for the dramatic drop in total ridership at the nine events in 2003 was the loss of the series, according to Erik Saltvold, the namesake for Erik's Bike Shops. So he took it upon himself and his employees to bring the series back.
"This will cost us a lot of money and time, but we view it as an
investment. We look at it as putting money back into the sport." Saltvold said.
Although he sounded willing, Saltvold said he would rather not bear the responsibility for the series indefinately. "I hope the individual race promotors will put money into the pot to cover the administrative costs to get the series back on its feet," he said. "We hope the series comes to sustain itself. But if it doesn't, we'll contine to support it."
Before the future of the championship series can be secured, someone had to take the initiative just to get it going again. The individual race directors didn't have the resources to do it, Saltvold said, especially after the low turnout last year.
"We've injected some cash into restarting and publicizing (the series). Last year there was a decline, so its really important we do this," he said. "No races have been held yet, but a lot of excitement has been
created. I anticipate we'll get our participation back."
After this year, there may be a concerted effort to create a non-profit entity to run the series. The "for profit" approach taken from 2000 through 2002 was not sustainable, conceded one of the organizers in that period.
"We wanted to run it as a business, but it was a major burden on our time and finances to run it. ... It was just consuming our lives," said Greg
Blasko, a college student who ran it for three years with Adam Schmidt, owner of two western Wisconsin bike shops.
"In 1999 and 2000, Subaru was the title sponsor. In 2001 and 2002, there was no title sponsor," Blasko said. "Without one, we made the announcement in early 2002 that we couldn't continue. We tried to work it out but we left without the series (continuing in 2003)."
Blasko and Schmidt will, nevertheless, continue to organize the June 6
Afton Avalanche race in the Afton Alps Ski Area near Hastings and the July 18 Bluff Riders Charge in the Mount Kato Ski Area of Mankato. Blasko and co-director Scott Finne will put on the Metric Auto Parts Welch MTB Jam in Welch on August 15. All three races are part of the championship series.
"I'm glad the race directors are now able to collaborate and that there's good communicating going on," Blasko said. Saltvold's leadership and
commitment of resources, Blasko said, signals the possibility of the series continuing well into the future.
"This is not a simple fix for 2004," he said. "They're really looking to get the numbers back up and keep it at a grassroots level."
Erik's Bike Shop sponsors the first race in the Minnesota series, the May 8 Spring Cup at Buck in Burnsville. This year will mark the 10th anniversary of the race. For the past few years, the race has been jointly
run with the Minnesota Off-Road Cyclists (MORC), a non-profit advocacy organization. MORC collects the proceeds from the Spring Cup, which suggests Saltvold does not merely pay lip service to "investing in the sport" of mountain biking.
Gary Sjoquist, a full-time advocate for bicycling employed by Bloomington-based Quality Bicycle Products (QBP), praised the former series directors. He said Blasko and Schmidt "raised the bar
significantly; it became pretty professional. I was surprised they weren't and couldn't make money at it."
Sjoquist said he tried to help patch together a series for the 2003 season, but the effort was unsuccessful. As a result, he said, "we saw a rather staggering drop in participation. About 44 to 45 percent overall last year."
Sjoquist said he didn't want to see that downward slide continue, and he found a nearby ally in Libby Shea Hurly, the marketing and events
coordinator for Erik's Bike Shop.
With QBP since 1998, Sjoquist previously helped build trails. He said it was only natural he would help facilitate promotors of a championship bicycling series.
"The enthusiast I am and the role I play in the industry was the reason I looked for someone to step in" to revive the series, Sjoquist said. "I figured Erik would play host. He's a big picture kind of guy."
Sjoquist said that, if competitive mountain biking is to have a future, there must be opportunities for beginners to compare themselves with their peers. That's the role of a series like MSCS.
"The biggest thing is they wanted their points tracked. So the series ended up meaning something rather than a sequence of individual stand-alone events," he said.
The MSCS is also making a comeback with each of its nine races
sanctioned by the National Off-Road Biking Association (NORBA). Every competitor will be required to be a NORBA member for insurance purposes, but riders will be allowed to buy race day-only memberships at the venues.
Sjoquist complimented the vision of the race promotors who have agreed to cooperate in 2004 and beyond. "The want to look at this as a three- to five-year deal," he said.
| 
