Dear Mr Joe 300,
What I'm trying to accomplish is to have people realize that riding the expert and pro classes in the USA and to compete in the World Cup World Pro class in trials takes a ton of time to do which requires a lot of money. Its not as easy as the local beginner classes and senior classes that someone can win by riding only on the weekend or twice a month on a clapped out bike. Riding expert or pro requires a lot more time of practice and the better rider you become the more bike work is required. Bikes get destroyed riding these classes and not having a fresh bike every year at least is almost impossible to do. Believe this or not but when riding expert or pro if your not breaking parts ( money) or crashing then your not progressing, challenging yourself in certain ways or getting better which means your result will be not so good. The bike work alone is a part/full time job no matter what bike you ride. All brands require the same amount. You been riding for 20 years so I'm assuming you understand bike work is very time consuming. If not well, there is a lot more to it than chain lube, oil filter, tranny oil and replacing linkage once a year.
Ill tell you what saying the Pros in Usa make a salary is the funniest thing i heard in awhile. If you think they make money your the real tool here not me. Considering i am pretty good friends with all the pros and practice with them more than most, they don't make money. They even all say that. If they break even they are happy and any positive is a good year. Basically they get free bikes, parts, entry fees and some but little travel expenses paid. Some get the check they received on the podium doubled. i don't call that a salary and to me a salary is enough to live on. Now Pat obvious makes a little more than that and gets more but still not a legit salary. Same for Cody, he wouldn't be riding this year if he didn't make enough money to make it worth it.
I know how all the riders and trials community is. EVERYONE is friendly, its the best atmosphere of any event of any kind. I am not putting anyone down. Andrews parents are great people like everyone else at the trials events. Met his parents at Andrews first national. Actually helped him out with advice. Don't need to tell me about the trials community.
If you read Trial Enduro News (Good work from Shan and the others) you will see Andrew spent from around christmas to end of January riding in Europe in the end of 2014 to beginning 2015(Just for practice). In August 16, 2014 he went over to begin his month riding the European championship round, last round of the world championship and also the Trial Des Nation. Oh yeah then last year before the USA nationals started in 2014 he spent a month in Europe again to ride the european championship in Italy not sure if that was in there but i do know that happened. yeah it was much more than a few days in Europe and for Spain as you said it was at least a few weeks considering thats where the world championship and tdn was... That wasn't my point how long he was there but since you wanted to say about that i made sure to point it out. my point was how he had the time which equals money to do this all this plus to ride with the best. Being in the top of classes does take a lot of money to compete.
Aires as a business throwing money out to pay the pros is great. it is a good start but it needs to improve to more than pro class and hopefully it will in the future. I believe it will with some effort of course. The problem is if you looked at rider counts the past 10 years has been at a huge drop. The main reason i think this happened is of course the cost to go to nationals to ride an event to possibly get a trophy. There is no incentive for riders or families to put in an estimate of $500-$1000 on a good weekend(No travel issues or breaking bike up) plus a possible day or two off work for a trophy. Another problem is when the schedule for the nationals is not good for kids in school. Kids in college that pay thousands won't miss college for a trophy they need to pay hundreds for with cost to ride a national. Plus the ones in high school can be challenging at times. those are the future of the sport so probably should focus on them?
Riding the national series is in no way cheap as that one guy says. Singing up alone is $160 for the weekend without a minder and with one is $240 a weekend of course if signed up early. Traveling to them all depending on location of course also if your using a motorhome/camper or hotel is easily $600 to be comfortable and yeah could be cheaper I'm sure but i think this is a reasonable estimate. Then if they are back to back weekends and traveling across the country, plan on missing probably 2 days before the first weekend, the following week then two days to get home off work. Thats only for two weekends of riding. this year we have 10 rounds or 5 weekends of nationals. So if this is cheap to you, well awesome your probably one who doesn't go to all the events but i don't see this being cheap for most. yes the east and west regional series helps this but to ride expert and pro, it takes money to do the whole series for the national championship.
Aires does help with the TDN team but you need to remember, there are A TON of people that donate A LOT of money for the TDN team to travel and pay expenses. Aires wasn't always there to help so they got a van before Aires got them one. Its just easier they van is already lined up now. I think all the companies and people who donate to the TDN earn recognition not just Aires.
Im not exactly sure about Bernie but i am told from one person (not sure if its true or not) but Bernie mainly stayed in a tent on his first trips to Europe to compete and had to borrow some clothes since being from SoCal he wasn't prepared for the weather. For Pat, most of his traveling was donated by awesome people in USA. Plus he had to come up with some to but lets just say he did have a comfortable budget but I'm sure it wasn't the greatest but he made it work and put in some wins at the world championship. Bryan also had a lot of donations plus he worked saving up his cash to fill in the rest of the expenses and he stayed at a lot of peoples places over there in-between events. Plus the FIM pays for a hotel for a few days, if a rider is more than like 3000 miles or something like this from home as explained to me.
For the guy saying about the olympic athletes, in the USA over %60 of the Olympic athletes that represented USA in London 2012 were college students. Why so? Well because those athletes growing up that were good at there sport continued to do that sport but thought about the future so they went to college. With the NCAA and a ton of colleges, the athletes do not need to be #1 or even #101 to get a full ride through college. Thats why no one gives up in those olympic sports because its obviously the main goal is olympics but if those athletes got a full ride through college they would be more than happy I'm sure. With trials if your not #1-#5 and even saying #5 is iffy, then your not making any kind of money to be bragging about or retiring on anytime soon for all the time and effort that trials requires.
As for me riding, I am in that expert national class level. I'm not that sandbagging support rider that needs to move up a class. I am not able to put in the time i need to win or have the result i would like to see in the expert class because i need to work pay bills like every other normal person. I do ride as much as i can (2-4 days a week depends). I am not able to always make it to the nationals but try to when i can to meet up seeing everyone. Trials has got me into a few injuries that require surgery so my effort is right there and many parts have been put in the grave yard so I'm just as passionate as anyone is. Oh yeah I'm a Wanta Be Forum rider to let me tell you. I follow the World, European, USA, British and X trial championships more closely than most. Not just red line either i prefer to follow blue line riders or the bottom half of red line.