It sounds like we made a mistake

Earlier this week, the club issued a notice stating that it intended to change the times of the sessions it runs on a Saturday. Word quickly got back to the committee that this change would mean that some riders would no longer be able to attend training.

Clearly, that is not what the committee wants for any of the club’s riders.

Earlier this year, the committee ran a survey and invited everyone to input into the direction the club should take, and whether its members thought that there were any changes that would be an improvement.

Among the many points that were made in the feedback from the survey, there were two points that were repeated by several respondents. The two points were as follows,

• That the experts as a group were too aloof, and separate from the rest of the club members, and that as a result this created an us and them relationship between the experts and the rest of the group,

• That the gap between Intermediates and Experts was too large; that it would be better for the Intermediates and Experts to mix more so that the next generation of racers - those in the Intermediates could mix more with the Experts - those more likely to have been racing for a longer period of time, so that the skills gap was closed and so that the Intermediates could progress more quickly.

Members of the committee and the coaches met to review the survey feedback to see whether they could come up with any changes to address the feedback, and to improve the training sessions and the club for its members.

One of the things that that group decided was the change that was announced earlier this week. The group that met had felt that by bringing the Experts session earlier the Experts would see the Novices on a weekly basis, and by overlapping the Experts and Intermediates training sessions, this would see the Intermediates train alongside the Experts, and hopefully reduce the skills gap. All of this was also intended to improve relationships across the club, and to create new ones.

Everything that the club’s committee and its volunteers do is always intended to be in the best interest of the club and its riders. It was felt that this change would lead to an improvement. Earlier this week, when we announced the change, we heard a very loud and very clear signal back that we’d got it wrong on this occasion.

And so we’re writing to you today to let you know that you should disregard any of the changes mentioned earlier this week - we will not be proceeding as that announcement suggested.

Of course, we still really want to attempt to make an improvement, and so we’ll be going back to the drawing board to try to come up with something different. We hope that when we announce that in time, that it will be received better.