CYCLING CANADA PRE-SEASON UPDATE
The outdoor season is now upon us with the roads, paths, tracks and trails coming to life after a long winter. Cycling Canada has been very busy since the fall and would like to give our participants and supporters an update on many areas of interest.
In early December of last year the road stakeholders’ engagement was initiated towards finding more opportunities for trade teams, event organizers and provinces to contribute to the overall national road program and its further development. Specific sessions with various groups of stakeholders have been held through the first quarter of this year and have led to a more complete understanding of the many issues that are in play and, in some cases, the most appropriate way to address them. The process has yielded some additional support for events like the Pan American Championships at which Canada needs to obtain qualification points towards World Championships quota positions. The process of creating a more robust road program is ongoing.
Most of you will know that the Pan Am / Parapan Am Games Velodrome opened in Milton on the first weekend of this year. In addition to hosting two exciting track events, the Canadian Track Championships and the Milton International Challenge, the velodrome is now home to our National Team program and our athletes are benefitting from this legacy even in advance of this summer’s Games.
Another Pan Am Games legacy facility for cycling is set to open on June 13th with the hosting of the BMX Canada Cup at the new Centennial Park in Etobicoke Supercross track. If you haven’t seen it and are in the area, don’t miss this inaugural competition.
In February we brought on board a new sponsor, Ecoasis – Bear Mountain Resort which will be the western Canadian training base for our Mountain Bike program. We look forward to working with them to bring high level training and racing to Vancouver Island.
In mid-April we launched the HopOnCanada campaign which has been very well received and supported by our agency Innocean Worldwide and numerous media partners particularly Rogers Sportsnet. Anyone who has watched any of the early season classic races on Sportsnet has been entertained by the rider less bikes within our public service ad. There is much more collateral beyond the PSA and we would encourage you to go to hoponcanada.ca to view it.
Recently the Cycling Canada Board held is semi-annual meeting Vancouver, BC. In addition to a full business agenda there was also an opportunity to share discussions with interested stakeholders on specific topics of interest to the organization.
On the business side the Board approved a budget of $ 7,361,000 for the 2015-16 fiscal year, reviewed the organization’s risk registry, discussed the feedback from the community on the new Anti-doping Rule Violation Policy and monitored the performance against the Strategic Plan over the past year.
The Board named the Nominations Committee for the 2015 Annual Meeting and the date for that meeting. The Nominations Committee will be chaired by Board Member Bill Kinash and comprised of Interprovincial Council representative Susan Richards who is President of Cycling Association of the Yukon and Greg Mathieu, CEO of Cycling Canada. The meeting will be held via conference call on Tuesday, September 29, 2015 at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time. It will deal with three agenda items; Elections, Approval of the Financial Statements and Appointment of the Auditor. Further information will be provided to the voting members in the next month.
The Annual Conference will be held in St. John’s, Newfoundland from Friday, October 30th to Sunday, November 1st, 2015. The full itinerary for the weekend is being developed with the assistance of Bicycle Newfoundland & Labrador and promises to be a memorable weekend.
The Board had a very interesting and productive discussion on a successful club development program that was presented by Andrew Pinfold who outlined how the Vancouver-based Escape Velocity club has built their DEVO Vancouver Youth Cycling Team. The business model used to initiate and sustain the program is one that could be applied to many clubs across the country. With the help of the Bridge the Gap Fund the DEVO program is supporting a second club in Victoria that will implement the program. The intent is to seed additional clubs for a two-year period after which they are expected to have built up their sustainable capacity.
Blake and John Bromley met with the Board and outlined the rationale behind the charitable giving platform Chimp Fund. They pointed out that many organizations, including sporting organizations and teams, had worked with them to attract donations for their programs and activities. There were examples provided on how a sport cause could be set up and receive funds to support their activities. Cycling Canada plans to pilot a specific national team activity for support with Chimp to see learn more about what is needed at our end and how the community supports it.
John Tolkamp, President of Cycling Canada, summarized the recent months of activity as follows; “There has been a lot of work done by many people to advance the sport in a number of areas which can be seen within this brief report. Cycling is stepping up in the minds and hearts of Canadians and we want to build on this momentum. Best of luck to all for an enjoyable season of Hopping On!”
