Below are the minutes from the Off road commission Annual General Meeting that was held in December.  The commission are tasked with running the sport in this country both competitively and non-competitively and there are a number of interesting initiatives this year.

Summary:

Attendance was as follows:

Number of Delegates from each club:
4 Epic MTB
3 Flow Racing
1 IMBRC
4 MTB Assoc of Dublin
1 UCD
3 Unattached

A quorum of the required number of clubs was not reached at 4pm, thus under CI regulations the meeting was adjourned for 15 mins by Geoff Liffey
(Executive Officer Cycling Ireland) and called to order at 4:15pm

Nominations had previously been received by Geoff Liffey, and a nomination on the day for Rory Beirne was received.

Nominations details:
Following were nominated from Epic MTB by Richie Byrne
Alan Clogher - approved by Morgan O’Connell
Morgan O’Connell - approved by Graham Diamond
Michael Cowan - approved by Damian Duggan
Fergal Kilkenny - approved by Damian Duggan
Sean Herlihy - approved by Peter Popham

Rory O’Keefe nominated by Alastair Maxwell approved by Sean Herlihy
Rory Bernie nominated by Sean Herlihy approved by Fergal Kilkenny

All nominations were seconded and a new committee was elected - the new 2009 OffRoad Committee will be:

Chairman: Sean Herlihy (EPICMTB)
Secretary & XC coordinator: Fergal Kilkenny (MADMTB)
Treasurer: Morgan O’Connell (MADMTB)

Committee member: Rory O’Keefe (021 Racing)
Committee member & DH coordinator: Micheal Cowan (CRC)
Committee member: Alan Clogher (TC Cycles)
Committee member & BMX coordinator: Rory Beirne (tba)

Roles and responsibilities will be decided/agreed between the commission members.
Items of discussion:

2007 AGM minutes were accepted.

2008 Off-Road Commission Annual Report was discussed, some members felt it was not representative of the current MTB community but it was accepted and previous committee were acknowledged for their contributions.

Role of the Offroad Commission

Sean Herlihy informed the meeting that the official goal of the Offroad Commission is to ‘To run off-road Cycling on the island of Ireland’.
It was agreed that High Performance would not be a responsibility or deliverable of the 2009 OffRoad Commission. This falls under the remit of the High Performance director of Cycling Ireland.

Clarification was sought and provided re; supposed requirement to alternate the XC National Champs between the South and North each year - there was no record that this had ever been officially agreed thus the committee agreed that this was not a requirement, neither past nor future.
XC National Champs hosting status is to be awarded on a merit-based system where clubs have previously demonstrated capability to host such an event.

National Points Series:
There was a lot of discussion re; defining standards for XC NPS races in order to improve the overall quality of the series
There was a desire that list of basic requirements that hosting clubs need to meet before being awarded XC NPS approval was to be defined.
Suggestions included that a commissar visit proposed venue several weeks before a race to ensure to-be-defined standards are reached, also there was talk of a grading system being drafted which would apply an A,B,C etc.. classification to race venues
Where the standard is not reached by requesting club, the NPS title will not be granted, but the club can obviously still run the event as an open MTB event etc..
There was the discussion for the NPS winners to be recognised at an official awards ceremony, a suggestion was to schedule the OffRoad AGM close to the end of the season and have an agenda slot for awards to the winners - this would also help boost attendance at the AGM.

There was also the request from the floor for OffRoad events to be better promoted in 2009, eg; via printed media in bike shops etc.. which was accepted

There was the request that clubs have some sort of contingency plans for extreme weather conditions which may affect the quality/rideability of courses.

Race Categories:
There was the request that the Sports category be better managed in order to automatically promote faster riders to a more senior category so that beginners would not be overly disillusioned by their race experience where faster riders would be finishing significantly ahead of the rest of the field. The Commission accepted this as an item of importance and will work on a plan.

There was discussion re; the jumps aspect of DH races, so as riders would not feel forced into negotiating an obstacle they judged to be overly difficult/beyond their capability, by provision of appropriate ‘chicken-runs’ or alternate/easier routes past the jumps that would not place the rider taking this alternate route at an overly severe disadvantage.

Inter-Club Relations:
There was a request from the floor that better relationships be built between clubs, EPIC MTB’s inter-club XC race league was a good example of this relationship building where other club members with CI licences were welcome along to their race, another example was the EPICMTB spin in Rostrevor where riders from EPIC and MAD met with members from northern clubs and enjoyed a great days biking and discovery of new trails, with reciprocal visits planned.

Race Levies:
The aspect of race levies was raised by Sean Herlihy who was advised that levies were a federation requirement, but not something that OffRoad had previously contributed to.

There is a Leinster budget used for the development of sport within Leinster which could be used by MTB clubs if they were willing to contribute race levies.

It was asked of the floor / clubs present if they wanted to contribute a percentage of race-takings to the fund, it was agreed that since some clubs barely broke even on previous events, that they would not incorporate the levy system in 2009.

Cyclocross World Championship:
The organisers of the Cyclocross World Championships in the Netherlands is seeking a team from Ireland to take part. Funding may be available to this end.

Other Business:
It was agreed that OffRoad committee members from Connaught and Ulster would be valuable, so there exists the means to co-opt new committee members from those provinces.

Derek Gray from DMI provided an update on the current work and initiatives of the DMI in relation to proposed Dublin Way trail structure to accommodate MTB.
Derek also advised of a DMI meeting scheduled for 15th or 16th Jan 2009 where he required input from the MTB community as to their desires for MTB trails per above.
This will likely be assigned to MBI (note; Sean Herlihy and Fergal Kilkenny are members of both MBI and DMI) to propose desired trail routes.

Sean Herlihy advised of the enforcement of the European Habitat’s Directive which prevents use of large areas of the National Park by cyclists

There was the request from the floor for the committee to promote non-competitive / non-race events such as the Djouce Challenge which was accepted

Geoff Liffey advised of the MTB Leadership Awards Scheme whereby it would be intended to have such a scheme in Ireland and for people to gain qualification. This will be an item for further investigation/discussion by the Offroad Commission.

Geoff Liffey advised of a Cycling Ireland part-time resource - Ger Cromwell, who may be able to assist in promotion of OffRoad events.

Geoff Liffey advised of the Sean Kelly house in Belgium which could be made available to CI members (eg; useful resource for Cyclocross training)

Minutes by Fergal Kilkenny