New Scottish Enduro Association Launched: Could you be part of It?

The future of Enduro has been the subject of a lot of conversation up here, so this is good to see. Hopefully no one is negative about this. If they are then they need to say why and get involved.

That said, there are a lot of challenges with organiser costs, event locations and course design, as well as land owner liabilities to name a few. All that and more has to be brought to the fore, so everyone, especially the riders are aware of the challenges and differing opinions.

Hopefully we end up with good events with good spin off’s to local economies.

You need to qualify this, “I’ll not be keen to involve myself with Dmbins after their failure to support Tweedlove in any way”.

Coming from the other end of the country and doing the same as you, I do see them support enduro, despite event organisers being private companies. Not saying its perfect but remember they have a remit, a budget, guidelines and boundaries they cannot cross. They are only the facilitators in getting this association going.

So. come on. Be constructive. Say what you would do and how you would run it all.

( Not right here though. I’m away out to do some trail maintenance)

The thing that gets me is that the remaining organisers in Scotland have been asking DMBinS and Scottish Cycling for a meeting about how enduro is taken forward for weeks/months – but have been totally ignored. That group also did a survey off their own backs to find out what the riders thought. DMBinS not interested in this either. Those organisers, who’ve put their souls into it for years, must be raging at this level of disrespect from ‘national’ and ‘representative’ bodies. They were also trying to get organised to host a round or two of the British Series but as that’s not BC/Scottish Cycling that was prob ignored too.
The rumour is that DMBinS funding is running out soon and their jobs may go, so maybe they’re using ‘saving enduro’ as a Trojan horse to get funding to save their own bacon. At the expense of the existing organisers whose jobs will likely now be lost. DMBinS is not fit for purpose, and this is a shameful way for a publicly-funded organisation to behave. They should never have planned or announced this without consulting the existing organisers first.

I’m really having to bite my tongue over this, but to me this is pure hypocrisy from DMBinS, given that prior to their share of Tweedlove’s announcement they had never shared or supported a single enduro event in Scotland.

If you want a sense of the feeling in the Tweed Valley, have a search for when they shared the TweedLove announcement, and have a read of the comments. I’m still surprised that they never deleted the share.

@mtnboarder if you want another rant, you should chat to the key Ae Trail Association guys about the influencer tour.

I’m now going to be diplomatic and resist saying anymore publicly.

The influencers tour had limited time so they could only visit limited locations, some places would always miss out this time. But can we not celebrate what they did do rather than focusing on what they didn’t do? They shone a bright light on Scottish trails for a vast global audience.

i think people who are being ultra critical of DMBInS should take the time to better understand their remit, their budgets and their wide range of work. There is a lot going on beyond enduro.

Well some may feel that past failures and oversights will stop them thinking on the positive “better late than never”.  Enduro needs help, all help is good, targeted, collaborative and focused help more people working towards a common goal the better.

I’m sure some will feel that monies are better spent where they want, and would not do certain marketing things over others, but at some point you just have to pick something and commit – the influencer tour will generate interest; better than it not happening, and reaching a wide demographic.

But knowing how much work some of those roles are, it would be hard to fill everything with purely volunteers, at least long term. However people are out there who will, I started PMBA Enduro as a volunteer until I realised the workload and had to quit the day job to continue.

Seems that organisers really are not happy – and as above they had no idea that DMBIS were doing this. Looks like this could unravel.

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=966905032123761&set=a.458470322967237

Quoted for those who don’t have FB

Doon Tha Brae Events

Scottish Cycling and Developing Mountain Biking in Scotland (DMBinS) today announced the set up of a new Scottish Enduro Association. This was a surprise to us and many other enduro event organisers across Scotland, given they hadn’t talked to us before deciding that this was the right response to the current uncertainty around the future of enduro in Scotland. That’s disappointing, as we have been asking for an event organisers meeting without any response, meaning our views and more than 800 of you who have completed the survey, haven’t been considered before deciding on a course of action. Given that, we feel that now is a good time to share publicly the survey results. Hopefully we and, through the survey, you will still have a say in how things develop.

Meantime our initial reaction is that whilst the return of a national Scottish enduro series would be a welcome step, there doesn’t seem to be much in the proposal to support grass roots local enduro racing, which is where most riders start their racing careers and compete for fun and to be part of the riding community.

Below are the results from the ‘State of Enduro Racing in Scotland 2024’, in the forms result where is says ‘xxx more responses are hidden’ these haven’t been hidden by us and is a limitation of Google Forms due to the amount of responses, you can find a full list of responses on the sheets link.

Forms Survey Results – https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10DfGN_Cf6dxpNYejvmb3hDJ9xrvb0m82khcO4NwcXQw/edit?fbclid=IwY2xjawGazMRleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHVwdoyI-vbzYzcheKkxl-HFJ8BhNESVzUWiUgDugzT60oykVebNV34_DJQ_aem_fF5q4EL8jaQSelJa25dzig&gid=80714908#gid=80714908

Sheets Survey Results – https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1AJAwEBfcnh_MzcWceYSQoH-Q3-lhNs8lvPv-gieZobQ/viewanalytics?fbclid=IwY2xjawGazMJleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHUChNH6crVwH6fkiEZ85S3zfIqIGBZTxj–Wn2gcVIaSHJemfk_aDuAAWA_aem_Vzes4LVC8up5Kn8fgGfdXw

DMBinS are a part of Scottish Cycling, hence their involvement.

I did ask on the announcement about whether any financial support was available and was ignored, as seem to be policy at DMBinS when tricky questions are asked.

I did ask on the announcement about whether any financial support was available and was ignored, as seem to be policy at DMBinS when tricky questions are asked.

DMBInS are halfway through hosting a very busy conference right now so not in a great position to respond to comments. Hopefully they’ll get to that next week.

DMBins – what a colossal waste of money, won’t be long before it goes down the pan…

Ah, not just me that thought that was a really stupid idea to do that…

I think you lose “Valley Points” if you suggest its maybe not the place for a hoon…

As DMBins are only based in Glentress

They have a number of people in the NE and around Fort William, so I’m not sure that’s a fair criticism.

SXC and SDA deliver their race series with amazing teams of volunteers, so is the counter argument that enduro is unable to be run with a similar team?

On that subject I think if we didn’t already have the SDA and SXC it’d be very, very hard to start a new one let alone have it be as strong as it is. I’ve had no dealings with SXC but SDA are bloody good at what they do and that’s come over years and years. And in the end, an enduro is still basically a lot like running 4-5 dh races at the same time, more access issues, more routeplanning and taping, more things to go wrong. A dh race is a crazy enough thing by itself. And enduro has more whiny cockbags like me always wanting a new track, or more difficulty, or LESS difficulty, or whatever. While DH people are much more accepting of “we will do the same locations and largely the same tracks every year” and tbh more realistic about things going wrong, they get that this is a stupid and challenging sort of event.

I say this often but it’s absolutely true, you have to be out of your mind to want to run a bike race. It’s really difficult, it’s risky, it needs either a massively wide skillset or a really good team, and there’s so many factors out of your control that can just trash you. You have to be both skilled and crazy and a people person and a practical person and a patient person and constantly risk aware but not risk averse and just incredibly hard working, so that some bellends can tell you everything you’re doing wrong on the internet or that it’s too expensive or too easy or too hard or both or that it should be closer to their house. And finding people who can do all that stuff and are also mad enough to want to is so, so rare and we’ve broken a whole lot of them on the wheel over the last decade.

I was a very good event organiser and a pretty good team-wrangler and that gave me enough skills to possibly make a go of it, but also the wisdom to see how hard it’d be and the desire to never ever do it. We need to protect these few skilled mad people at all costs, they’re the rarest resource in our sport by far.

and for the love of god don’t even consider making people pedal mid-stage!

It will be a very tight timeline to train up enough new commissaires before 2026 if that is the plan- at least 4 events are needed to qualify at a base level, so at least a full season of racing. And if an enduro needs two per stage, that’s a lot of volunteers to find and train up. Not only that but SDA and probably SXC (I’m not sure) have much higher density of marshals than enduro. The last SDA had in the region of 23 marshals, if that density was spread over 5 stages it becomes unwieldy. BC are only just dipping their toes into enduro and there’s much to be established.

GavinB, the point was that DMBinS are local to the trail in question so should be well aware of potential conflicts with walkers.

Hi Hels, with having the British Enduro Champs this year, there is something in place already I’m sure. The bigger issue to me is whether they will be able to find enough qualified commissaires in the next few years. A quick look at the current list shows that there’s not enough and many are still trainees like myself.

There’s a lot of anger towards BMBinS coming out here, particularly from current and past organisers, upset that this initiative is 1; proposing volunteer led competition to their business or 2; a kick in the teeth to their past efforts at getting DMBinS to help develop Enduro in Scotland.

None of this is great- but I reckon I’ll make the effort to get to at least one Doon The Brae race next year, and maybe cross the border too..

I don’t think its an entirely genuine page…

Perhaps DMBinS would have been wise to secure the social media accounts before announcing the name of their new organisation.

I honestly can’t tell if that page is real or not. You’d think that the mullet post and “get in the SEA” were top trolling but the rest is very normal!

BC involvement is probably best described as a necessary evil. With Enduro now being recognised by UCI, the only pathway to international level now requires sanctioned races, where you can score the required BC/UCI points.

At a grassroots level, BC also makes sense, as it’s the most viable way for local clubs to run club events. Things like the PCC Dirt Crit races are run via BC, but as it stands, the only way for local clubs to run an enduro, is to take on the responsibility of the race and insure it themselves, which generally makes then unviable, as you’re not likely to cover the costs with typical local race numbers.

Some what coincidentally, I bumped into Chris Ball last week and had a quick chat. His involvement with Scottish Enduro is very much over.

If ESO hadn’t won the rights for all the UCI MTB stuff, they would most likely still be running the SES, and I’d say that with hindsight, ESO probably wouldn’t have taken on the SES if they knew they would win the UCI stuff. It was very much a case of poor timing, with relaunching the SES 6 months before winning the UCI stuff, then 6 months later having to run the UCI stuff, so the SES got mothballed after there was little interest in an alternative setup (somewhat ironically similar to what the SEA proposal is..)

As for NoFuss, NoFuss is also very much dead, with little desire from either of the main people to be directly responsible for running events.

There have been other proposals floating around for a few months, but the overarching issue is, the numbers don’t make sense.

I’ve personally costed out a smaller more local series, and the realistic ‘profit’, is somewhere between losing 1k, and making 2k, and that’s before allowing for the various bits you’d need to buy to put on a race. That excludes any sponsorship, but bike trade sponsorship is pretty much non-existent at the moment, and I suspect it will remain that way for a while.

I personally don’t know what the solution is, however I wouldn’t want to see somebody take on the SEA proposal without knowing exactly what they’re facing, and what needs done to make it successful, as otherwise you risk ending up with a broken organiser, and/or poor events.