Anyone got any course updates for LoveCrossed on weekend? Ie conditions can you get away with one bike or is it a 2 biker? Thanks in advance

MC – I’ll not be up there helping until Friday, but I’d guess at 2 bikes. Just been walking the woods locally, the wet sloppy muds drying out into sticky goop right now. No real rain in the forecast & if it’s a heavy frost on the day you can bet it’ll have thawed out by the time you race.

Well the reports I’m hearing suggest the Lovecrossed commies approach to gridding led to a start-line mutiny for one race, and a bunch of visiting riders who’d travelled hours to race who won’t be coming back.

I know I’m not the only 2017 competitor who decided not to return due to the gridding fiasco and I’m glad I stuck with my original decision not to waste a day of leave from work. Tang, you really need to sack it being a League round if it’s going to grow.

And to illustrate how different commies can be (and not a willywaving exercise) I raced the final Leics League round at Misterton Hall (because it’s a terrific course). As it was their final round it was designated their county champs. I asked the chief commy if I could be gridded, and said that I would be happy with something like 3rd row so I was towards the front of the field but not interfering with their champs. He showed me the call-up list and I had already been gridded, FIRST, as they’d planned the gridding based on BC points.

The gridding was justified as I came 2nd, to another visiting rider who’d entered on the day (so he was gridded last-minute) from Scott Factory Racing (who may actually have won Lovecrossed).

As Crashtestmonkey says it was chaos on the start line! The Commissaires wanted to grid the Western league women as per normal in amongst the V50 and all other women at the back… erm you have advertised a £400 prize fund for the winning Senior woman and people have travelled in excess of 2 hours for the event. There was a bit of a kick up by some ladies, the commies then asked the regular western league ladies their opinion.. clearly they weren’t going to say anything after the mini mutiny!!! So they agreed to start us all 1 minute behind the V50.

Very disappointing behaviour just before the start, as a result I won’t be going back to race Love Crossed until it becomes a stand alone event. Tang does a stirling event along with James Lowsley-Williams, Le Col etc but it isn’t growing in size due to the old school manner of running the race that the Western league (which is a small league) has. It’s a shame as it has the potential to be an fabulous event.

The organiser does have the power to run gridding how he wants, every league is different and there is nothing in CX rules to say it has to be done X way. At the Central league last race of the season pretty much ALL the normal top 7 riders got bumped down to 2nd row due to loads of high flying interlopers, not one has an issue as quite rightly those top 7 interlopers all finished in the top 10.

Thanks for everything you are trying to do Tang I’ve enjoyed racing there the last 3 years. Next year Bogense for me (not racing though) 😉

PS. thanks Tangwyn, James, Ben et al for a great day out. My non-riding sister commented on how impressive the setup was. Don’t be put off by the shouty have-a-go-pros…for everyone who vows never to return you can be sure that many more of us will be back!