05/16/03 by Ted Ingraham
Races At The Lake 2003 has been over for a week and I am just getting myself together enough to wrap up some of the loose ends. Overall, it was one of the most successful series ever. We believe the rider turnout for the four weeks was the highest we have ever had, the races were all very competitive, lots of club members actively supported and raced in the series, and the club did well financially.
We did a few things differently this year. We added individual and team series-long competitions to make it more interesting, we changed the race times to make the most popular race (Cat 1,2,3) last instead of first, and we moved the whole series back on the calendar by one week. All the changes seemed to be well received especially since we were blessed with beautiful weather most weeks and only early morning showers on the last week.
The one dark spot of the series involved my daughter Tricia, who crashed on the last lap of the women's race on the last week. Kind of a freak accident (we still don't have a logical explanation of why Trish went down), and freak result in that she broke more bones than most racers will break in a lifetime of crashes. I want everyone to know that the good news is that she is doing well and will fully recover. After a rough couple of days she now has the pain under control and is in excellent spirits, even talking about what kind of new helmet she is going to get – again this year! Trish and I want to thank all folks who helped at the accident and the many nice people sent good wishes this week. Those positive thoughts really do help!
I also want to thank a number of folks who put in a ton of work to make RATL 2003 the success it was. Joanne Liolios, as usual, put in a long, full day of work every Saturday handling registration. Joanne got great help this year from Sally Lott, who also put in long hours. Registration is a difficult and thankless job. I want both Joanne and Sally to know they have my thanks! Sally dragged Dick along (or was it the other way around?) every week too. Dick was the "assistant" official and was invaluable at the starting line. It enabled Dan Gableman to handle the "official" official duties himself. Between the two of them the races went smoothly and were actually on schedule almost the entire series! We also had great help from Russ Stapleton (course set-up/take-down, cones and barricades), Becky Blice (provided those bagels everyone loved and posted results to the web), George Liolios (he claims he helps Joanne), and others who helped at various times were Don Whitaker, Bob Iden, Doug Hale, Rick Schwarz, Brian Baddour, and Rob Tandy.
I also want to thank the two sponsors who stepped forward to provide extra support for the series Rudy Project (title sponsor) and Marty's (thanks, Tom Denholm)!
Next year, we'll make it even better – and no crashes!