Crystal ball time

After hitting the ‘pause’ button on our Rocky Trail events last week it is now time to bring out the old crystal ball, dust it off and make some predictions of what is going to happen over the next few months. Between getting the latest news updates, homeschooling and despite being locked down still not finding enough time in the day to go for a bikeride, it is easy to lose focus and get dragged down in a negative thought spiral. I want to combat that by looking at the future especially now that there are clear signs of the ‘endgame’ to this nasty situation. This fills me with hope and I want to share that hope with you.

Here are my assumptions:

1. We will be in a situation where organising events will be very challenging until around November/December.
2. After that we will see a gradual reopening of state borders and more importantly some level of certainty that they will stay open and lockdowns will be less often and also more foreseeable.
3. I think international travel will be possible again after March 2022 – this doesn’t really have an impact on Rocky Trail events but I wanted to put it down ‘on paper’ so I can look back and see if I was right 🙂
4. Until November or December we will be able to bring you some races but need to factor in scenarios where events and regions get shut down at very short notice. We had this happen to us twice now with our own events GP’s in Jolly Nose and Kempsey and again last weekend at the Noosa Enduro where we supplied timing and event management services. The good news is that we now have proven communication procedures in place for exactly those scenarios.
5. I expect that Australia will introduce some form of COVID passport where you need to prove that you are either fully vaccinated or have received a very recent negative test result in order to be allowed to do certain things like attending events. Our crew is getting vaccinated this month and I encourage you to do the same.

When we reopened in July last year we were amongst the first event organisers globally to make a COVID comeback. We were able to run successful and fun events and were rewarded with massive rider numbers and support. When we had to we came up with creative new ways of racing like the A-SYNC format. We will be doing all of this again for the second half of 2021 and have a great time with you whenever it is possible. Rocky Trail management staff are in Qld as well as NSW which gives us more options and with a lot of flexibility and the ability to turn things around in super short timeframes we will be racing again soon – possibly even in a few weeks in Qld.

What we ask of you is to be flexible with us. Most importantly you can rest assured that if you sign up for a Rocky Trail event your entry is safe with us and you will get a race entry for it. If you can’t make it to an event because it’s across a border or you are in a locked down region you can always transfer it to another race. As no doubt we will have a lot of transfers in the coming months we will have rider lists available sooner than usual where you can check if you are already registered for the upcoming event. We will also work on a simplified form where you can let us know what you want to do with your entry.

The Rocky Trail warehouse is full to the brim with new goodies and merchandise like orange drink bottles, #rockytrailracer keyrings and very shiny caps. We can’t wait to hand them out to you!

Martin and the Rocky Trail crew.