2016 Most Influential Award | Interesting Anonymous Email
By Billy Rainford
We’re well underway with our ‘2016 Direct Motocross Most Influential People in Canadian MX‘ People’s Choice Awards voting. We’ve received a ton of votes, so far, and some the people being selected are surprising while others are expected.
I’ve actually got pretty thick skin and have no problem with some self-introspection, so when we received the following email it caught my attention and made me want to share it with our readers.
I replied to the sender and asked if it would be OK if we posted the email online and they agreed, as long as it was done anonymously. No problem.
Here it is:
I think the media has to be most influential in Canadian MX today.
They do not bother to point out that people will have to pay to camp (we never used to).
They do not bother to point out that a customer will stand in line at port-a-cans (these are permanent facilities today, not staked and ribbons once a year tracks like Copetown was, no excuse).
They do not bother to point out that what used to be full gates of a few classes with many qualifiers has now turned into a class for everyone to win and 4 laps of fame motos (and in order to get any amount of track time, people have to enter more classes which means more cash outlay for even less racing time).
They do not bother to point out that when there was one single FIM affiliated sanctioning body, that we had meaningful National and Provincial Championships because there was only one, instead of 4-5 different sanctioning bodies all claiming to have created a true National or Provincial Champion. (There is only ONE F-1 World Champion, but MX here has a Trans-Can Champ, an MMRS Champ, a WCAN Champ, an ECAN Champ, etc. It is like saying you’re the best looking guy in a house but that is only because you live alone)
The sport is not healthy when you have 300 entries and it’s basically 120 people racing 2-3 classes each, meaning they are laying out close to 100 bucks each weekend just in fees.
The media is influencing the sport by being a part of the problem (Trump pointed that out on politics and the same shit is true in racing).
Tell the people the truth like Super Hunky used to in Dirt Bike.
Read Monkey Butt by Super Hunky…….He and Jody were the last true journalists in MX.
When I sent the email asking permission to post it, I got some more…
We used to be able to produce some great talent on motorcycles in this country, guys like Pederson in MX, the Sehl bros in Dirt Track, Picotte & DuHamel in road racing…
UGH………when you don’t have unity, and deep competition, you will never achieve greatness. We can produce world class winners in auto racing, equestrian, cycling etc……..why not motorcycling???
Now, we don’t want everyone to send us ‘War and Peace’ when they send in their vote, but I thought this was interesting, and we’re not afraid to post something like this that points a stern finger directly at us, the Moto Media.
We pride ourselves on posting news without biased opinion. Our goal is to tell people what is happening in the sport but perhaps we could do a better job of digging into why certain things do or don’t happen.
Thanks for the letter. If nothing else, it’s food for thought.
Keep the votes coming in. The best way for us to keep track is to email billy@directmotocross.com with the subject, ‘Most Influential.’
