jodrell bank sportive

idw

Ands wrote:

idw wrote:

That's fair enough, but i rode it and I quite enjoyed it.

So what you've highlighted is that the event was more successful for the early arrivers/early starters - more food, easy parking, and probably the toilets were in a cleaner state the earlier you used them.

It sounds like the capacity to hold the event was lower than the actual number of participants. This is either down to poor planning or greed. The organiser should take this on board and look at how this could be improved - either improve facilities or reduce the number of participants to something that is manageable and allows a consistent and quality offering to everyone - after all, everyone pays the same amount to enter.

I would be interested to know what the costs are in hosting an event like this. I'm sure we'll never be party to this information, however.

The event HQ is the one that was also used last year for the Spud Riley Polka Dot memorial, which I also rode, that event is limited to around 600 people.

andy_wrx

The original Polka Dot when it ran, and now the Spud Riley, had good feedstops and free tea & coffee and biscuits at the end, they cost £20 to enter and have lots of enthusiastic volunteer helpers because they are run for charity. At £20 and limited to 600 entries they make a significant donation to Christies.

andy_wrx

pprince wrote:

I do believe though sportives should have somekind of minimum standard. I'd happily sign up to somekind of voluntary code guaranteeing riders a certain 'level' of event based on what riders pay to enter. Difficult one to manage but the idea in principle, I think, is the way forward.

As long as that does turn into another IACO fiasco...

<edit : obviously I mean doesn't !>

stingmered

Cycling Weekly are doing a feature on the Jodrell - you can vote and leave comments on the forum (need to register, takes <1min.) Link here:

http://forums.cyclingweekly.co.uk/showf ... =1&fpart=1

For what it's worth I've done a fair few sportives in my time and this is by far the worst I have experienced. I don't want to detail what has already been said here but the usual feed-stop food quality, route marking, parking debacle (not so much the availability, but non segregation of riders and cars when vehicles cars were trying to get onto the full car park - I'm surprised somebody wasn't injured.) One thing I don't think I've picked up on so far is the route choice. For £25 I would expect some imaginative route options but a couple of miles on the A6??? Some clown at Torelli (or is it just one person?) blatantly used the 'drag route' option on bikehike to make up the miles at the end. And the first feed stop was approaching 50 miles for the 80 mile riders. Very poor, and a cr&p introduction to sportives for my other half.

Maybe Cycling Weekly will drop the feature if they get true accounts from participants who suffered this brazen, money-grabbing sham.

stingmered

Link post fail.

That link above gives the results so far. The link below is the blank 'questionaire'.

http://forums.cyclingweekly.co.uk/showf ... #Post88735

pprince

andy_wrx wrote:

pprince wrote:

I do believe though sportives should have somekind of minimum standard. I'd happily sign up to somekind of voluntary code guaranteeing riders a certain 'level' of event based on what riders pay to enter. Difficult one to manage but the idea in principle, I think, is the way forward.

As long as that does turn into another IACO fiasco...

I'd hope not and wasn't advocating I ran it, I just believe the idea is a good un

fungus_the_muffin_man

idw wrote:

Parking – Registration was defined as being between 7-8, I arrived at 7:20am and had no problem parking. I’m pretty sure in the event e-mail it mentioned street parking if the car park was full. I’m not sure how people can complain if they arrived at after 8 and the car park was full.

I think the total riding for the day was roughly 640. If I remember correctly Tony had set the limit at 1000. If the event had been full where would the other 200-400 cars have parked? registration was also from 7 till 8.45

idw wrote:

Feed Stops – No problem for me, I found them both, hard to miss really!! Grabbed some bananas and was even offered extra gels for the road by the people manning the feed stop. What more do people expect? I’ve been on some sportives that had out of date swiss rolls and sausage rolls??? I’m happy with couple of bananas and gels.

After paying £25 I would severly hope for more than just banana's and a few gels.

idw wrote:

Markers – All seemed fine to me. I did the 80m route and never had an issue. I even thought at the time it was quite nice to see extra markers if for example you had been riding for a while just to confirm you were still on the right track.

I don't actually blame tony for the fact that there were markers missing. It was an unfortunate thing to happen. We'd actually been impressed with the marking until we got lost.

idw wrote:

Route – For the time of year it was this was ideal for me, 55m fairly flat, with a little sting in the tail.

I agree with you I thought that the route was perfect for the time of year

idw wrote:

Food after – I didn’t hang around for any of the food, I tend to take my own recovery drinks. Free coffee would have been a good idea for people that wanted it though, but I don’t think I’ve ridden a sportive which has offered free food at the end, and considering I rode ten or so last year, I wasn’t surprised to hear there was a cost. Even reliability’s I’ve done this year have a few cakes/biscuits and coffee available.

As I've already mentioned every sportive i've ever ridden entitled you to free food and drink after the event. If the MMH can manage to give you a bacon butty and free drinks for a tenner what is Tony spending the £25 on to not even be able to give free hot drinks.

idw wrote:

I am also planning on riding the Tour of the Peak District and I don’t think people should judge the organiser based on this thread, ride one and see for yourself!

I think the organiser should be judged by this thread. We put our concerns and gripes on here about the ride and he then decided to dish out personal insults and accuse me of stealing. If you walked into a shop and bought something which you then criticised and the owner started giving you a load of verbal would you go to that shop again? No you wouldn't. You would also not recommend the shop to friends and acquaintances etc... That is all we have done here.
I think the fact that Tony has removed all the posts in which he made the insults proves that he is in the wrong. Funnily I'm still waiting for some kind of apology from him :roll:

If your happy to waste £25 of your money riding a ride organised by Torelli sports then that's your prerogative. There are much better sportives out there. When you find one you'll understand where we're coming from.

pprince

£25 entry * 640 riders = £16000

:shock:

thats a BIG profit

Velonutter

pprince wrote:

£25 entry * 640 riders = £16000

:shock:

thats a BIG profit

Yep Tony's email to me indicates that it is all done for Charity :roll:

pprince

Slow-N-Old wrote:

pprince wrote:

£25 entry * 640 riders = £16000

:shock:

thats a BIG profit

Yep Tony's email to me indicates that it is all done for Charity :roll:

which one?

cjw

http://www.torelli.co.uk/news_more.asp?news_id=58

Land of Smiles.

Velonutter

pprince wrote:

Slow-N-Old wrote:

pprince wrote:

£25 entry * 640 riders = £16000

:shock:

thats a BIG profit

Yep Tony's email to me indicates that it is all done for Charity :roll:

which one?

Hi Paul, Tony sent me an email replying to my questions about this years Jodrell, but in it he claimed that it was all done for Charity!

fungus_the_muffin_man

pprince wrote:

£25 entry * 640 riders = £16000

:shock:

thats a BIG profit

If only you had a bigger carpark

So bearing in mind his event was twice the size of yours. Over twice the price of yours and he still couldn't organise a free bite to eat and tea/coffee. ( well actually its not free as we'd have already paid for it)

It was then £1 per drink I think. My small portion of curry and rice was £2.40. God knows what he was charging for the tinned spam muffin which was the other alternative. He was probably looking at another grand profit from the food as well.

pprince

the charity did well out of it then I hope

fungus_the_muffin_man

pprince wrote:

Slow-N-Old wrote:

pprince wrote:

£25 entry * 640 riders = £16000

:shock:

thats a BIG profit

Yep Tony's email to me indicates that it is all done for Charity :roll:

which one?

Its called land of smiles and it's for thai kids who have been orphaned following the tsunami a few years back.

Ands

pprince wrote:

the charity did well out of it then I hope

I'm pretty sure the website said that donations to the charity could be made at the end of the event. Or did I imagine this (as it doesn't say it anymore!)

pprince

GOD charges a fortune for the weather and you have to book it 6 months in advance! :P

fungus_the_muffin_man

pprince wrote:

GOD charges a fortune for the weather and you have to book it 6 months in advance! :P

You must've had to pay extra for yours then to get it that sunny all day long

cjw

Ah but he didn't pay the morning ice clearance surchrge did he

fungus_the_muffin_man

MMH = FAIL

And he was doing so well

Velonutter

Anybody in any doubt about the Jodrell event should read this: -

http://cyclosport.org/article.aspx?id=1336

Ands

Slow-N-Old wrote:

Yep Tony's email to me indicates that it is all done for Charity :roll:

The website states that it is NOT a charity bike ride:

Although this is not primarily a charity bike ride we do support a charity called Land of Smiles. The charity is an orphange in Thailand set up after the tsunami
hit the country in 2004. It looks after children who lost their families in the disaster. If you have had a good day and enjoyed the event please make a donation to the charity in one of the collection boxes in registration.
http://www.torelli.co.uk/news_more.asp?news_id=65

idw

Slow-N-Old wrote:

Anybody in any doubt about the Jodrell event should read this: -

http://cyclosport.org/article.aspx?id=1336

And in the interests of fairness you can also read (not me btw)

http://www.cyclosport.org/members/myBlog.aspx?mid=8913

zanes

I've been following this thread with some interest, as I'm involved in the organisation/running of an event (not cycling, but still sport). Some observations (obviously I don't implicitly understand costs involved, but I can give a few ideas)

People seem to be upset about paying for food/drink at the finish. The cost to organisers (assuming they've got the kit in in the first place to cook) for a freebie is peanuts. Taking bacon baps for example, we cost them at <50p a piece everything thrown in, buying from supermarkets.

Things go wrong in events. Fact of life. Toilets block, markers disappear, parking descends into chaos. As an organiser/worker you damn well do your best to sort it, especially when people have paid that sort of money to be there. At £6 an entry (what we charge iirc) we do our best to sort this stuff out (as any body would imho). People generally understand this, which brings us on to my next point;

Even if someone's (customer or not) kicking off in your face, the last thing you do is enter into a slanging match/insult/accuse them. Ever. If I or any one else connnected to our event wrote some of the stuff I've seen here we'd expect to have our affiliation (ergo, license to run the event) revoked. Plus the fact, it's just NOT the done thing.

Surely this is all basic stuff?

dead sheep

Ride an audax - it is a lot less trouble

TomF

TomF wrote:

jodrell bank - isn't that rhyming slang for.........

Judging by the proposed route, I should consider that a complment....

Oh dear, judging by the comments on the several pages above, looks like I was proved right..!

I was out on a club ride that day, and saw many of you about. No wonder you all looked so grim faced, Maybe you should have joined us....

Anonymous

There's still signs up in Knutsford town centre.

TomF

NapoleonD wrote:

There's still signs up in Knutsford town centre.

"Empty your wallets this way"?

Slow1972

"Featured Charity" = "we promote the charity but don't give them anything, you the entrants make donations"

The profit from this went in one direction, straight into "Mr customer service" Tony's pocket. He's running it as a business, why else do you think he charged you £25 to ride public roads and then ran it on an absolute shoestring. Cost per head? £5 max I reckon. 640 x £20 = £12,800. Would have to print a lot of Bidons to make that sort of money eh Torelli?

Glad I kept my money in my pocket and went for a free ride in Cheshire that day.

dulldave

Was going to drive down to this from Scotland. Ended up doing a race instead. Pretty glad I did now.