Hong Kong Mountain Bike Association

Rant time...

So, today I had the pleasure of showing two fine overseas riders HK's Mountain Bike trails, pride of place I hoped would be the new Tsin Fu Tsai North Trail in Tai Lam Country Park, and it almost was...

We start the climb up to the lookout only to find the road absolutely littered with, count them...25 gel wrappers from the previous days MTB race!! Most of which we picked up I might add.

Sorry but race or no race pick your god damned trash up, riders like you bring absolute shame on all the MTB community as a whole, this is inexcusable.

Perhaps both the participants, race teams and HKCA organisers would like to comment through these forums both in Chinese and English as to why this was allowed to happen.

HKCA rubbished Lamma when they last held a race on Proj-X. I documented every piece collected and we complained. I would back banning them from holding events in country parks or on public lands until they learn to clean up their act.

tom wrote:
Hear hear! *cough off with their 'eads! cough*

I would aim lower.

Priority here is that rider attitude has to change, with HKCA it's almost a foregone conclusion that they're not going to take responsibility. This is a short course and it wouldn't have taken more than a few minutes for participants to head out after the race and picked up all that crap!

A short announcement after the race may have done the trick. Or am I expecting too much...?

I would say the onus is event organizer to leave the site and course in the same condition (rubbish wise) that they found it. How they achieve this is up to them. In this case the event organizer is actually receiving subvention from the HK govt to put race on so its a double hit. HKCA know MTB already has a poor perception problem (which hinders the growth of the trail network) and then allow their competitors to rubbish HK countryside..

On top of this Gel packs are so poorly designed that when you tear the tab off the little piece it bound to go flying -- and I think most use their teeth then spit the plastic out. And when done riders may stuff the waste in their pockets but then this inadvertently go flying away as well. I think gel packs should be banned from races and any rider caught with one should face immediate disqualification. Its a tough stance to take but I am sick of finding those shiny Gu packs even years after the fact...

That's terrible.

I've repost this incident onto a local forum seeking for feedback or comment.

*bump*

It seems cycling.org.hk will be visiting Tai Lam CP to hold various rounds of the HKG MTB championships soon. From the Chinese events calendar (as the English one is very dead):

www.cycling.org.hk/node/22

Round #1 (30th Sep. 2012) and round #3 (25th Nov. 2012) will be at the Tin Fu Tsai North Section (New Trail).

Round #5 (20th Jan. 2013) is at the rather ambiguous "Tai Mo Shan, Ho Pui".