Warren has sent out these ideas for classes for next years Championship rounds. Here's your chance to have a say, just click on the comments tag and let us know what you think.

Hi All 

Championship Grades 

During the Trials workshop held recently at the MNZ AGM in Nelson I had an item for discussion regarding Championship Grades. The Item was discussing the possibility of changing some of our existing support grades to receive full Championship Status. 

To achieve this we all need to come up with a sensible/workable structure that recognises true Champions in both age and ability classes. I then need to present it to the MNZ board for their approval or not and generally will act on the recommendation from me unless it goes against the MNZ constitution or policy.  

The simple option would be to just issue all existing grades as full Championship Grades with the exception of Social Grade. But with a little discussion we came up with a proposal that although a little different from our current Classes it could work well.  

For some time now there has been discussion about the need in NZ for a Masters class as they do in Australia. This is for 35 years + riding the Yellow (Intermediate) line. There was full support at the meeting for this class to be installed and felt that the positives for it out way any negative reaction that it might have on the existing Intermediate Grade. All riders who make this age group are automatically put into the Masters class and removed from Intermediate. The feeling was that we needed to have a separate grade to cater for those older riders who are either coming back down from the A Grade and those experienced riders in Intermediate to have a good class to compete amongst themselves in. This then leaves all the up and coming younger riders to fight it out for a title with out the others getting mixed up in it. 

So with that in mind it was decided that this grade would be given the full Championship status over the Presidents as this is the higher class of rider in the same age group category.  

So we have seven Classes with the following titles: 

New Zealand Expert Champion

New Zealand Masters Champion

New Zealand Junior Champion 

National A Grade Champion

National Intermediate Champion

National Clubman Champion

National President Champion 

The three NZ Champ classes represent the very best in ability at the top level and each of the two age groups. Then the four National titles represent all other grades. 

It was thought that the top three grades get full Championship status as they do now and the other four could be recognised at a lower level, basically receiving MNZ certificates but not Medals.  

So now the question is what do you think of this format? Do you want a Masters grade? Should we give all seven classes’ full recognition? (I am sure MNZ would supply another 4 medals each year).  

We also briefly discussed that in the future if (and hopefully we will) we get to a situation of having good junior numbers coming through the ranks from Junior into Intermediate that we would shift the Junior Championship to this level where it recognises the achievements of these better riders and the Blue line riders would become Youth riders who are just beginning in the sport. Obviously as I said we cannot do this yet until we get better numbers for these grades so it was decided to keep Junior as it is at the moment.  

Unfortunately we did not discuss the current trial under way in the North Island with the Presidents riding one Yellow gate per section. I think at this point we will continue this system if the organising club wishes to run with it and we will all need to make a call on it later in the year for next year. This is almost a whole different topic and will leave it at that for now. 

Please as usual pass this around and send back any comments to me for evaluation. 

CheersWarren