Without going into too much detail about an incident that occured, I want to find out how CSA deems someone competent to work at school races?
A short overview of what occured today. My 6 year old son crashed on the practice lap of a schools race today. Another kid crashed at the same exact spot 30 seconds after him. As a parent the first thought was that the time we put in the get him ready to race was not enough (about 2 hours a week for a sub nipper).
The part of the track in question is a double ramp with about a 2m section in between, with a small hump at either end. Most of the younger kids didn't have enough speed to clear it, but also didn't have the judgement to know that they will get airbourne carrying even low speed into the ramp. .
Upon arriving at the medic tent we had to wait in the queue because there were already a number of kids injured, likely from the same spot on the course. This was still during practice.
After his cleanup I took my boy for a walk to find out if he is OK and still wanted to race later on. I briefly went back to see how a family member was diong in the nipper race that was the first race for the day. During this race about 1 in 4 of the kids either crashed or nearly lost contol at the exact same spot. Some lost control when their hands or feet slipped off after landing, and one boy went over his handlebars and landed face first.
Gathering courage to go to one of the CSA Commisairres to try and convince them that I know enough to know when something is a serious issue was quite difficult. I did it as they were lining up the nipper girls for the race. This exchange started off politely, but I soon realized that my concern will be ignored, and I was told to ask our team manager to warn the kids of this dangerous spot. My last words were that if someone gets seriously hurt in the next couple of minutes I did warn you. One thing I realized is that this person hasn't spent enough time observing small kids in a race environment to realize that if a number of them crash at the same spot then something needs to be done and all the so called track checks they did is useless!
The medics also didn't raise alarm that there might be an issue because of a number of kids getting hurt (surely more than usual).
After telling my son we are going home before his race, he promised that he will go slow over this specific section of the track. I agreed and we took him to line up as the nipper girls got underway and sub nipper boys were being loaded into the pen. While standing with him at the pen, I looked to the specific part of the track hoping to see no injured kids to convince myself that him racing is OK. Unfortunately what I saw was exactly the opposite...
I approached the same person again and made him aware that what I warned him about just became a reality. This was hopefully when they realized there is an issue. After this another commissaire proceeded to warn the sub nippers to only do the jumps if they are comfortable! How on earth do they think that 6 and 7 year olds have that type judgment to know that when they go at the speed they feel comfortable with that they might or might not land a jump that they didn't expect. Fortunately the person I approached acted at that point and steps were taken to address the problem.
I hope that all the injuries heal up soon. I know we can't protect the kids from everything, but here we failed.
