SSWC2006
IMPORTANT NEWS! from the Surly blog. Reprinted in its entirety and without their permission:
Friday, January 06, 2006
SSWC2006
For those of you paying attention to where Single Speed World Championships is going to be held next year, here is some information. It was decided at SSWC2005 that the last person still riding in the derby was allowed to choose where it would be the following year. Skip Bernet and myself were the last riding in 2 of 3 rounds, so we got to choose. Although this was an honor and it seemed like a smashing idea at first, it turned out to be a tough position to be in. For any future SSWC event planners, I wouldn’t recommend having this rule this again. What I would recommend is that more of you sacrifice body and bike at SSWC2006 to make the worlds largest bike derby. Now that will be smashing.
We asked for proposals from everybody and anybody around the world that was serious about hosting SSWC2006 and had the trails, manpower and creativity to make it happen. For the record, we got 16 such proposals. Most of them were serious, a couple of them worthless, and 6 of them were good enough to make this a very difficult decision. The research most of these people did to find out if their town was ready for this was incredible and I commend all of them for stepping up and committing themselves.
This decision was made with all of you in mind and it was not taken lightly. We asked the 6 best potential hosts some stupid open ended questions like, “what would Jacquie Phelan do?” and “when drinking beer from a glass cowboy boot, toe up or toe down?” just to get an idea of who these people were. We also asked more serious questions like “how car-free can this event be?” and to “describe your ideal mountain bike course”.
I won’t divulge all their answers to these questions, but I want you all to know when drinking beer from a glass cowboy boot, you need to drink with the toe down. Otherwise you get an air bubble caught in bottom of the glass and it’ll splash beer in your face when you tilt the glass upright. All but one of you got this wrong, I’m ashamed. What does this have to do with SSWC? Who cares, I’m asking the questions and was just curious.
What happened to New Zealand? The folks from New Zealand basically told me they weren’t organized for the event and to be careful with our decision. It’s really a shame, because we all wanted to go there.
But is it really a shame when you have single speeders in Stockholm, Sweden? Singlespeeders that boast excellent trails, sound fairly organized (like it or not), understand we all just want to show up and ride, and have the manpower to make this thing rock? How cool would that be?
These folks have been behind Sweden SS champs in 2003 and 2004. They’ve “masterminded” an event called Tour de Retard, which was a 100km fixed/SS stage race to celebrate the old Tour de France days. They’re also involved in the local freeride scene and ran an e-zine for about 4 years. They’re well connected within the local bike industry, the local urban life and have trails within riding distance from most of the hotels/hostels/campsites in town. These folks understand the importance of beer, heckling and donuts along the course. They also understand the importance of this being a truly international event, making fair registration for equal representation from all countries. They left us with no doubt that this will rock.
Stockholm is the capital of Sweden and it’s a very bike friendly city. There are bike lanes established throughout the city and it’s easy to get around. We’ve been assured that if you’re a singletrack hound, you will not be disappointed with the local dirt trails.
So that’s it, some fine folks from Stockholm, Sweden are hosting SSWC2006 and you can start planning for it now. Since this is their event to host, it is completely up to them to decide dates, the course, beer sponsors, “other” events, website, registration, beer sponsors, where to stay, how the champions will be decided, beer sponsors, etc. Once we know more about their plans, we’ll post them here. Holy shit is this going to be fun.
And please don't forget the Category 6 MOUSTACHE RIDE
Cranky on 01.11.06 @ 04:58 PM PST [link]
