Audax Australia Cycling Club Inc.
Annual General Meeting 23rd January, 2016
President’s Report
Membership
As of January 18th the club had a total membership of 1209, up from 1134 at the same time last year.
The club still remains male dominated, with 235 female members, up from 214 in the previous year.
The membership includes 904 individual memberships, 295 family and 10 life memberships. 353
members have afforded themselves a discount by taking out a multi-year membership.
The average age of members is 52 (standard deviation 13.75). The age of membership continues to
increase and this is particularly showing in our volunteer community where a number of volunteers
have regretfully indicated that they will no longer be making themselves available as volunteers and
citing age as one of the reasons.
I’d be remiss in not again thanking Lorraine Allen for her extremely long period of service as the
club’s Membership Secretary. Lorraine has passed the mantle to Rodney Kruz who I am confident
will take on the role with the same enthusiasm and gusto he has applied to the Brevet Editor role.
Region
VIC
NSW
QLD
WA
SA
ACT
TAS
Other
Total
#Members % of Total
549
45.41%
354
29.28%
117
9.68%
77
6.37%
41
3.39%
37
3.06%
23
1.90%
11
0.91%
1209
# Members
(previous Year)
512
319
108
76
45
41
21
12
1134
% of Total
45.15%
28.13%
9.52%
6.70%
3.97%
3.62%
1.85%
1.06%
Jim Chant
This character has left a big impact on so many people across the club, and there has been a
profound sense of shock and loss experienced by many. Jim loved the cycling and the company of
fellow Audaxers. Marie remains in our thoughts.
Checkpoint
I think Checkpoint Magazine now looks the best it ever has, and the addition of more full colour
pages has helped. Trevor Gosbell continues to do an amazing job as the Editor. Checkpoint is going
through a change as social media impacts on how we share the stories of our rides. Checkpoint
remains dependent upon the contribution of members for content so please consider sharing more
than a 160-character tweet and write a piece for the magazine that might be shared in difference
circles than twitter and facebook.
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Audax Australia Cycling Club AGM 2016
President’s Report
Thanks to Trevor for the work. Matthew Rawnsley will be taking on the role as Brevet Editor as
Rodney moves to Membership Secretary. I look forward to seeing Matthew’s work in the coming
editions, and thank Rodney for always providing the most interesting sorting of names.
Systems
The new membership system has been rolled out. This greatly reduces the load of the Membership
Secretary, particularly with family memberships. The new system provides a login and password for
all our members and is the cornerstone for future development.
With the assistance and support of Peter Donnan the Brevet Processing system was overhauld so
that we now record all brevets in a central database. As part of this update we also implemented
email notification of homologation numbers. This is a start to applying some automation to the
administration of brevets to hopefully reduce future administration work.
Work has commenced on a rider registration system with a test being run during the rides preceding
the Alpine Classic. Automatic RORT creation from the registration system is also developed.
Risk and Safety
The lighting debate which started on the e-mail list progressed beyond just lighting to the whole of
risk and safety management. Thanks to Peter Jenkins for writing up a proposal and to Kerri-Ann
Smith who kicked off a risk matrix and register. There’s much work to be done in this space and it is
not just a question of what our lighting rules are and who enforces them.
Rides
There were 5,253 brevets issued in the season, compared with 5,140 in the season pre-PBP’11.
1,067,840km ridden compared with 1,014,390km pre-PBP’11. The 78 PBP’15 riders accounted for
25% of the total distance ridden. PBP’15 also saw our highest female participation rate with 8 female
riders. Thanks to Peter Moore for leading the PBP Committee – it was setup late and Peter did a
sterling job playing catchup to get us back on schedule.
The top 10 rides by number of brevets were:







AAC (Collected rides)
Fitz’s Challenge
Newcastle Overnight
Fleche Opperman
Wandong Winter Wander
Gippsland Gold (mixed terrain)
Jump the Gun
The data starts looking very interesting when you consider the number of actual Audax club
members riding these events and the relative workload for volunteers to run them. I’d suggest
consideration should be given to how we support more “small but larger” events which attract good
numbers of member riders but don’t require the resources of an AAC or Fitz’s to run.
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Audax Australia Cycling Club AGM 2016
President’s Report
Top 10 Rides by Number of Homologations
Rider Region
Ride
ACT
NSW
Audax Alpine Classic
5
ACE 250
Fitz's Epic
QLD
SA
N/A1
Total
%2
25
2
3
79
938
1052
20.1%
1
18
2
17
128
166
3.2%
5
10
1
147
163
3.1%
129
137
2.6%
32
129
2.5%
22
66
98
1.9%
3
47
56
1.1%
Wandong Winter Wander
46
4
50
1.0%
Gippsland Gold - Mixed Terrain Randonnee
13
36
49
0.9%
Newcastle Overnight
TAS
VIC
WA
8
Fleche Opperman
3
31
Ultimate 320
2
5
Fitz's Extreme 250
Other
1
10
4
3
6
2
39
7
Jump the Gun
1
33
10
44
0.8%
N/A indicates rider is not an Audax Australia member. 2 % Represents the percentage of the total number of
homologations this ride represents.
1
On behalf of the riders I pass on my thanks to all the ride organisers who deliver the “product” of the
club. The calendar coordinators doing a magnificent job of pulling together a year of rides which
considers qualification requirements and liaise with Wayne Hazelton to ensure we have a national
calendar.
Completed rides get recognition which again takes volunteers. Thanks to Peter Donnan for taking on
the International Brevet Secretary role and for leading our regional, permanents, brevet Australia
and Brevet Dirt secretaries. Also thanks to Mark Lloyd for coordinating the awards processes.
Alpine Classic
The 30th year of the Alpine Classic is what enables us all to be together in one place for the AGM. It’s
a big event, and a number of key volunteers have expressed their desire to step down. For the AAC
to continue we need to find new team captains, and also new ride directors to learn from the
current team. To keep the AAC running will be a challenge, and the club needs to really consider if
this is what we want to do. If it is then we need to commit, and that means feet on the ground,
people who are ready to take on roles. It’s not enough to think it’s a good idea to have an event such
as AAC, good will doesn’t get it organised.
The AAC rides represent 25% of our total homologations so the future needs to be planned,
whatever it should be.
A massive thanks to Leigh, Val and Phil for work in the directorship. Too many volunteers across so
many areas, but I’d like to single out Peter Curtis and Martin Haynes for mention, without wanting to
diminish anyone’s contribution.
My final thanks are to the National and Regional Committees who give up their time to ensure the
club runs effectively. In the end we just want to ride our bikes, and these people make the time on
the bike so much better.
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