2024 Grant Application: Woodstock Area Mountain Bike Association Event Hosting Grant

Woodstock Area Mountain Bike Association Event Hosting Grant

Requesting funding to support the infrastructural needs to host the 2024 Maxxis Eastern States Cup enduro mountain biking race, a touring New England race series, which brings over 300 riders and their families to mountain communities for a weekend festival of racing and riding.

$9,925

$3,500

Woodstock Area Mountain Bike Association

PO Box 291 Woodstock VT 05091

Mark Harris

mark.wells.harris@gmail.com

6,176,100,284

http://mtbwoodstock.com

81-1302062

The Woodstock Area Mountain Bike Association’s mission is to build, maintain, and preserve trails for non-motorized public recreation in the Woodstock area. As a member-driven, local non-profit, our organization works with landowners, public officials, and other stakeholders to provide the community with enduring access to sustainable trail networks and collective opportunities to experience them. Through our efforts, we hope to enhance community health, promote economic development, and foster a lifelong passion among our trail users to protect and enjoy our regions’ magnificent natural landscapes.

55,000

The Woodstock Area Mountain Bike Association (WAMBA) has partnered with the Maxxis Eastern States Cup to bring the top enduro bike riders in New England to Woodstock for our 3rd annual weekend riding festival in Woodstock and Pomfret. This year’s race will take place on September 7 and 8, 2024. More than 300 registered riders (including at least 75 aged 16 or younger) will descend on our area for a weekend riding festival. Arrival begins on Friday evening, with racers either camping at S6 or staying locally in our hotels and short-term rental homes. Saturday will serve as a practice day for racers to familiarize themselves with the five segments of the race across Mt. Peg and Saskadena Six, then spend the remainder of the day experiencing our Woodstock Community. On Sunday race day, riders begin competition at 8 a.m. and ride throughout the day with a culminating festival and awards ceremony held at S6. The most "Woodstock" aspect of this race is that racers will taxi themselves by bike from S6 to Mt. Peg with a trip across the Middle Covered Bridge. This is a community-forward race unlike any others on the ESC circuit (which take place mostly at large ski resorts). This event brings great attention to Woodstock and Pomfret as an elite mountain biking destination. It takes an incredible volunteer effort in the weeks leading up to the race and throughout the entire race weekend. In addition to the reputational boost to our community and trails, we receive support from race participants in the form of donations and WAMBA paid memberships.

This year's race has moved up in the Fall calendar to Sept 7-8. Last year's race was the second weekend in October. This change will avoid the peak foliage challenges our community faces, as well as distance itself from the Vermont Youth Cycling Race and Vermont Mountain Biking Association festivals that will each take place Sept 21-22. The most important aspect of timelines is to have our trails in their best possible condition by racing weekend. Fortunately, trail maintenance is our primary work as an organization. The race forces WAMBA to bring the trails along our five race stages to their absolute best condition for the weekend. Based on the work of the previous two years, our Trail Crew estimates roughly 175 hours of paid labor specific to race preparations. This includes smoothing, berming, addressing drainage issues, and taping and untaping the race course. In addition to hosting an elite MTB race with a first-class course, our community receives the benefit of this work after the fact.

We are confident we will once again host an incredible festival of mountain biking! This year, our true success is going to come from carefully managing our expenses, particularly in our trail crew time, and creating new revenue/sponsorship opportunities for revenue for WAMBA and for our partners. For example, we will work with the Mt. Tom Farmers Market to be better prepared to share the S6 parking lot on race weekend. Their vendors will be ready to feed a parking lot filled with race campers on Saturday morning. We will also recruit new Local Partners who can feed racers on-site or off, which creates incremental value in our Local Partners program. Last year, the EPIC Food Truck from Claremont sold out of all inventory before Noon. This year, we'll have more partners lined up and ready to support this weekend. We will offer a Woodstock weekend guide to all campers at check-in, and provide the contact information for our lodging partners to the ESC for inclusion with their registration materials. We intend to fully utilize the ESC race as a marketing opportunity for all of the businesses that support WAMBA. NOTE: The ESC Race brings its own sponsors to the weekend, which prevents us from hosting a traditional event sponsorship model.

Confirmed

While our costs are reasonably similar to last year, we are asking the EDC for a lesser grant amount than last year as we wind down our requests of the Woodstock community (EDC) to support this event and approach a self-sustaining model which can absorb the full expense of the race and still be profitable enough to justify the incredible amount of volunteer hours required to host.

This race has become a signature event for WAMBA and our Board fully supports it for the benefits it brings to our organization. These benefits include revenue, new members, social media followers, and an increase in Woodstock's reputation as a premier mountain biking destination in New England. Additionally, this race is only possible with the support of the Woodstock Inn and its staff, who allow WAMBA to host this event on their grounds.

We estimate that it takes no fewer than 300 volunteer hours to host this event successfully. Community members serve as course marshals, prepare and serve food and drink at the racer refueling station, and host camping and parking efforts at S6.