Some comments from your Rallymaster
It was in Cornwall during the 2016 BBR that the 2017 Rally was born. Early on Sunday morning I found myself riding down a precipitous hill to a point above a harbour where the GPS said stop, “you have arrived at your destination”. I looked at the rally book and the bonus picture perfectly matched the one I was looking at on my camera. Click, job done, points in the bag, move on, to the next perfect match, and the next, and so on. In the planning all you had to do was join the dots, in the riding it was just follow the arrow on the screen. To me the sense of achievement had been diluted, it was a world away from my first rally, the 1999 Iron Butt, when there was no fancy electronic guide to show you which way to go. All you had was a paper map folded up and stuffed into the viewing panel of the tank bag, and the necessity of having to search around once you got within the vicinity of the bonus location. Then, once you were certain you had found it, you would pull your bulky polaroid camera out of the top box and take a picture with its fixed focus fixed aperture lens. Once it had ejected the print you waved it around a bit and waited for it to develop. When you were sure that the evidence was presentable to the scorer, then, and only then, you put it somewhere safe, ticked it off of your route sheet and headed off towards the next bonus.
Now, I’m not going to get all misty eyed and say things were better then, because in many ways they were not. Maps will get you there, and of course you need to know how to read them, but having to keep taking your eye off the road to glance at where you are is just plain dangerous. This led me to thinking how I could give the 2017 rally a more retro feel, but without confiscating everyone’s GPS at the start of the rally.
I can’t remember exactly how I tripped over the ‘Y’ concept, but the points doubling came fairly soon afterwards. I did however see a problem for the counties with just one bonus location, who would visit them for a single point? Hence the multiplier was born, it brought every location into play. As I indicated on the first slide at the rally briefing, the requirement to search around to find evidence of the village name was my homage to the 1999 Iron Butt Rally, old style bonuses with new style mapping and photographic equipment.
As a rider I always find the briefing, and the revelation of the challenge, the most exciting part of the rally. After that there is the routine sequence of confusion, worry and panic, followed by contemplation, enlightenment and mild confidence once you think that you have broken the code and solved the equation. As a rallymaster what you want to do is present a challenge that if you were riding it, you would like to solve. The one that I presented was; from the list of ‘Y’ locations in the rally book the rider needed to build points from the towns and villages, whilst at the same time accumulating multipliers from the counties they were located within. The complex mathematical formulae that needed to be mastered were as follows: adding some numbers then multiplying them. About three months before the start I tested out the concept and scoring method with Nobel prizewinning mathematician Professor Sir Phillip Weston. He got it.
The solution to this rally was, as it almost always is, ride the big points. Bag the towns and villages in the counties with five, six or seven bonuses, then pick up as many multipliers from the low scoring counties in between. Add this to the very generous sleep bonus being offered and a five figure score was achievable. Please note, apart from the addition and multiplication, this was a very simple rally. No fuel log was required, there was no call in bonus, there were no special instructions to follow (bike in picture, time limited bonuses, rider in picture, receipt required, time of day, daytime only, etc), nobody had to ride around with a balloon between their knees or go shopping, and there was no late twist at 5:55 on the morning of the ride. There were one hundred and eleven bonus locations, all available at any time, and there was just one special instruction, name of village and rally flag to be CLEARLY VISIBLE in each photo’.
Now before anyone thinks that I am beyond criticism, I’m not. I fully accept that some things were wrong, and, as my own worst critic I would give myself just 7/10; good in parts, can do better. Some of the villages did not have any signs anywhere, and despite what I thought were fairly clear instructions, some riders, a week after the rally has finished still remain confused with the scoring format. I have to take responsibility for that. However, I believe that it was correct to try and do something a little different. Over the years old riders have had to learn new tricks, consequently I saw nothing wrong in asking new riders to learn old tricks. And with those words still ringing in your ears, could all of you contemplating doing next year’s rally please get yourself familiar with advanced calculus, differential equations and algebraic fractions before the 2018 briefing, I’m already working on the next rally.
I can’t end without thanking everyone who helped out with the organisation, the riders for wanting to do this, and of course congratulating the winner, Robert Koeber. I know that you didn’t like the format Robert, but you beat my winning score estimate by some 3000 points, there must be re-entry scorch marks on the side of that Pan European.
One final point. The rookies I spoke to all seemed quite happy with the format, they had never done a rally before hence they were quite open minded, and the pillions also unanimously approved of it. One happily told me that for them it was great, they had something to do when they entered the village.
Steve