Copyright 2003, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

FIRST PERSON/OPINION

By John Ulrich

This is my personal opinion, as an individual.

On Monday, Roadracingworld.com posted an opinion piece by Trudy C. Ulrich, President and Publisher, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

And yeah, I’m married to her, and, yeah, she has a son, Chris, who races. I met her in a college copy-editing class, and Trudy has been involved in motorcycle road racing over the last 27 years, doing everything from driving a box van full of bikes and equipment (and toddlers) cross-country to racetracks, to scoring endurance races, to handling the books for a race team, to retrieving injured racers from hospitals. Over the years, she has heard plenty of complaints about how AMA Pro Racing does business, from racers she interacts with on a daily basis, and she is a card-carrying AMA member. Since it went into business 13 years ago, she has handled the business side of Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Last year, she handled the establishment of the Roadracing World Action Fund, Inc., a non-profit, tax-exempt corporation designed to promote the use of soft barriers at racetracks through educational programs, including demonstration deployments. During the process of getting non-profit, tax-exempt status for the Roadracing World Action Fund, she learned that a non-profit cannot transfer any of its assets to a for-profit company if doing so will give the for-profit company a competitive advantage.

She quickly formed the personal opinion that AMA non-profit had given AMA Pro Racing, its for-profit subsidiary, a competitive advantage in the race promotion and race sanctioning marketplace by transferring AMA non-profit assets to AMA Pro Racing, a company which has lost money every year during the decade it has existed, not only in the form of annual operating deficits, but also in the form of money paid to defend and ultimately settle a lawsuit related to AMA Pro Racing’s business activities. One estimate of the amount of money AMA Pro Racing has cost AMA non-profit since its founding is $8 million. In theory, the way AMA Pro Racing advocates tell the tale, AMA Pro Racing was supposed to make money to support AMA non-profit’s important activities, including government relations. In actual fact, the money AMA non-profit has spent shoring up AMA Pro Racing and paying for its legal miscues could have paid for a lot of government relations activities.

At any rate, since forming her opinion, Trudy has written three versions of the editorial which was finally published earlier this week. The first version was written about six months ago. The second was written about three weeks ago. And she finished the final version last week.

For months, I have been telling her that posting her editorial opinion would bring accusations that she was fronting for me, that I had written the piece and was hiding behind her byline. I have told her that because I currently hold an elected seat on the AMA non-profit Board of Directors, posting her editorial would bring criticism from AMA Pro Racing supporters on the AMA non-profit Board.

However, Roadracingworld.com frequently posts opinion pieces written by not only staff members but also readers. Ultimately, she has as much right to express her opinion on a website she owns as anybody does. And so the piece was posted.

As I predicted, the criticism has been swift in coming. Proponents of AMA Pro Racing have accused me of writing Trudy’s editorial, and of hiding behind her byline. They have called her personal opinion lies, and have accused me of being a liar. They have accused me of seeking (how, I do not know) personal profit by running Trudy’s editorial.

Let me point out right here that nobody who is seeking personal profit would spend the kind of time and money I have—we have—on funding the majority of the inflatable soft barriers currently in use at road races in this country.

And let me say that while I did not write Trudy’s editorial, and while I do not personally agree with everything she says in that editorial, I do agree with about 90 percent of it. I think she makes very valid points, and I think that AMA Pro Racing is a freewheeling cancer that continues to eat away at AMA non-profit’s money, reputation and good will. AMA Pro Racing operations—the stuff AMA members encounter at the races and when trying to deal with headquarters staff—are a disgrace. The lack of accountability—from top to bottom—is appalling. In its interactions with what its advocates like to call “stakeholders,” AMA Pro Racing operates as a continuing, non-stop drama, with the biggest recent example involving renewal negotiations with AMA National Motocross Promoters.

And as seen again in this case, AMA Pro Racing’s instant, predictable reaction to any criticism is, A. It’s a lie; B. You can’t believe (insert name of critic here), he’s just seeking personal gain; C. It never happened; D. We didn’t do it.

Officiating is inconsistent, with a few examples following: Billy Joe Bob (a made-up name representing the majority of non-factory riders in the paddock) gets fined $100 for running down pit lane at 52 mph instead of 50 mph (and never mind that the radar speed display placed at the head of pit lane to allow riders to judge their speed often does not pick up and display the speed of approaching bikes), while Miguel Duhamel gets fined nothing for throwing rocks on an active racetrack. Chuck Chounaird gets completely thrown out of an AMA National for having valves that were cleaned using Scotchbrite; factory riders get fined money and points but keep their finishing position for such offenses as illegal cylinder head machining; non-stock, low-pressure oil pumps; and being underweight. Half the 250cc Grand Prix field was sent home for not getting within 112% of pole the first time timed qualifying was used for the class—never mind that most of practice had been rained out—at Fontana last year, with AMA Pro Racing taking the position that allowing riders who had not properly qualified, to race, presented a liability problem. Yet this year at Barber, riders who failed to make the cut in qualifying were allowed to race, with no explanation of what happened to that liability problem. Which way is it?

The claim that “stakeholders” will be allowed to comment on new rules is a sham; facing complaints that they recently enacted a new rule on short notice without allowing any comment, AMA Pro Racing first claimed that they didn’t have to allow comment because it wasn’t a rule, it was a regulation (look up those two words in a dictionary), then, facing the obvious complaint that a rule is a regulation and vice versa, claimed that they didn’t have to allow comment on operational rules, only on technical rules. Which isn’t what they said when they announced their new policy of allowing comment on proposed new rules.

Almost a year ago, the Board of Directors of AMA non-profit, acting as the shareholders of AMA Pro Racing, ordered AMA Pro Racing to improve operations by hiring a new operations chief by the end of the first quarter of 2003. We’re now in the fourth quarter, and the same guys are making the same mess of operations.

There have been some improvements. Timing and scoring is less screwed up—because the timing and scoring crew shows up earlier, an idea it took two years to get AMA Pro Racing to accept–and the system is usually working when official practice starts, and we just won’t talk about the guys who for some reason weren’t timed in qualifying sessions at a recent race.

But overall, AMA Pro Racing is far from what it should be, and it remains a drain on AMA non-profit in terms of money, prestige, reputation and staff time. It will continue to be a drain on AMA non-profit as long as it is managed the way it is managed now, and as long as its core group of entrenched bureaucrats remains in place, insulated and protected by a separate AMA Pro Racing Board of Directors that is not accountable to AMA members.

That’s what I think, and I’m not hiding my opinion.



See related post:

10/13/2003 Opinion: Time To End Misappropriation Of AMA Non-profit Assets by Dissolving AMA Pro Racing, Firing Everybody, And Starting Over