australian time trials association
australian time trials association
ATTA Timeline—significant milestones
ATTA is an association of individuals, bike riders who wish to pursue their sport of road time-trialling with regular, organised events on a range of courses varying in the sort of challenge each offers and at distances ranging from about 16km to 160km and to promote the sport to encourage other bike riders to participate. ATTA was founded in 1988 by a group of riders who saw the need for a specialist club to cater for Time Triallists in WA; they took over the running of a number of events which had been run for a number of years by the former WA Veterans Cycling Association that eventually merged with ATTA. At the time of its formation, ATTA was the only such specialist group in Australia. Begun by one of our members on our behalf, but without any formal association after the first few years, there has been a loosely affiliated group that operated in NSW since 1993 and from the 2002-2003 season, another group, ATTA-Tas (Titta) somewhat revitalised cycling in the Hobart area. It ran a very well-attended and enthusiastically-received series of evening TTs (short but tough) plus other flattish, hilly and MTB events; all, more or less in association with the other local clubs. It also created the Mt Wellington Challenge. Unfortunately 2006 was the last season for Titta as we knew it. However, in January 2007 ATTA-Vic began organising TTs in Victoria with a core of enthusiatic members riding on a monthly basis on a variety of courses. But it didn't continue into 2008 and, despite a number of enquiries about how to revive it, ATTA-Vic appears to have faded away. Attempts have been made to stimulate interest in SA and Queensland.
We have ventured off-road, particularly during the winter months, into the realm of MTB time-trialling. But now we only have one such event a year.
Time-trialling involves matching one's current fitness and abilities on a bike against the external milieu of road, distance, weather and the clock. That is, it involves getting on your bike and going like the clappers until you've covered the predetermined distance. The rules are simple but the most important phrase in our vocabulary is "alone and unassisted". That is, with one or two exceptions, we ride always as individuals; we start at one minute, sometimes shorter intervals and take no deliberate assistance from other riders or other traffic. Occasionally we may ride as pairs (or 2-Up teams); very occasionally we have ridden as larger teams.In a sense the sport is non-competitive; individuals are testing themselves. There are, of course, rivalries and we publish lists of who went fastest on the day and so on. But there are no losers; each individual has his or her own goals whether they are standards (eg from a set of times based on age and gender) or perhaps a sub-hour for a 40km; perhaps a course record but certainly, always that elusive personal best (the 'PB' seen on results tables). The courses vary: some are flat and potentially fast, others are undulating and some very undulating. Originally we tried to maintain standard distances eg 16, 40, 50, 80 & 160km for our courses but not now. Nevertheless course lengths are usually close to one of them. We do like to compare times across courses and we always calculate average speeds in comparisons.
Time trials are what win Tours de France and are called, quite properly, the Race of Truth.
Time trials are what triathletes do on the bike in Triathlons (although the purity of the TT ethos has become a little tainted in some classes of event over the years)Wikipedia is a source of some good, descriptive information on TTing: see the page on Individual Time Trial
In the broadest sense you need at least a pair of wheels and some form of non-motorised propulsion (e-bikes? a couple of hand-cycle riders have now used e-assist in the off-road Panther event). The occasional tandem was once seen fairly regularly; we have had Penny Farthings, trikes, hand-cycles, standard racing chairs and varieties of recumbent participating in our races. The basis of our approach has been that if somebody can 'ride' in safety, we will try to accommodate them.You can spend sqillions on a bike if you have a mind to; it's not necessary and, current in 2023-24, it only cost you $35 to join ATTA for a year (less if you are over 60 or, since the start of the 2023 season, 65 but free for under 18s). Race entry fees are also kept low to encourage riders to try the sport (but we needed to cover our costs). So, we didn't collect large buckets of entry fees to redistribute as prizemonies to a few elite riders. We have been a pretty egalitarian mob and have taken some pride in that. The incentive in Time-trialling is the search for the Time, particulary one that is a Personal Best.
Not all who ride our events are committed testers. Many riders are triathletes or roadies who see time trials as a useful adjunct to their training program, others are newcomers to cycling who want to see if the sport has anything to offer them or want to see how their level of fitness compares to others'. They may be ex-riders wishing to return to cycling who also want some hard riding in order to assess their progress. For whatever reasons riders participate, the thing is that riders of all levels of ability can ride in the one event; raw novices with seasoned internationals, even World Champions; the hard men with the weekend warrior; blokes and girlies; young and old: there's something in it for most tastes
In 2011 ATTA became an Affiliate member of the newly-formed WestCycle that was created as the Peak cycling body in the State. In 2019 CycleSport WA ceased to exist as an entity, being formally absorbed into WestCycle, Road and Track. At that stage ATTA was a member of the WestCycle Roadsport Advisory Group.
ATTA maintains its own Public Liabilty and Management policies that apply to its events. Riders do not need any 'licence' to participate in ATTA events but a previous Personal Accident policy was discontinued in 2023.
Until November 2020, ATTA had been a member club of Cycling Australia (CA) and membership of ATTA entitled you to buy a membership of CA but none of our events could, alone, be sanctioned by CA. CA members, riding ATTA events were insured under the training provisions of CA membership. At the moment (see below) ATTA has not joined AusCycling of which CA is now a part. If you wished to be covered for Public Liability and Personal Accident whenever you rode, in the past you had been advised to become a member of WestCycle.