After previously being president for well over a decade, I stood down for a number of reasons, but the main one was that I felt I was getting stale. I was going through the motions but didn’t really feel I could commit to anything, and looking back, it is a clear case of burn-out. Handing over to Daniel and Andrew allowed me to clear my head, focus on myself and do other rides with other people. I had little to do with the running of the club over the last 5 years but have always been there on the periphery. There are often expectations around being a club president that you may not notice from the outside, but can weigh on the decisions you make. Even little things, like what kit you are wearing, can prompt comments from people.

So, I am back. But why am I back. I am back to help rebuild the club and I guess the elephant in the room is why do we actually have to do that. Although it has all been agreed within the committee that we will move forward and focus on SPR, there are still a few things that I want to address from the outset.

There were a number of rumours, lies, half truths and conspiracy theories spinning around that caused a division within the club. Even though I was not directly involved, I know this because I was gas-lit for the last year with these same stories. Plus when I re-joined the committee to assist with the race training, I had access to all the chat history and emails that happened over that period.

Some of these I want to bring to light here –

The committee is not dirty and corrupt. If anything, it was requesting better oversight as to how funds were being spent. A really disturbing email I found in relation to ToMR funding stated clearly “These are not SPR funds, these are ToMR funds”

Dome is not trying to take over the club. The clubs relationship with Dome has been long and not without its ups and downs. In this case the question was just asked, if we had to have a major sponsor on our jersey, why would we not ask Dome rather than a real estate company that had no links to the club?

SPR doesn’t care about racing. If you knew the club history, you would know that the reason we formed a club in the first place was because we had about 12 or so people turn up for a Northern Districts race and we all had licences with different clubs. SPR’s participation in ToMR preceeds the breakaway race committee’s involvement with SPR and SPR has been a fixture at many club races over the years.

The club has not stolen money from Steve. Reimbursements were late. Too late to be considered normal and was bad practice on the clubs behalf. But if money had been “stolen” why were the police not involved?

Now people can choose to ride with whomever they want. I was reflecting the other day that I see on Strava that a number of the original SPR members now ride with Fastlane on a Saturday morning. Vanessa created her own club with 4F and people have moved over to it. So it is not about telling people they can’t choose or crying because people have not chosen SPR.

What has caused the angst is that there are a number of people that have believed the stories that caused the division and have decided that SPR was dirty and corrupt. Some of these people have known members of the committee for well over a decade and didn’t bother to ask their side of the story. That, to me, is one of the most disappointing things. Others have only been with the club since they were recruited for ToMR and so that group is all they have known. I fully understand why they would move away to ride with their friends.

SPR has always been an inclusive club and we will not tell anyone that they cannot ride with us (unless you are dangerous, it has happened in the past). So we are moving forward and will concentrate on our rebuild. I have spent the past 4 months focussing on the Tuesday and Thursday earlybird rides, and numbers have been steadily increasing. We are already planning a number of changes and improvements for this year and once the new committee meets, we can start fleshing these out.

So, long start for an initial blog post, but I wanted to close things off so the club can start afresh with the goal in mind of continuing to do what we do best.