Discussion: Where Oh Where is the US MTBO Team?

Do you wanna know what the best kept secret is in Orientering? It's the 7 people going to the world mountain bike orienteering championships. Announcements? Bios? Marketing? It's almost like you're trying to keep a secret. And with WMTBOC only 2 months away... I wonder what that secret is.

I could probably name the four women for you but I don't want to spoil the surprise.

Mind you, another well kept secret on AP is who the heck are you?

And are you volunteering to help gather/distribute any of that info? We're all volunteers here (in the U.S., pretty much)....

Excited to see the MTB team in action! Trying MTBO is another bucket list item for me. I admire how well the MTBO team can command their bike and orienteer at the same time, truly awesome!

oh Kyle, fess up. your just jealous you weren't selected.

Can I post about the Australian MTBO team without running the risk of being raided by the AFP for revealing the location of Australian military personnel?

The Finland World Cup thread started with the Canadian team and continued with the US team so I don't see why the US MTBO team thread can't do something similar. BTW my riding performance today should have me barred from the team.

No worries, Joe. If you think this is a worthwhile endeavor, go for it. Just seems like OUSA doesn't promote, market, or advertise the US MTBO Team... Ever. Why is that? No blog posts, no updated team page, no newsletter announcements... nothing. You wouldn't even know there was an US MTBO Team by the complete lack of interest they show for MTBO. Are they proud of the team? Are they proud of the money they've invested in the same athletes year after year? The evidence is all there... ignoring it and giving everyone a participation trophy is STILL not working. When you base a World-Level opportunity on a Zero-Merit System then you should not be too shocked when that system produces absolutely no growth. But hey, so long as they come in last but still PR? I guess it's all good. Meanwhile, keep arranging the deck chairs on the US MTBO Titanic. Who knows? Maybe doing the same thing over and over again WILL produce a different result!

Well, is there a lot of enthusiasm for MTBO in the US? Do we see people putting on a lot of MTBO events? If hardly anybody cares about it, does the federation have an obligation to put a lot of effort behind the team to international events?

MTBO is a small niche of a niche sport. You talk about the US Team, but where's the groundswell nation-wide? I haven't seen it.

A small club in eastern NYS tries to put on occasional MTBO events, but no one comes (event scheduled for June 16 in EMPO-land).

Anyone truly interested in promoting US MTBO can collect the information and pass it along to the OUSA webmaster to post in our various channels, or volunteer to maintain the info pages on the website. (We had such a volunteer from 2010 until 2016.) Or create your own webpage, maintain it, and we'll link to it.

With no budget (or volunteer) for marketing any of the teams, it takes proactive measures by members of the teams/disciplines to get anything posted anywhere.

I read dauntless as arguing that OUSA shouldn't give any funding to the USMTBO team since nobody is that interested in MTBO.

Pity, but would be good for the sport if other countries will invest more in mtbo rather than the Europe’s domination

Yeah I'd come to the US for the MTBO World Champs! Otherwise it'll take a lot for me to get there (given all my travel is for racing, that's what it took to get me to Europe in the first place).