[Closed] Trans-Savoie on again?!

Ali Jamieson saying "Oh, and don’t even get me started on Strava and Trailforks. Sorry, but as much as they are truly wonderful tools, they’ve got an awful lot to answer for too in terms of upsetting a very fragile balance of politics" is a bit bloody rich tbf. Yep, it's all strava's fault, definitely nothing to do with unpaid tax and fake "secondments" and racing on footpaths without permission because you know that if you ask you'll be told non. When you see all the hard work that's been done since he legged it to try and repair that, from other operators and folk like Yvan Bonin, getting stuff reopened and permissions reinstated etc...

Did everyone on here get their money back, in the end? I know most folks were having to go through ABTOT and credit card companies and the like after having their holidays trashed, I was out with White Room that year and half the other guests had been caught up in the TA mess and were still hoping for money back after being told no chance by TA themselves.

(Timbud, you worked for TA right?)

Wondered if you'd chime up Northwind. You always do when Enduro2, Trans-Savoie and TA are mentioned.
Oh right, you stayed with a rival company, it makes total sense that what you heard was not positive (gossip never is right). I'm not sure why you're so bitter about it, as from what I can gather you were never directly involved. Time to move on fella - The last 2 Enduro2 races went down real well (despite what rival operators tell you)

Wow, that's seriously Impressive Northwind, - you've outdone yourself there! How many wild and entirely false accusations can one person manage to fit into one paragraph!? I think you just smashed your own record!

We do feel oh-so-privileged to have our personal anonymous STW stalker though. 🙂

Oh, and don’t even get me started on Strava and Trailforks. Sorry, but as much as they are truly wonderful tools, they’ve got an awful lot to answer for

Professional guides in opposition to self guiding tools shocker.
Sounds similar to the bits in that weird pan-alps guidebook where the Locals Perspective section was all too frequently " the best way to get the most from this area is to employ a local guide"

Knew that was going to happen.

timbud
Free Member

Wondered if you’d chime up Northwind. You always do when Enduro2, Trans-Savoie and TA are mentioned. Oh right, you stayed with a rival company, it makes total sense that what you heard was not positive (gossip never is right).

And you are completely unbiased and definitely don't always "chime up" on this subject aye? Wind it in.

I was speaking to the guests who'd been screwed over, White Room are pros so they didn't comment at all on TA's collapse but you'd better believe that individuals who'd been affected did and still do. That's not "gossip", it was first hand from the victims. And MBF are not a rival either, they're one of the groups that helped pick up the pieces and are pretty open about what they had to deal with.

freeride_addict
Free Member

Wow, that’s seriously Impressive Northwind, – you’ve outdone yourself there! How many wild and entirely false accusations can one person manage to fit into one paragraph!? I think you just smashed your own record!

We do feel oh-so-privileged to have our personal anonymous STW stalker though. 🙂

I bet this is unbiased too.

What is supposed to be wild and false? Fake secondments? Fact and not even well hidden. Racing without proper permissions? Fact. Guests left in the lurch and only getting money back because of third party protection? Fact. Permissions to ride trails regained by the hard work of others since? Fact.

TA screwed a lot of people over, some of them my friends. Sometimes that happens in business. But claiming it was all about equivalance is transparent nonsense, TA weren't the only people fighting that battle.

But blaming Strava? **** off, genuinely. That's pathetic. Is anyone going to fall for that? Or defend that, that isn't involved with the company?

It is pretty obvious as to who will pop up on the these threads from both sides 😉

I've got a couple of mates who live out in Bourg who were less than impressed with the way Ali acted, especially with the state of certain trails after his races there and the lack of interest in maintaining them afterwards.

I raced Enduro2 both years and they were really good fun, however after riding in and around the Bourg area for a couple of years after it's pretty obvious which trails were repeatedly used. On the back of that, would i enter Enduro2 or Trans Savoire again, probably not.

OK Northwind, whoever you are, you really don't have even the slightest clue about what you are talking about, do you? It would be interesting to know though - genuinely, what is it that you've got against trailAddiction and anyone who ever worked for them, that has driven you to stalk this forum for at least 7 or 8 years now, and without fail, come out with vitriol such as the above?

All you've actually done here is commit multiple counts of libel, not only against a company, but against an individual whom you've never even met. Having been given an opportunity to retract your unfounded comments, you've doubled-down on them, and used abusive language while so doing. Well played. I hope for your sake you are ready to take this off-forum and into the real world, because that's exactly where this is headed.

For the benefit of anyone else that may be reading this, I accept its highly probable that you found more than a few people who were very upset with the whole affair in 2017 as I would certainly have been myself, if I had been a customer). This topic has been covered at length both on this forum and in subsequent press releases.
Northwind, I suggest you go and look up what actually happens in an administration and why it is strictly prohibited for the directors of a company to refund anyone even a single penny, except via a third party.

In contrast to your anecdotal "facts" though, how do you explain the several thousand satisfied, regular customers that holidayed with trailaddiction for over more than a decade? More-so, what about the fact that a good portion of those customers who took part in the 2019 Enduro2 re-launch were the same customers who were signed up for it (and lost out) in 2017? Or the fact that the 2021 Enduro2 recently sold out 300+ entries in under an hour and now has almost double that on the wait-list?

Do you still feel you know better than every single one of these customers? Especially since by your own admission, you've never actually been a trailAddiction customer yourself?

To set the record straight - Illegal secondments? Accused? - yes; fined for it 5 years ago - yes; 4 years later finally heard in court and found to be innocent for ALL counts of "illegal secondment" (and with the fines cancelled accordingly) - erm, also yes!
You didn't know that last part did you, fella?

Racing without full & proper permission? - Where the hell did you get that from? Quite categorically WRONG and entirely UNTRUE! Literally there is ZERO credibility around that statement...if you have any, please do tell.

Permissions to ride banned trails re-gained? - what drugs are you smoking?! The only possible reference you might be making there would be a termporary ban to "La Varda" trail in 2016, which was NEVER a trail that was included in any race. This ban was resolved and removed after the trailAddiction team themselves organised an dig-day at the end of the season. Yvan was certainly there, that I will give you. (great fella, done a lot for the area). But he worked for trailAddiction as a guide full-time that season! Its all on public record! We even made a video about it and its now on the MBF website still today - well-over half the people with spades in their hands are actually trailAddiction staff....not to mention the picnic and drinks paid for out of trailAddiction budget. If MBF want to take the credit for that, fair play to them. They do a lot of great work too, but its incorrect to say they are fixing trailAddiction legacy issues.

My point about Strava and trail forks is this - TA put no more than a few hundred people down the trails each year, including in its races. Last year Les Arcs sold 350,000 bike uplift tickets in one summer season alone - how many of them were likely using Strava to ride outside of the marked bike park trails? You do the maths, mate.

Look, I could continue laying into you a lot worse on this, but to be fair its probably not your fault - you'll have probably picked all of this up 3rd-hand direct from the rumour-mill, and immediately assumed it all to be true, without bothering to verify any of it for yourself. There's a lesson there somewhere.

This IS exciting...

the trail destruction was pretty bad

It's not really race trail destruction though? The whole area is getting a lot more use, everything has changed immeasurably since I started riding there in the early 2000's and that's ramped up in recent years - 300 riders at a race is fairly small fry compared to a seasons worth of riding apart maybe from an odd really hidden gem although the races never seemed to use thoes?

Completely agree on the increase in wheels down the trails in the area, and that in pure numbers 300 riders down double header is a tiny number compared to a seasons worth. What that doesn't take into account is the lines taken during a race.

The majority of riders will, by and large, take the line of the trail if just out riding, however put a clock on them and there are all kinds of cut lines/straight lines etc taken. You can't tape whole trails for events like Enduro2/TS it just wouldnt work, but relying on the 'spirit of enduro' is daft. The big problem that then arises is that normal punters see the straight/cut line and take that (often because its easier), which in turn accelerates erosion and a)becomes the mainline and b) often makes riding the original line very difficult.

Burchy - on this particular point, I agree with you 100 percent. Its something which winds me up big time. (For the same reason though, its one of the many reasons I hate strava because by very definition it encourages the same mentality).

In my 20 years experience as a guide though, people take cut lines because they are not capable of riding a switchback properly and they are scared. Since people who race are - im generalising big time here - more experienced and more capable than those who do not and who are being guided around like school kids, one could argue that overall the entire thing balances itself out.

Not that it negates the problem but be aware that Enduruo2 is not really a race at all. I mean, it is, sure, but only the top 10 percent give a crap. Last year, for example, there was a bail out option due to the bad weather. It meant that racers could opt in or opt out of Double Header stage - if they opted out, they were not disqualified.

This was a decision made by the organisers to try and Protect the trail and also for safety considerations.
(But its not something you will ever hear someone like Northwind bring up, because it doesn't fit his narrative of trailaddiction screwing the trails and not giving a sh*t)

Only about 25% of the riders chose to take that stage. The rest took the detour down black 8 instead.

Add to that the fact that the slogan/motto of the entire Enduro2 series is
"The only TIME that counts, is having a GOOD time"

And it should give you and idea of the general mentality of the race.

But agreed, there will always be the d*ckheads who cut corners. If they get caught (and this has happened) they are immediately thrown out of the race and not even allowed to finish riding the course as a disqualified rider.

All that said, no-one ever talks about the real issue here which is storm damage. Just One storm will just rip out channels in a trail. Yes, the bikes start it all off by cutting a small channel in the first place but its the epic rain storms that shred the trails to pieces. The simple solution is a small amount of regular trail maintenance - in particular, cutting channels in every switchback to divert the torrent of water away safely.

However this is a big job and no-one (out in France at least) wants to hear it. Its much easier to do nothing at all and simply point the finger at the larger operators like trailAddiction.

freeride_addict - all valid points and I agree with the race centiment. I'd add that Ali shoots himself in the foot with the rhetoric that some how he invented enduro racing and multi day point to points and that the current crop of races should give him a nod. Well done, he was one of the early ambassadors and set up some great events, but that doens't get him out of the responsibilities that come with it.

I'd point out that all of these style races give a huge amount back to the areas they operate in. Look at the legacy of Trans-Provence, BC bike Race, Tranz NZ, trans-cascadia, trans madeira and countless other larger and smaller events that really do put a lot of time back into it. Having recently used freeride maderia, they really are setting the standard in trial maintenance with a full time trail crew. It shows it can be done.

Like Burchy, I've visited the valley a good number of times over the last 20 odd years, have friends that live there - I'd like to tink I have some perspective too. I raced both events and good times were had - for sure. However, the trials did get hammered. 'Reamed' was the word used at the time. Yes, increased general foot fall also does that. But events like E2 promote the area, the trails used and the laps they put in. Something has to go back and its the organisers responsibility to acknowledge that, and act.

Every other guiding company I know and have used follows that ethos. Especially in the Bourg / Les Arc area. It seems from all the reports and direct actions, Ali seems to indicate he is somehow exempt from all this and can operate races without putting back in, or exploiting others hard work.

Fair play to him for getting back out there and good luck. There is a lot of storg opinion on this and actions speak louder than words. Lets see if he and the TA crew can metaphorically repair the damage in both a physical and social sense!

@neilforrow - erm, freeride_addict is Ali isn't he?