My parents bought me a Tamiya Madcap for Christmas when i was 11 (1993) and some lads around the corner from me had Nikko Super Sprints and told me they raced up at a local school so i went up with them and had my a$$ handed to me on a plate so my Dad came up next week and quickly realised there was a lot more to this hobby in terms of tuning, electrics etc and since he used to race and mechanic at Motocross he quickly got into it and bought me an old Optima Mid custom special and some second hand electrics through a guy he worked with - We were soon racing outdoors and every wednesday night at the school....
I think the main thing that helped me and this goes for a lot of racers that are still competing is that they had a parent there to help fund the hobby and take them all over the country to go racing, without that i'd have quickly got bored and had to move on to something else so i consider myself lucky my Dad was so keen and prepared to shell out the money needed!!! If you look at the likes of Craggy, Bradders, Pidge, Mossy, Danny Mcgee, Ellis, Kevin, Craig, all those guys started with their Dad's coming along which really helps out....
It sounds harsh but these days i think it's harder for parents to commit the time and money required due to having to work so hard these days just to pay a mortgage, keep a car (or 2) going, pay all the bills etc so in a lot of cases they just don't have the time, money or motivation to get up and take their kid(s) racing all day which i think has a lot to do with the decline in numbers of new kids starting....
Obviously this isn't the case with everyone, but when you look back at the Juniour champs from the 90's the class of racing was almost national standard, and a huge amount of competition where you genuinely couldn't always guarantee who'd win - these days there's like 3 or 4 heats at the juniours and it has to be twinned with the F2's, Veterans champs which is a real shame.
The Juniours used to be a big national meeting, with at least 11 heats and to give you an idea, one year (1995 i think) at Donnisthorpe some of the names competing are as follows (for anyone that doesn't know them all, they would have all made top 20 or so at Nationals (if not winning A finals):
Neil Cragg
Paul Bradby
Matt Moore
Kris Heath
Richard Taylor
Chris Doughty
Si Willets
Graham Alsop
James (Jim) Thomas
Jon Leonard
Rich Meredith
Danny Mcgee
Lee Martin
Tom Yardy
Luke Saunders
Darren Bloomfield
Simon Moss
Richard Sharp
That's just a few i can remember off the top of my head but when you think about it most of these guys are still racing and doing well, and when you look at the lack of numbers now something has to change!!
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