Access the 2008 Fast laps results here.

Recently, the leadership of Ohio’s mountain bike clubs met in Columbus to discuss taking the Ohio Mountain Bike Association (OMBA) to the next level. Currently, OMBA is simply a name and not a formal organization. We’ve decided to change that and make OMBA a statewide organization with chapters. As part of this, each local club will become a chapter of the Ohio Mountain Bike Association. This is exciting news and will benefit all Ohio mountain bikers by giving us a unified voice.

Here’s some highlights of the new Ohio Mountain Bike Association:

Local clubs retain their identity
You won’t notice much difference in how each local club looks. Each local club will retain its name, website, members, leaders, etc.

Local clubs retain their funds
When you join the Ohio Mountain Bike Association, you will specify your local chapter. Based o­n your choice, your money will be deposited into your chapter’s account. A processing fee will be taken off the top by OMBA to cover things like postage and printing costs. The chapters will have full discretion o­n how they wish to spend their money, but they must comply with IRS 501(c)(3) non-profit guidelines. Any leftover funds that OMBA has will be distributed back to the chapters at the end of the year.

Unified voice
The Ohio Mountain Bike Association will pool the membership numbers of all chapter clubs together, giving the OMBA President the ability to speak o­n behalf of all those members. We’ll likely break 500 members in the first year and as the chapters grow, we could easily see a statewide membership count of 1000+. That gives us a lot of power that we never had before!

New Wind Blowing For Mountain Biking in Ohio

At the Ohio Mountain Bike Summit held in February 2007, it was decided to create a state wide Mountain Bike Association. All clubs in Ohio attended including MVMBA. The creation of a state wide organization will be helpful in managing projects, soliciting grants, and will form the basis of a more powerful advocacy group. With this structure we will have a larger voice than our smaller club now has. The statewide structure will also be able to manage memberships through internet access. Part of your membership fee will go to the cost of maintaining this system which will provide greater visibility of bikers across the state and give us a stronger voice in trail advocacy issues.