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news
Harrogate Worlds 2019 fan zone mud (credit Simon MacMichael)UCI insurers asked to pay compensation to local businesses and for damage to Harrogate park following World Championships
The UCI’s insurers may pay out for damage to a Harrogate park, but have ruled out paying compensation to Harrogate businesses who claim they were negatively impacted by this year’s Road World Championships.
The UCI Road World Championships took place in Harrogate between September 22 and 29 and huge crowds, heavy flooding and heavy goods vehicles resulted in significant damage to local park, The Stray.
Judy d'Arcy Thompson, chair of the Stray Defence Association, said: "Everyone looking at it can see the absolute tragedy that's occurred. It looks like a battlefield, quite frankly."
D’Arcy Thompson said the organisation was not against the Stray being used for major events but said the World Championships had been an "event too far".
"It's a superb free sports arena and so many people use it. To see it like this is devastating and I don't know how all those who normally use it will be able to use it for a long time to come."
Speaking last week, a spokesperson for Harrogate Borough Council said: "Without minimising what needs to be done, the ground can recover quickly and faster than many would expect.”
However, the Conservative leader of the council, Richard Cooper, has since said that he has been working with Yorkshire 2019, who organised the event, to see if it had "any leverage with their insurers" to help fund recovery work.
"Let's not deny acknowledging the amount of rain we got was extraordinary,” he told the BBC. "Hopefully the insurance company will accept it was out of the ordinary.”
Yorkshire 2019 has however ruled out providing financial compensation to businesses who claim they were negatively impacted.
The Harrogate Advertiser reports that at a meeting of local businesses last week several claimed to have been treated as "collateral damage" during the World Championships.
"We’re sorry if some businesses have reported a reduction in trade during the UCI Road World Championships, but we’re not in the position to offer compensation,” said a Yorkshire 2019 spokesperson.
"We liaised extensively with businesses in the three years leading up to the championships to ensure they had the opportunity to mitigate against any impact on trade, and equally capitalise on the opportunity.
"We’re delighted that many businesses were able to do that, and experience the positive benefits that the championships brought about."
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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22 comments
I grew up in Harrogate, the council will have been fully aware of the effects of the rain. The Stray was used all year round for travelling fairgrounds, circuses and all kinds of other stuff (I vaguely remember a traction engine rally). Whenever it gets wet the underlying clay soil ensures it becomes a massive quagmire, we used to have loads of fun sliding around our bmx's and getting covered in mud.
It always had an ample covering of dog shit too.
Harrogate's main industry is tourism and hosting conventions. Threatening action against thhose who bring their events to the town is possibly not a smart long term move. And since the Stray was closed on at least 3-days to protect it, the UCI might point out that they didn't receive what was promised.
I've been to music festivals where heavy rain turns the fields into a quagmire in September.
By December they're holding Xmas markets in the same place and the grass is back to normal.
It'll just take some time.
What do they want to do with the grass at the moment anyway ?
I reckon the grass will have grown back by the time any insurance claim is sorted . . . . .
You'd think a Harrogate book shop, with a little bit of thought, could have done very well out of the World Championships. There is a lot of waiting around, a bit of time to browse, to buy and a lot of time to read. And then the need to replace the soaking wet book.
I sympathise with the locals who've probably lost use of the stray for some months yet, I can't see what could be done to bring it back quicker than it will naturally (apart from chucking a bit more seed down which won't bring it back any quicker anyway) frankly it'll come back in time, no one in charge could have sensibly accounted for quite the amount of rain we had. Now it's happened, it's just a case of moaning for moaning sake.
Stato, it depends on what the grass is but it could recover in a month without doing a thing. Anything else you do will have establishment time anyway. There aren’t any shortcuts.
What insurance contract are they going to claim upon? General Liability policies?
Loss of income beacuse of what?
Physical Damage to the land? Land is excluded from all first party All Risks/Physical Damage policy.
Event insurance will cover damage / injury to third parties and possibly some loss of income cover (if purchased) in case the event is called off but only to the policy holder or named beneficiaries.
What are insurers going to do say "oh yes that field is a little muddy; have some money"
The idiots who are saying they can claim from insurance really don't have the first clue about insurance. There will be no insurance pay out.
What there will have been is vastly increased revenues for all businesses in the area for the whole week.
This is all just anti cycling numpties making up BS...
Harrogate businesses seemed happy to take my money that they wouldnt otherwise have got.
I read somewhere that only about 25% of businesses had bothered to engage with Harrogate Council beforehand. Many of the comments online seem to be from businesses that fondly imagine they need vast car parks and free-flowing traffic to allow flocks of happy customers to drive into Harrogate and walk around just looking for shops to spend their money in.
The ones that had bothered to engage - hosting pop-ups, putting in a TV and some seating and a coffee machine, putting up displays and banners and related decorations - all shouted "we are open and there's extra stuff going on, come in!" and they all seemed to be doing very well.
I went to a bookshop and that was closed with a passive-aggressive notice on the door about "the unacceptable disruption..." so I've made a mental note not to go back there. I'm sure that the tone of their notice has put off the thousands of additional people walking past that door. Whether a business owner agrees with the event or not (and there are many who would not benefit directly because it's highly unlikely that someone coming to watch bike racing is going to want to buy (eg) children's clothing or a sofa or a fridge) but there are ways of engaging with those thousands of extra people - after all they may be future customers! As a bookshop, I'd have thought you could stock up on some cycling titles and Harrogate area maps, perhaps try and get Ned Boutling or Rob Hayles or David Millar or Nicole Cooke (other authors are available) in there one evening for a talk and book signing.
The Turkish Baths were lovely, they had a half-price deal all week. There was a hairdressers down at about the 500m to go mark which had put aside the hairdressing and was hosting a small pop-up with free beer and a TV. Cold Bath Brewing and the Zwift pop-up - that wasn't "on the circuit" but you couldn't move in there sometimes! Great atmosphere.
There's two options for this. Either close up shop and go away for a week and just accept the loss. Or actively go out and engage, have some fun, chat to people, market your business, tell people to come back after the event, make them feel welcome. Having seen some of the comments, I'd genuinely think twice about going back to Harrogate as "a cyclist" because of the tone of "all these bloody cyclists have shut our town down and destroyed The Stray".
But the standard British way sadly seems to be a middle ground - moan like fuck, be determined to make it as miserable as possible, complain bitterly at "others" having fun (especially when those "others" are cyclists and foreign visitors), complain that although you were open you lost loads of money...
Can you by any chance let folk know the name of the bookshop please? Then I can avoid it when shopping in Harrogate. Ta very much.
PP, best thing to do is nothing. Let the land regenerate itself. Rolling creates soil compaction which slows the recovery and promotes weed growth. It might look bad on the surface now, but the rhizomes beneath will still be there and ready to grow cover back.
I don’t know why they’re so worked up over this, clearly they’ve never seen a turf farm where grass is cut and removed yet they manage to regrow a new crop every season.
Presumably because leaving it till next season means its unusable for normal users for around 5 months, if not more for the time it needs to become properly established. Ive run cyclocross events and know the grass grows back even when it looks appalling, but that never damages much more than a strip, this is almost the entire area it would seem.
If us cyclists lost a public space for 6 month due to an event we'd be livid. I agree there is much hyperbole with some of their comments, but its not without its grounds.
I have, Woodside Wall where I was gearing up for a KOM, a beautiful piece of road and fields, has been dug up to build a bypass (Congleton, Cheshire). So it's lost for >6 months and the replacement will be a high speed, horrible road with some red paint chucked on a pavement...
I was up there today. There was loads of activity going on with lots of workers busy about the place so hopefully they are going to put right all the damage.
Surely all they need to do is roll it flat and leave it, re-seeding it in time for next summer? Or am I missing something, not being a lawn turf expert....
PP
Given the weather forecasts, it seems that Harrogate BC and the Stray association may not have properly thought through what would be their plan B...
Surely this is all 'act of god' stuff, no one can be blamed for damage incurred from ridiculous weather.
Having looked at some overhead drone shots of the Stray it is pretty much the Somme at the moment. It's worse that I'd guessed it would be once all the UCI crap as gone. I can sort of see now why you'd look at it and think 'that's a mess'.
Hopefully the UCI will cough up something seeing as local opinion seems to be about 50% piss off and never come back and I'm not so sure the TDY will be as welcomed as a start/finish location next year if they wanted to use it.
It's common for events that hire grounds/parkland like this to have a clause in the agreement,that you pay to return it to its prior condition if there is damage, so they'll fix it for sure...but theres little point at this time of year unless you want to do it twice.
The businesses,no chance, the opportunity was presented to them to increase sales on the back of the event in let's face it a fallow footfall period of the year,plenty of Harrogate based business made a real effort to get engaged and looked to have reaped the rewards
We are obviously getting more info then usual due to it being British held, but can anyone with more knowledge know if Innsbruck, Bergen and other recent hosts had the same local hostility to from businesses etc.
Bergen was a shambles, even the Police struggled getting their fee as the event basically was bankrupt. Poor planning, even on the route several overshot a turn due to lack of signage. Lots of local firms struggles with exfremely limited access, and the huge influx of mobile homes following the event had not been suitably planned for in finding spaces to park overnight within reach of the course.