30/07/2026
Below is the Club Presidents Report presented at the AGM last night.
Ashley Cassin will stay on as President for the upcoming 2026/27 season, a further post will come out welcoming our incoming and thanking outgoing committee members following last nights election of officers at the AGM.
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It’s hard to believe we are already knocking on the door of season 2026/27
To review the 2025/26 season, where does one start?
The health of our club? The growth of our club and our sport locally? The culture within our club? the people that enable our club? The financial position of our club? The success of our athletes at their various levels of the sport?
All things that a president, committee and club member should be proud of, and this one certainly is.
Season 2025/26 saw 29 races delivered on 11 unique course between Hari Hari and Denniston, utilising in excess of 230km of West Coast roads
Growth in membership and attendance last season was immense, we had 3 Tuesday nights where attendance records were broken and re set. Culminating in a 76 rider record! We averaged a number that quite simply used to be a dream for a record turnout, 53, and enjoyed the company of 134 unique riders. And we have a fleet of a dozen club bikes available to support new riders into our sport.
We are small but we have a significant bank balance, feed by strong and growing membership, race fee and sponsors annual input which continues to grow our funds year on year, even with some serious and strategic purchases over the past few seasons
We have a happy and inclusive place people enjoy coming along to and returning too, but also one people willingly bring others into
Success is an individual thing, Riders starting in the sport, members achieving goals locally, nationally and internationally, and celebrating that success week in week out, but also with 30 awards at prize giving. Our clubs success is Headlined by our very own superstar Sharlotte Lucas, who last season took the win at the cyclocross nationals, was second at the crit nationals and made the winning split at the elite road nationals and earned herself a place at the gravel world champs.
All of these points lend themselves to support the health of our cool little club, in my biased eyes anyway.
And for the above I want to thank those that have enabled this situation to manifest over the previous years and seasons of commitment and hard work, you should be proud of what has been achieved here. But we certainly aren’t stopping here.
We had two SGMs last season, resulting in a fresh, fit for purpose and compliant constitution, and the other resulting in our newest life member being crowned, again thanks to Kirk for driving the constitutional update and congratulations to John for his life membership.
It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the vast range of supporters our club has, the local papers for week in week out sharing our stories with our community, sponsors that reach out to us to come on board or continue to support us year after year, what a privileged position to be in, to our roading control authorities up and down the coast that we work with, thanks again for your part in our sport and for moving into the risk based approach to traffic management in the way in which you have, coast to coast our largest annual fundraiser and quiet possibly the largest participation event of our club members.
To those on our committee and those that operate outside of our club committee but carry out significant roles and give significant time thanks again, the previously mentioned success doesn’t happen by chance or without significant input. This year a focus needs to be upon building some more capability and redundancy into our system to support the sharing of the week in week out load upon those key contributors to our club.
Following the election of officers and other formalities at tonight’s AGM the committees focus will move quickly to refining the race calendar ahead of the typical day light savings start to Tuesday night racing.
As the days get longer, the cycling season gets closer, so Here is cheers to yet another successful and enjoyable cycle season ahead.
Ash
HCC President 2025-26
