Triathletes meet with MVA

With the closing of the most successful XTERRA Saipan Championship in the five-year history of the event, and the looming economic crisis, local leaders at the Marianas Visitors Authority are faced with the reality of cost-cutting measures to deal with the impending reduction in funding.

Yesterday the MVA held an open meeting to vote on incoming board members and to address whether or not to retain the “Crown Jewel” of the XTERRA series, and the public came en masse. Board members seated around the table in the MVA conference room were surrounded by a ring of supporters anxious to impress their feelings upon all present.

According to Team Unlimited Director of Marketing Trey Garman, no locale has ever opted to end its relationship with the off-road endurance, and now it looks like the MVA is looking for ways to retain what many decision makers referred to as “one of the most successful events in the CNMI.”

“I thank everybody here. You all live here, I think, and work here and if you’ve been reading the newspaper you’ll see we’re faced with very challenging times. Like Jerry [Tan] said, we’ll look at where we can cut costs so it would be great if you could give us a list like you did [with examples, such as] to work with the airlines and cut some $50, 000—just to give us something to work with. I think you guys did a great job and I’m sorry I missed it last weekend,” said MVA vice chairperson Marian Aldan-Pierce.

Aldan-Pierce said that the MVA has been served notice of a reduction in funding and is now hard pressed to make cuts.

“We’ve received a directive to cut a certain amount of money from our budget and that’s really what we have been looking at. XTERRA is one of the biggest costs we have for local events. Our mandate is really to market the CNMI abroad so we don’t want to touch our marketing activities in Korea and Japan, and China of course is big for us too. So we’re just kind of looking at where to cut and we’re listening to what we can do because obviously it’s important to a lot of people here,” she said.

The $325,000 price tag for the XTERRA race is the largest item on the MVA’s plate, but the numbers given by Garman illustrated how the CNMI gets all of that back during the event and gets a total value of more than $2 million and more than 54 million CNMI impressions.

Pierce turned to the public for answers to the MVA’s budgetary crisis by saying that the public is welcome to help them find funding for the event, but said that the fate of XTERRA on Saipan would not be decided just yet.

“We will not be making any final decision today. Now that we have a full board, one of the things that we are going to do within the next probably month is we’re going to have a working session in Tinian where we just kind of all go there and lock the doors and look at all of the campaigns that we have and really look at the costs—look at what we’re spending money on and see what makes sense for us to keep, what to cut, if there’s anything new to put that in, whatever. Any recommendations you guys have let us know because we’ll be doing this within the next month,” she said.

Newly elected board chairman Jerry Tan said that the most important aspect that the MVA will look at with regards to programs is the economic impact that the events will have on the CNMI.

“That’s actually going to be the key word that we will be using at the MVA board because of the limited funding so we need to look at all of the different campaigns on the table to make sure that we are spending the dollars that will give us the biggest economic impact and that’s why those number that you mentioned earlier are going to be very important to us because that is a measure of our investment. But I think that nobody would disagree that XTERRA is one of the most successful events in the CNMI and that nobody wants to see it go away. We’re trying to find a way to keep it—not finding a way to cut it. This is why I am trying to ask you whether we can go out there and look for sponsors to help us defray the costs. We’ll try to find a way for that to be done” said Tan.

The measure of success for the race is in the numbers. In the first XTERRA Saipan Championship in 2002 there were a total of 136 participants in the Scramble, the XTERRA Sport, XTERRA Championship, the relays, and the kids bike race. This year there were 408 for an increase of 300 percent. The increase in Japanese participation has shot up consistently as well—growing from 10 in 2002 to 100 in 2006. The rest of the international number followed suit with a 350-percent growth rate in 2006—a race that fielded athletes from 13 countries.

While a number of local residents stood up to voice their opinions and to make their presence known, triathletes from the United States and China stepped up to explain the positive effect that the race and its resulting marketing has had on Saipan. One of the speakers was Courtney Cardenas—husband of 2004 XTERRA World Champion and three-time XTERRA Saipan Championship winner Jamie Whitmore.

“We’ve been here all five years that you guys have had the event and it’s by far the best event we’ve been to. We’ve been to Europe, the U.S., and we love coming to Saipan. We’d really like to see it come back to the island. Everyone that knows my wife and I know what we do, and they ask ‘Are you guys going back to Saipan?’ They probably have never heard of the island before they saw the show on TV in the States. It’s played all over the place and people when they see it they say it’s a beautiful place because the people at XTERRA do such a great job putting the TV show together. All these other people who live around the island love to see the race here,” he said.

Cardenas raised a few eyebrows when he explained another beneficial effect that the race has had on the CNMI by virtue of the success of the award-winning television show of the XTERRA Saipan Championship.

“I kind of see it from a slightly different perspective where I live. People who don’t know anything about triathlon they come and they get to see the show, see what we do, and see what everyone here puts on for us between the two races. I just think that it’s just a really good show and a really good way to get your name out there to the U.S. markets. We bring tons of people out here every year that have never heard of Saipan before the show and then through the magazines, and the people that we’ve brought with us through the years have started to bring their family members,” said Cardenas.

Third overall finisher and top amateur from last Saturday’s race James Kennedy of Shanghai, China stood up in support of the race as well. Kennedy addressed Saipan’s status as the top caliber race in the region and that the growing Asian triathlete community will look to the CNMI to test their skills.

“I can say particularly that Korea and China have really growing markets for this type of sport. People are starting to have a lot more money to spend so an event like this can be a major draw. I know for somebody looking for major events that this is the only thing major that I can go to unless I start looking at Thailand or Malaysia, but frankly for the caliber of the competition doesn’t come anywhere close. For people in those markets who are looking for some place to come, Saipan is relatively accessible, and as they have more money to spend you’re going to be able to promote things in those markets,” said Kennedy.