Herbert Leah: With regards to the revised age categories featured in the Newsletter 78 that will be introduced at this year's BIRC. Whilst the three new categories J11 & J12 and particularly the Women's existing 60/69 at last being divided into 60/64 and 65/69 seem to be sensible and right. In the case of the latter this is merely bringing it into line to what has been operating in the other categories since, I think, the 1997 championships. I presume the original decision to adopt the split 10 year age group was because it was recognised that it would make competition fairer in that a 10 year age span represented an imbalance to competitors when considering the natural deterioration that occurs in the human! (7-13% per decade as been quoted )Paradoxically, the existing 70/74 and 75/79 group has now been combined into 70/79 group also the 80's and 90's.at a time when the need for a division in the ten year age gap is more significant than at any other time due to natural deterioration. The 90's group maybe academic as John Hodgsons are likely to be very few and far between. I anticipate that a defence for this maybe made that there may be insufficient competitors to justify dividing the age group but this in itself is no problem because any event that doesn't justify sufficient entrants doesn't have medals presented. More importantly, it is likely that a 10-year category will restrict entrants as most competitors would, I feel, prefer to compete nearer to their own age. If this be so then entrants will diminish. Whilst strongly believing that the decision taken is wrong for the reasons stated I must express a personal interest that I will, hopefully, be 75 at the time of the 2003 BIRC!-------------------------------------------------------For a long time we've had an imbalance between the number of male and female events on offer and this year have made the decision to right that. Given the sparsity of over 70 competitors across the four sex and weight categories we have chosen to adopt the 10-year age bands for these age categories. Unfortunately the one age category that we've decided to drop is the 75-79 hwt and lwt men's category.Your point regarding the natural deterioration that occurs in older age is a good one, and we will monitor the participation levels this year as well as comments that come in from competitors. Having said that we want to offer competition and it's a balancing act between having two many categories with 0, 1 or 2 competitors in each or fewer categories with 2, 3, 4 or 5 racing - making winning each event more competitive all round.