It only took a few years for the powers that be to reneg (or at least seriously consider renegging) on their promise to keep costs down at the Grand. I'm sure I'm not the first person to tell you that the ATA Executive Committee wants the 2010 Grand American to once again require participants to use brand spankin' new factory shells.
The word is that it's not official yet...there may be a vote by the Delegates. Some people are claiming that this change is in response to the substantial prize available in the $100,000 donation by the Martins...it'll supposedly make it more difficult for the cheaters to win it.
I haven't validated any of the rumors floating around. There's too many. But I know one thing for sure...the ones who stand to benefit from this are the shell companies.
You could argue that the ATA will benefit, and they might actually turn a profit on the Grand this year if they enforce this. But, they're not in the business of making money (at least not publicly). When the Grand moved from Vandalia to Sparta, the EC thought that allowing people to use whatever shells they choose would help stimulate attendance. It may have had an impact on attendance, but it had a more noticeable impact on the big three shell companies (Remington, Federal, and Winchester). The Grand was guaranteed profit for them.
I'll probably still shoot the Grand, but I will most likely scale back on the number of events I participate in because of this. I'm interested to hear how others are going to be impacted by this. Leave a comment by clicking the comments link immediately below this post.
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