SUBSCRIBER EXTRA / 

THE BUSINESS of drag racing is probably as hard as the performance sport itself. Darren Morgan should know, because he has just won his third straight Australian Top Fuel drag racing championship – and he has managed to do it from his rural base in Mildura, Victoria, far from the more usual motor racing bases of Sydney, Melbourne and the Gold Coast.

Mr Morgan admits the distance means he has to “drive that extra mile” to engage with his sponsors, but he is always more than prepared to do so, in gratitude for the way they have supported his sport over the years.

In fact, it is this high level of engagement and empathy with his sponsors and business partners that sets Darren Morgan apart, as much as his undoubted high octane, split-second racing skill. It showed in the way he took the title, one race shy of the season finale, but still raced at the next event to delight his sponsors and fans. 

“We are here for our fans, supporters, and our sponsors. And besides there is still a race to win,” grinned Morgan as he climbed into the dragster.

His DMR/American Truck Works dragster took out the Nitro Thunder Top Fuel round at Calder Park and basically secured his third straight ANDRA Championship. All that was required to make it official was to stage the Victorian American Imports dragster in Sydney during qualifying in late November, accept the green light and celebrate.

Mr Morgan could have easily stayed in the pits after the first qualifier to save parts and money, but he was there to win the event and try to double up with two ANDRA gold Christmas Tree trophies.

It is a measure of the DMR team that even though the title was secure, they were prepared to go one better and battle what were some of the season’s most trying conditions.

Saturday saw the temperature climb over 30 degrees “and then on Sunday it was high winds and a lot of dust” Mr Morgan said. On the first qualifying session a mechanical problem hurt the engine early and resulted in a 6.51 elapsed time over the quarter-mile distance.
Headed by crew chief Ben Patterson, the DMR team made the repairs and bounced back in the second session with a clean run in 4.81 seconds at 308mph [495.68 kph]. This moved Morgan from fourth position to third. 

For the final session the Victorian American Imports dragster was looking good in the early increments of the run but the engine suffered some damage around half-track and slowed to a 5.75 at only 157mph.

Mr Patterson believed the car was on a high 4.6 run as the night conditions were the best all day. Morgan finished fifth and had a first round match-up against American Tommy Johnson Jnr.
Eliminations saw one of the biggest Top Fuel fields of the season with eight teams in for round one. Darren Morgan tried hard against his opponent, and while it was a close run, the DMR/Victorian American Imports Top Fuel dragster fell short by .0823 of a second. 

Mr Patterson put it down to wearing out too much clutch “which in turn slowed the car”. 

For Mr Morgan it was more about looking after his supporters and fans at the event.

“Overall it was a successful weekend with another championship win and a successful corporate outing for DMR and the L&H Company – a leading industrial supplier of quality electrical, lighting, heating and cooling, and ventilation components,” he said.

“I’m very thankful to my hard working crew. I know how hard they work and I am especially proud to be working on the car alongside my 17-year-old son, Will. 

“We didn’t have a lot of time between Melbourne and Sydney rounds so I’m thankful for the teams time and dedication.”

Plus, DMR wanted to thank his sponsors and supporters in person at the final event of 2013.

“Having L&H and 100 corporate guests was a huge undertaking,” Mr Morgan said. “It was all about them on Saturday.

“They put their toes in the water at the Nitro Champs back in May and at the Nationals we gave them the full ANDRA Championship drag racing experience. It was up close and personal, and judging from the smiles I saw, I’d say they really enjoyed themselves too. 

This makes it three consecutive Top Fuel Championship for DMR (2011, 2012 and 2013) and a fourth overall for Darren Morgan as a driver. DMR won four of the 11 championship rounds, two runner-ups and two top qualifiers.

Mr Morgan thanked John Bakker and his team, at Victorian American Imports, for their continued support of DMR and for understanding how the team worked, doing most of its testing at race meetings for financial reasons.

Darren Morgan said he was once told he would never succeed in Top Fuel because of his country location – which only him more determined to succeed and win – and with three in a row under his belt now, other drag racers wonder what they are feeding the men and women who build and race the mighty machines of Mildura.

www.darrenmorgan.com.au

www.andra.com.au

 ENDS

POSTED MAY 2014

Captions:

Darren Morgan and the ANDRA Top Fuel winning DMR Victorian American Imports dragster.

Darren Morgan’s DMR team also enjoyed a humorous aside last season when they provided the machinery and drag racing sets for the Australian comedy series, Upper Middle Bogan, starring Glenn Robbins.

ends

extras:
 
Morgan was quoted in the Sunraysia Daily when asked to assess the season, “We seem to be getting better and better. We don’t test like some of the big teams do because we don’t have the finances, we have to test at the race meetings”.
 
Morgan concluded by saying that winning the championship for 2013 was made even more special knowing it was ANDRA’s 40th year of drag racing in Australia.
 
Special thanks to John Bakker and his team, at Victorian American Imports for their continued support of DMR.
 
DMR was backed last year by Victorian American Imports, American Truckworks, Permatex, K Trans WA, Shannons Insurance, Timken, Cabac, Lovells, Castrol, Champion, Disc Brakes Australia, Speedmaster, White International, Stahlwille, Simple Green, CRC, Crow Cams, Fusion, Pavtek, Torque Calibration, Hedman Headers, Rocket Industries, Aeroflow, PPG, Elgas, Super Mini Booster, Garner Transport, GTS Transport, The Brakeman, Performance Diff Services, Replay XD, Lawrence & Hanson, Tiger Light, CRD Engineering, Airmaster, Clevite and Kingpins Custom Paint.

The pinnacle of drag racing success is winning a championship. In the case of Morgan he can hold his head high knowing he has done that – not once, but four times in his career.
 

 .
 .
 

  
The first outing of the 2014 ANDRA Top Fuel Championship fires up in Perth and will feature round one and two on January 10 and 11.
 
For more info: find and like Darren Morgan on Facebook
 and check out www.darrenmorgan.com.au for news, photo gallery and more.
 
Top Fuel                                                                  Total
Darren Morgan                                                                                805
Phil Lamattina                                                                                 755
Steve Read                                                                                     421
Damien Harris                                                                                 387
Tommy Johnson Jr                                                                         197
Mark Sheehan                                                                                184
Allan Dobson                                                                                  182
Terry Sainty                                                                                     171
John Lamattina                                                                               154
Phil Read                                                                                         131
Luke Shepherd                                                                                 87
Martin Stamatis                                                                                83
Larry Dixon                                                                                       72

SUBSCRIBER EXTRA / 

PENRITH Panthers has taken the number one spot, with a brand value of $46.2 million in the 2013 Top 20 Most Valuable Australian Sports Brands research conducted by Brand Finance. Surprisingly, even though it had the top value, Penrith Panthers only had a brand rating of AA- which actually made it one of the weaker rating brands in the Top 20.

According to Brand Finance Australia director Richard Haigh, “Branding is important to sports teams because it validates their ability to generate value both on and off the field.

“This is particularly true amongst Aussie Rules brands which excite incredible brand loyalty but even they were pipped by the Penrith Panthers.” 

The Panthers Group businesses have closely associated the brand successfully with the elite rugby league team to create a strong business, Mr Haigh said, which has resulted in the high valuation by the co-ordinators of the research, Landor Associates.

There are six NRL teams in the Top 20 Most Valuable Australian Sports Brands. The Sydney Roosters currently have the highest brand rating overall of AAA-.

An indication of the role performance plays in the brand values has been illustrated by coach Tim Sheens’ Kangaroos, who convincingly won the 2013 Rugby League World Cup final against New Zealand in the UK.

Mr Haigh said with Jonathan Thurston winning man of the match and team mate Billy Slater the Golden Boot award, their respective clubs North Queensland Toyota Cowboys and Melbourne Storm would be already leveraging the Thurston and Slater successes to attract further members and support from fans.

The AFL is moving ahead in terms of total Brand Value, said Mr Haigh, accounting for 14 teams with a total brand value of $334 million. This is more than double the value of NRL teams in the Top 20 whose combined brand value totals $151 million.

The key finding from the brand equity research conducted by Landor was that the AFL teams have greater brand equity except for the NRL’s Brisbane Broncos, which has the greatest brand equity of any team.

The study also showed that 27 percent of respondents interact with AFL more than once a week compared with only 21 percent for NRL.

The research also showed the Collingwood Magpies possessed the most valuable AFL brand, rating second in the overall Top 20, with a brand value of $39.1 million after a financially successful year. The Magpies also received a AAA brand rating, the highest rating in the table thanks to a loyal fan base and strong performances on the field.

In terms of overall Brand Strength, the online research by the Sydney office of Landor Associates determined Brisbane Broncos topped the ranking across all codes.

The Essendon Bombers brand rating has suffered this year dropping from potentially a AAA- to a AA+ since the investigation by ASADA. The fall caused overall brand value to drop around five percent to $24 million. The impact could have been more severe but sponsors and fans have remained loyal. The Landor report suggested moving into a new state of the art training facility could see Essendon bounce back for the 2014 season.

Although other teams from Australian Rugby Union, A-League and Big Bash were included in the research, only AFL and NRL teams turned out to be valuable enough to be featured in the Top 20 Most Valuable Australian Sports Brands.

Landor Australia managing director, Dominic Walsh said, “There’s no doubt that the AFL goes deeper in the Australian psyche than NRL – this goes back to its unique Australian heritage.”

For the research, the Australian public ranked each team across four pillars of: knowledge, relevance, differentiation and esteem.

www.landor.com

ENDS

POSTED MARCH 2014.

SPORT and recreation industries generated $12.8 billion in income and employed around 134,000 Australians in 2011-12, according to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures.    

ABS director Andrew Middleton said in addition to providing significant health and social benefits, sport and physical recreation has major economic importance, which is reflected in the latest household expenditure, production and international trade data.

“Australia exported over $358 million in sport and recreation goods in 2012-13, up 26 percent from the previous year,” Mr Middleton said.

“We found that Singapore has become a major destination for exports of Australian sporting goods and services. The value of these exports to Singapore rose from $15.6 million in 2011-12 to $73.4 million in 2012-13.”

Australian households spent more than $8.2 billion on selected sport and recreation products in 2009-10.

This included $4.4 billion spent on sports and recreation services (such as sports facility hire charges and health and fitness studio charges) and $2.9 billion on sports, physical recreation and camping equipment, including swimming pools.

Further details are in Value of Sport, Australia, 2013 (cat. no. 4156.0.55.002) which is available for free download from the ABS website. 

http://www.abs.gov.au/

ends

IT IS hard to overstate the impact that an Australian-developed athletic GPS tracking and monitoring system has had on sport around the world.

The cream of the world’s athletes – across sports as diverse as American football, rugby, Australian football, hockey, baseball, tennis, mountain biking and snow boarding – have become used to the small Catapult Sports monitoring system that tucks neatly between their shoulder blades as they train and perform.

Now with the help of Australia’s science research agency, CSIRO, Catapult Sports has taken its systems to a whole new level.

Coaches of elite athletes have been hindered in the monitoring of vital metrics of their rising stars, as reliance on GPS systems to gather information on their power and speed were unreliable in poor signal areas such as indoor stadiums or arenas.

However, the program Tracking Elite Athletes, which uses revolutionary ClearSky Technology, changes all that by fulfilling the needs of coaches and broadcast media for accurate athlete analytics. It is the result of a joint project between CSIRO and Catapult Sports.

Their achievements were recognised by the engineering fraternity, when they were awarded the highly prestigious President’s Award by Engineers Australia, Sydney Division at the 2013 Engineering Excellence Awards Sydney in September last year.

CSIRO research team leader, Mark Hadley said the technology overcomes limitations of GPS systems by combining the indoor tracking components of CSIRO’s Wireless Ad-hoc System for Positioning (WASP) technology with Catapult Sport’s advanced inertial sensors and algorithms, in a sleek exterior designed for use in professional sport.

The current solution is being used to evaluate performances of athletes in the Australian Football League (AFL).

“The technology that this partnership has developed is 10 times more accurate than GPS systems, and in sports where the results are closer and more technical, these results are much more important,” Dr Hadley said.

He said players’ performances can be quantified and improved by making team training more specific based on game demands, combining the work of the coaching staff with that of the fitness staff, and by comparing the performance levels of players with other players, sessions, or predetermined physical goals.

“Seeing the fruits of your research is fantastic, for 95 percent of research projects never go anywhere, so it is great to be a part of a successful one,” Dr Hadley said. “The win provides inspiration to keep going and do better; it is great to get that recognition amongst our peers.”

In a way, the award made Dr Hadley’s team feel like the winning athletes they assist.

"The win is a fantastic honour and part of the excitement behind winning is having the research and the project recognised,” he said. The project was also awarded an Excellence Award in the category of Software and Embedded Systems.

Catapult was founded in 2006 as a part of Federal Government research to develop technology for use in helping to prepare athletes for Olympic competition. The founders of Catapult – Igor Van de Griendt and Shaun Holthouse – worked closely with the Australian Institute of Sport to invent athlete tracking devices.

These devices contain GPS sensors, as well as 10 other inertial and physiological sensors, including accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers and heart rate sensors. The technology found its legs with field sports such as soccer, field hockey and rugby sevens.

The technology was patented and as part of the agreement with the government, Catapult remained a part of the Australian Institute of Sport for a period of time. Once the exclusive time period elapsed, Catapult began working with professional sport around the world.

Its initial clients were largely based in Australia, and the company adopted a client-driven focus in developing the technology and application of the data. Catapult worked closely with Australian football, rugby, basketball, soccer, skiing, swimming and more.

Initially, the focus of the technology was on establishing the exact demands of match competition – something that previously was impossible. Catapult’s critical differentiator between athlete tracking technology and other tracking devices, such as heart rate monitors, is that athlete tracking allows measurement of the external demand and intensity of the movement of the athlete.

Other tracking technologies have focused on the internal response of the athlete, which is equally important, but athlete tracking devices allow the measurement of the workload that elicited that response.

The technology has been applied beyond sport in the US, where Catapult has its base in Ohio, with military training applications and some moves into workplaces to enhance productivity.

www.catapultsports.com 

www.csiro.au 

ends