Absolutely, wake up Whistler! This whole festival model for mountain bike events does nothing for our sport except to promote it in a good light and facilitate a gathering of a whole lot of like-minded people, adding up to money for the hosts and sponsors, fun for everyone involved, and ultimately, growth of our sport. So to solve the 'problem' you've identified of a handful of pros not showing up, they should drop all the pro categories and only run amateur categories? Or drop the races altogether and make it a slopestyle event? Then maybe to support their slopestyle event in the future, they could run a handful of races and see who turns up...? /sarcasm>