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6 days of awesome mountain bike stage racing from the roof of Australia to the surf...
The BMC Mountains To Beach Stage Race (add this to your calendar...)
The BMC Mountains To Beach - 6 days of awesome mountain bike stage racing from the roof of Australia to the surf
Imagine a week of mountain biking, a week of racing, that will take you from the highest mountains in Australia, across snowgum lined plains, down along rainforest lined creeks and out to finish with your wheels in the sand and surf. Snaking singletrack, ‘wind through the helmet’ downhills, challenging uphills and some of the most varied scenery you could want.
Event promoter, Wild Horizons, are very excited to announce that the inaugural BMC Mountains To Beach will take place from 1-7 March 2009 and would like to welcome Swiss bike brand BMC aboard as Headline Sponsor of the event.
The BMC Mountains To Beach is a ‘tour’ style event. Entrants, solo or pairs, will ride some 400km on a journey from the mountains to the beach, from Thredbo in the Snowy Mountains to Narooma on the South Coast of NSW. The majority of the riding will be in race stages that will test the full range of mountain biking skills - uphill, downhill, cross country, marathon, riding under lights. Geez there will even be a short navigation stage and the potential of a task or two along the way to test riders mental faciltities! Whilst timed race stages will range in length from 5km to over 100km, there will also be a number of non timed, non race cruising stages along the way.
In announcing the event, Huw Kingston of Wild Horizons said:
‘When we announced the retiring of our 11 year old Polaris Challenge event in 2007, the reason was to allow us to run a stage race on mainland Australia in the month of March. Our Course Director Wayne Byard and myself have been working on Mountains to Beach for well over a year now. We’re really excited by the route and the riding we’ve pulled together and the partnerships we’re forming with host communities along the way. As with all our events, we’re putting on a professionally organized, challenging and fun race with the usual Wild Horizons slight offbeat elements included.’
Huw added:
‘It’s great to have BMC on board as the headline sponsor of the event and we will be announcing other major sponsors and host partners in the coming weeks. Our hope is that the event will establish itself as a ‘must do’ event on the Australian and international MTB calendar.’
Further details on The BMC Mountains To Beach will be available on www.wildhorizons.com.au in July
For additional information please contact Huw Kingston on 0418 977609 or huw [at] wildhorizons.com.au
(Ride posted: http://nobmob.com/node/5527)
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Could they have not picked a different month at least? Given the fact that the Alps Epic is 2 weeks after, I'm confused as to why organisers try to blatantly snub each other when the calendar isn't exactly bursting with events...
I actually thought it was the same race for a sec...
Seems like the Mtn to Beach organisers could have thought this one through a bit better in terms of timing. As far as the courses go, does anyone know what the 100 or 150km or so between the mountains and when you hit the coastal national parks is like? Cooma kind of area. The mountains for the whole race could be cool. It's all about how much singletrack there is for me, Wildside style.
Hey Junky tell my wife and kids that.
They think I have divorced them as it is now.
I like the idea of this race, at least its all down hill,
except for that climb out of Jindabyne.
Pikey
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Don't worry what other people are thinking,
because most of the time their not.
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As someone who does organise races I have to say that the calendar isn't exactly bursting with free weekends either. Specially when you take into account most organisers do other races as well (adventure, downhill, mtn X, whatever)and have work and family commitments.
No body likes clashing with other events and potentially lossing out on participants but at the end of the day as a organisier sometimes up just have to close your eyes and pick a weekend that suits *you* best and not worry about whats on the week after or whats happening in perth.
I'm not talking about a clash with an AR and MTN X event, for example. There would be few participants that would be wanting to do both of those type of events.
These are 2 events that are extremely similar in both duration and location and therefore would be more or less competing for the same potential participants. It is most likely that potential participants would only be able to enter one event. Given that there are very few staged MTB races, certainly in NSW, to ensure the success of both events (and other events like them) both from an organiser and sponsor point of view, there needs to be the maximum possible entrants and hopefully some form of media coverage. I highly doubt that these 2 events will be able to achieve both, mainly due to the similar scheduling.
The same goes for XC classics or 24hr races (I can't comment on the non- AR/XC/Enduro/Rogaine events as I don't participate in them)... there have been a few large and publicised events have been within 2 weeks apart.
Is there an organising body that coordinates the MTB calendar (or at least tries to) or is it too difficult as there are both MTBA and non-MTBA events? And I'm just referring to this at a state level, not the entire country.
Pikey - You have to stop using the old "I'm off to an MTB race/event" every time you duck off...
I'm saying a lot of organisers put on more than 1 type of event so even though you may have other free weekends that are better suited they may not.
MTBA cooridinates the National series calender. NSWMTB organises the NSW series calendar
As an example we currently have DH on the 1st or 2nd weekend of the month, xc on the 3rd weekend, and Mtn X on the 1st or 4th.
The WWS takes up another weekend and we haven't even added in club racing as yet. So lets say I help organise a DH, put on a clubbie, try to get to an 8hr to actually ride... as you can see there's not many weekends left for me to organise another event so as an organiser I'm going to pick a week end I have free and if it clashes with something else hope the punters prefer to come to my event.
As for cooredinating every MTB event put on, and ignoring there are about 27 clubs in NSw most of whom we don't hear from at all and there are regulations written in to the MTBA rule book about what event can and can't clash, most of the big events are put on by private promotors using their own insurance and so MTBA has no say whatsoever.