At the first Australian Mountain Bike Summit, held at Mt Buller, MTBA CEO Shane Coppin announced many new initiatives that the governing body are working towards for Australian mountain bikers. From making sure we have UCI C1 ranking events to better prepare and equip elite racers for World Cup competition, to increasing the flexibility of membership for non-competition riders, to making sure they will help oversee the governance of gravity enduro racing under the safety guidelines of MTBA.
Some of the most exciting news was the announcement that Australia will have a six race XCM Series in 2015. We already know that the Easter in the Alice stage race will host the first stage in April, and that the XCM National Championships will run at Derby in mid-May.
While the announcement of which races will make up the series is yet to come, we can take an educated guess at what round they might be.
Wombat 100
Race owner Henry van Heerden is a staunch supporter of a unified series, and his races have typically been part of an XCM Series since they started (in one guise or another) in 2011. This is likely to be part of the MTBA XCM Series.
Convict 100
Another race by Henry van Heerden, but instead of being close to Melbourne it’s close to Sydney. It’s popular, entries are open, and the course is new for 2015. This seems like an obvious inclusion.
XCM Champs
A possibility, although as a MTBA staff member pointed out, traditionally a championship event is not part of a series. So this might make it to get to 6, but that’s not a given, and given their comment seems unlikely.
Dwellingup 100
The race in WA is well established and Tony Tucknott is highly involved with MTBA and racing. It would be great to have a Westeran Australian round included in the series, despite the logistical nightmare for east coast bound MTBers.
Flight Centre Epic
Perhaps the longest running marathon in Australia, 2015 will be the 12th year the Epic runs at Grandchester, west of Brisbane. A great addition to the series for a race from Queensland.
But that is where it gets hard. With the Kowalski Classic and Highland Fling being win the Maverick Marathon Series in 2014, seemingly with great success, are we missing some races? MTBA have clearly announced that they are not interested in running events in the long term, they want to just provide governance and a framework – so it seems unlikely they would create a race for the series.
We’ll just have to wait and see if the 2015 MTBA XCM Series is the marathon series we’ve been waiting for, with great races, big fields, quality prize money, a good pointscore, and increased media support to promote it.