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The ten or so seconds between when Tracey Hannah went over the bars in her race run and when she finally got the wheels rolling again was the longest we can remember. She was on a blinder, and the collective feeling of shock which reverberated around the finish arena when she went flying into the vines […]
It was a truly amazing race. Sam Hill, the people’s champ, held the hot seat for over 50 riders before Mick Hannah strung together the perfect run and knocked him to the second step. It looked like an unbeatable ride, but Loic Bruni did it to us again here in Cairns, grabbing the rainbow stripes out […]
Watch Rainbow Warriors Day 1 here featuring the Junior XCO races, plus view our photo gallery here. Day 2 saw the U23 Men’s XCO action and some old school flash backs. Stay tuned to Flow’s Facebook all World Champs for daily episodes of Rainbow Warriors.
The final race of Saturday’s XCO bonanza, the Elite Men’s, was truly epic. The battle between Jaroslav Khulhavy, Thomas Litscher and Nino Schurter was intense; Khulhavy’s brutal pace couldn’t unsettle Schurter, who waited until deep in the final lap to hit the afterburners, ripping himself a gap on the climb and then storming the descent to […]
Australia’s squad of six elite women was headed up by Bec Henderson, along with Peta Mullens, Eliza Kwan, Kath Mcinerney, Anna Beck and Tori Thomas. Get into the dust below, with our huge photo gallery and grab the full results here.
Watch Rainbow Warriors Day 1 here featuring the Junior XCO races, plus view our photo gallery here. Want more action from the U23 Men’s XCO? Check out the photo gallery. Not wild enough? Check out our DH practice and seeding coverage here. Stay tuned to Flow’s Facebook all World Champs for daily episodes of Rainbow Warriors.
Check out our photo gallery from the Junior XCO races here. Stay tuned to Flow’s Facebook all World Champs for daily episodes of Rainbow Warriors.
Cameron Wright stormed the field today in the Junior Men’s, leaving a dusty, shellshocked train in his wake, riding the kind of aggressive race that was only going to end one way: with a gold medal around his neck. This is the first XCO World Championship won by an Aussie for over a decade, and […]
The downhill race track is also a little different to what riders were racing all season, with a steep and rocky start that flattens out toward the finish. That calls for some interesting tech to give the riders the best setup possible. With one quick wander about the pits, we saw some seriously cool stuff, […]
Updated spectator access – no more long way around to the juicy bits! Choose from six designated spectator zones for the best viewing of racing action, come find us at the Herbies Pocket Live Site above Jacobs Ladder if you’re thirsty. For more on the event – head to mtbworldscairns.com.au The DH track has received a lot of […]
Mountain Bike Australia (MTBA) are pleased to confirm the following riders selected to contest the 2017 UCI MTB World Championships in Cairns, Queensland 5th-10th September 2017. A team of 64 Australian cross-country and downhill riders will compete against the worlds best at the season ending event, held in Australia for the third time. Leading the […]
The team includes Junior National champions Baxter Maiwald (VIC) and Ellie Smith (NSW) and Oceania Champion Joshua Clark (NSW), as well as a number of world championship debutants. In the lead up to the world championships, a number of the squad will attend a four day training camp in Cairns with national team staff. JUNIOR […]
The 2017 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships are seeking volunteers for the World’s premier mountain biking event. The 6-day event will be held from the 5th to 10th September 2017 on the recently upgraded Smithfield Trails and will feature over 300 riders from 35 countries competing in the Cross-Country (XCO) and Downhill (DHI) disciplines. There […]
Today marks 50 days to go until the 2017 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in Cairns, held at Smithfield Regional Park, James Cook University from the 5 – 10 September 2017. With only two UCI World Cup events remaining before the world’s best mountain bike riders make their way to Australia’s iconic mountain biking destination in […]
This May is going to be an INSANE time in Cairns. Obviously, Crankworx is back and doubling as the Oceania DH Champs, but the week before, Smithfield is also hosting the Master’s World Champs — the first of a two year stint in Tropical North Queensland. Yes, this is the chance for you to relive […]
In 1996: – John Howard became Prime Minster of Australia for the first time. – After a court battle, the first series of Friends screens on the Seven Network, almost two years after it premiered in the United States. – Osama Bin Laden is expelled from Sudan and moves to Afghanistan. – Prince Charles and […]
When Michael Ronning was in his heyday in the ’90s — when this writer was still learning how to read — he was mixing it up with the likes of Shaun Palmer, Brian Lopes, Tomas Misser, and Steve Peat — and beating most of them, too! One of Australia’s early pro-Downhillers, his career at the […]
After a bumper year in Thredbo, hitched onto the Cannonball Mountain Bike Festival in 2023, the AusCycling MTB Nationals roadshow is headed for Lake Macquarie. Awaba will play host to the 2024 GWM National Championships, covering off XCO, short track, XC relay, pump track, e-MTB and adaptive categories. The Hunter Mountain Bike Association has been […]
*This story has been updated on April 16 with new information about Slopestyle Grab some sunscreen and your best party shirt because Crankworx is returning to Cairns May 22-26, 2024. Yes, that means it’s only a few days after the UCI Masters World Championships, which also descends on Cairns from May 16-19. Oh, and did […]
Crankworx is back babeeee, and the world’s best freeride athletes have set a course for Cairns this May, with the festival running from May 17-21. “Now hang on just one minute,” we can hear you saying. “Wasn’t Crankworx just here?” It sure was, with the festival landing in Aus for the first time back in […]
Having hosted World Cups, World Champs, and now Crankworx, the pedigree of the terrain and trails at Smithfield Mountain Bike Park is undeniable. About 20min from the Cairns CBD, nestled in the rainforest behind James Cook University, are approximately 40km of singletrack, ranging from family-friendly green trails to DH runs that will test the most […]
Among the crocodiles and the cassowaries, Cairns will play host to a Crankworx World Tour stop from October 5-9, 2022. The idea to bring Crankworx to Australia has been bubbling away in the background since just after the World Championships rolled through Cairns in 2017. Matt Hilton from GTR Events — which ran the Cairns […]
With the World Championships to be held in Val Di Sole, Italy, from 25-29 August 2021, AusCycling has now confirmed athlete selections for Junior, U23 and Elite XC, and Junior and Elite DH. There have also been tweaks to the wording of AusCycling’s position statement on riders racing abroad, which means more of the selected […]
If you have been following mountain bike racing for a while, there is a good chance you know about Smithfield. You have probably seen video clips of riders on rigid bikes, with skinny bars and bar ends, hanging on for dear life as they tried to navigate the trails. More recently, you will have seen […]
Australia currently has seven riders across both disciplines ranked in the top 20 in the world. Eleven-time National champion Tracey Hannah (Polygon UR) is one of the favourites in the elite women’s downhill after claiming two World Cup wins so far this season in Leogang, Austria and Les Gets, France. Hannah is also the current […]
Kye A’Hern (AUS) ensured the Australian team would walk away from the 2018 UCI MTB World Championships with a silver lining after finishing second in the junior men downhill on Sunday at Lenzerheide, Switzerland. More than 20,000 spectators flooded through the gates on the final day to bring the total number of fans attending the […]
This course is really living up to its reputation as a breaker of bikes and bodies, but Sam Gaze had no troubles taming it. In fact the only thing that seemed to worry him today was the cork on his champagne bottle, blasting him in the face on the podium. The Aussie contingent was led […]
Elite Men (Timed Session) 1. Mick Hannah – 3:30.620 – AUS 2. Loïc Bruni – 3:31.730 3. Jack Moir – 3:32.870 – AUS 4. Aaron Gwin – 3:33.120 5. Rudy Cabirou – 3:34.810 … 12. Sam Hill – AUS 21. Connor Fearon – AUS 24. Josh Button – AUS 30. Dean Lucas – AUS 37. Jake […]
Finals Highlights Women’s Final Watch Tahnee Seagrave’s winning run Men’s Final Watch Aaron Gwin’s winning run Val di Sole Results Women 1. Tahnee Seagrave GBR 2. Myriam Nicole FRA 3. Tracey Hannah AUS 4. Rachel Atherton GBR 5. Eleonora Farina ITA Men 1. Aaron Gwin USA 2. Amaury Pierron FRA 3. Loic Bruni FRA 4. […]
Know where to look for final approach, and you can see the trails, including the famous downhill start gate with its views out to the reef. The sun strikes the window. I’d left the concrete of Sydney in the dark, and now I’m about to touchdown in a paradise seemingly never touched by cold. If […]
Under 23 Men The young fellas got it started this early morning, with a strong Australian contingent in the Under 23 men’s race. Scotty Bowden gritted his teeth and hung on for seventh place, the best placed Australian. Trek Australia and the TORQ Merida team had a stack of strong performances too, and massive praise […]
The day started in soggy fashion, riders emerging from the downhill track coated in filth, which sent mechanics from the more well-resourced teams into a frenzy of mud-proofing. Spike tyres, silicone spray, moto-foam in every crevice – it was all about making the bikes shed mud. The particular blend of Cairns mud is so gloopy, […]
Mountain Bike Australia is pleased to announce the Australian XCO and DHI junior team to take part at their respective 2016 World Championships. Eight riders have been selected to represent Australia in the U19 Downhill team for the World Championships to be held in Val Di Sole, Italy in September, while six athletes were selected […]
Chris Panozzo (VIC) and Em Parkes (ACT) have been crowned as the inaugural Mountain Bike Enduro Australian Champions at a thrilling event presented by Mountain Bike Australia in Palm Cove, Far North Queensland. The Enduro discipline, also known as Gravity Enduro, has been Mountain Biking’s fastest growing competitive category in recent years. The popularity stems […]
The UCI announce the 2016 World Cup and World Champs calendar, diaries out, it’s time to book flights to Cairns! April 9-10 Apr UCI MTB WORLD CUP – DHI Lourdes FRA 23-24 Apr UCI MTB WORLD CUP – XCO – DHI Cairns AUS May 21-22 May UCI MTB WORLD CUP – XCO Albstadt GER 28-29 […]
Rob Warner: “Is there a detective at the finish line, because Brosnan just murdered that course” Troy Brosnan’s maiden world cup win, at possibly the toughest world cup course on the circuit, Fort William, has been a long time in the making. Two times junior world champion, and a protégé on team Specialized with some […]
The colourful Cairns mountain bike crew deserve a lot credit for the fantastic state of Australian mountain biking today. Back in the 1990s, up in the rainforests of the Kuranda range, a wild bunch on mountain bikes began blazing their own trail. They were developing mountain biking in their own sweaty microcosm, not caring a damn […]
Miguel Martinez, the 38 year old French Cross County rider is best known to the Australian mountain bike community for his strong rivalry to Cadel Evans through the 90s and taking a Gold Medal at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. He then went on to form a part of the French domination of the World Cup, […]
Tropical North Queensland, where everything can kill you, and will probably try… including Mother Nature. After covering the rocks in mud for yesterday’s downhill, the sun came out in backpacker-blistering force today, right in time to cook the world’s best cross country racers. On went the ice vests and out went the mud on a rapidly […]
Mountain biking may not have been born in Cairns, but once its tyres gained purchase in the fertile dirt and steamy greenhouse temperatures of Australia’s loosest state, it grew like a cane toad on steroids into something radical, magical and downright dangerous. Not many realised it at the time, caught as they were amid the […]
World Trail lifted the barriers off the course for a day of track testing and previewing, Tracey Hannah takes a roll down the track with her Sony Action Cam. With a wet season bringing extraordinary amounts or rain between now and the big race in April, World Trail have built a course designed to withstand […]
“Meet me at Birdie Beach at 5:30,” the text message said. Birdie Beach is over an hour away from Mick’s Flow HQ; it will be a long day. Mick spends a day with Jack Moir. An early start and an odd venue to meet up with professional mountain biker, but Jack Moir isn’t your typical […]
Dan MacMunn Reviews The 2020 GT Force 29 Expert GT as a brand has always been a bit special for me. One of the first bikes I owned, certainly my first dual suspension bike, back in the 90’s was a GT RTS – one of the original dual suspension mountain bikes. That raw alloy beast, […]
The introduction of automated electronics is a bold move by FOX, with the ultimate goal to make a create a more efficient ride experience without any input from the rider. No stranger to electronics, this is advanced technology FOX have experience in from their off-road vehicle division, now it’s our turn for the magical wizardry […]
In this interview, I talked with Mick and Tracey Hannah, two of Australia’s top downhill riders. At the time, both riders were fresh off their successes at the 2017 World Championships in Cairns, their home track. From your perspective, is riding about legs and body, or is it your head? Which is more important? Mick […]
But in recent months, Dean has taken up another cause, throwing his support behind two of Australia’s most successful mountain bikers, Dan McConnell and Bec Henderson. Motion have developed a brand new line of kit, the Inspire #becanddan range, with all profits from the sale of every item going directly towards supporting our two leading XCO races to […]
They’re here to stay To be frank, we’ve heard it all before. Every mountain biker and their Nanna quickly formed an opinion about e-MTBs when Specialized first launched the Turbo Levo. Grannies were divided into those who frustrated their offspring by continually confusing the terms “mountain bike” and “dirt bike”, and those who, until then, […]
Grant Allen is a rowdy mountain biker. One of the early Red Bull Rampage riders, Allen, sustained a spinal cord injury in 2011 overshooting a roughly 20m road gap. But the injury hasn’t stopped the Adelaide local from pushing the limits of what he can do on a bike. Aside from being a multi-time Australian […]
Mick recounts his epic week at the Reef to Reef “Who’s that silly guy wearing long pants? He must have juuuust stepped off the plane.” I arrived in Cairns for the third running of the Reef to Reef MTB, and I was delighted to be there. Leaving a very damp and dreary wintery Newcastle behind […]
“I still get goosebumps about the whole bloody thing,” says Cairns local and World Trail Founder Glen Jacobs. “All of these years later, to see our little park in Cairns (Smithfield) still growing and evolving is crazy.” Smithfield put Cairns on the map, playing host to the worlds biggest events, and with Crankworx coming to […]
Back in the early days, mountain bikers in Cairns were a different breed to riders everywhere else in Australia. Their uniqueness was never more evident than in 1990 when all eight Cairns Mountain Bike Club members packed up the Tarago and set sail for the Australian Mountain Bike Championships in Stromlo. “We’d been practising for […]
After two years of bike bags everywhere toiling in sheds, garages and back closets, it’s well and truly time to dust them off and set sail for trails over yonder. We’ve been itching for an excuse to head back to Rotorua and get lost in the Whaka forest, and we think we’ve found it. There […]
The last few years have been difficult for event organisers, but things are beginning to look up, and it is a damn good time to get into mountain bike stage racing here in Australia. With a range of new events popping up for 2022, and some classics returning after the 2020/2021 forced hiatus, there are […]
The Australian Olympic Committee has just announced who will be pulling on their green and gold skinsuits at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Dan McConnell becomes the first Australian mountain biker to have been selected to race in four Olympic Games — Beijing in 2008, London in 2012, Rio in 2016 and Tokyo in 2021. Bec […]
After a week of dry and dusty conditions, the clouds began to gather above Abbotts Peak at the 2021 XC nationals in Maydena, and Tasman Nankervis knew he’d made a mistake. “The week before I left for nationals, I was talking to the guys at Michelin, and they asked if I wanted mud tires. They […]
30 years ago, someone thought it might be a bright idea to take a mountain bike up the Thredbo chairlift and ride down the enormous mountain. And as it turned out, not such a bad idea at all, and the beginning of brake-melting history. In this three-part series and videos, we reflect on three decades […]
Whoa, exhale, 2019, done, finito, 12 months in the bag. It has been an absolutely momentous year for the tiny powerhouse Flow Mountain Bike. Reflecting on what exactly made it so eventful by choosing key highlights is a pleasing way to remind us of how fortunate we are to work with talented people on amazing […]
August sucks to be a bike rider in Australia unless you live way up north or you’re into those weird indoor things where you ride around going nowhere, through an artificial landscape in a fake hyper-coloured world with lots of numbers and computer-generated people that look like robotic mannequins from Alex The Kid. Everyone is […]