Jon Odams is fast. Like really fast.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s on a big burley enduro bike, a svelte XC rig or even something with curly bars and skinning tyres — if it has two wheels and pedals, Odams is going to make it go fast.
He’s a permanent fixture on the pointy end of pretty much every MTB stage race and gravel event. And if you didn’t see him on the front, it’s because he was racing somewhere else.
The 41-year-old is also the owner of two shiny new national champs jerseys — e-MTB and 24-hour solo. These make for an interesting mix sitting next to his U19s Downhill green and gold striped jumper from 2000.
Born and bred in the Sutherland area, Odams has been riding in the Royal National Park since the mid-90s and the network — both the authorised trails, and the not quite authorised trails — have shaped him into the allrounder that he is. Come along as Odams shows us the Royal National Park through his eyes. For more on what it’s like to ride here, head over to the Destination Hub.
The downhill days | Ride like Myles Rockwell
His first memories of riding in Royal National Park came after watching the 1995 MTB World Champs in Kirchzarten, Germany on TV, and the youngster was motivated to find some water bars to send it to the moon.
Five years later, he’d have a green and gold jersey and was on his way to Sierra Nevada, to race in the 2000 Junior World Champs, where he’d finish sixth overall.
“I wouldn’t say that Downhill back in those days was anywhere near as gnarly as it is now. It was more similar in some ways to some of the enduro stages, which the National Park has some really good, little downhill, real rocky sort of trails,” he says.
“I used to go out to do sections, so just do really repetitive practice over like 100m or 200m, to help hone my skills on really hard parts (of trail) — which might be difficult to carry speed, or corners or jumps,” says Odams.
Like every enthusiastic teenager, he would also watch his idols ride on TV and then go out on the trails and try to emulate their unique style.
“I remember being out riding with a couple of buddies who were racing national level, and I’d be like ‘oh, I’m going to ride this section real loose like Myles Rockwell,’ and they’d be like, ‘wow you can actually change your riding style to be like what you saw on TV,'” he laughs.
What started as a bit of fun and games turned into a skill that would allow him to adapt his approach to carry more speed. And he had the data to back it up. Long before the days of Strava, Odams had a stopwatch zip-tied to his bars, so he could time these sections to track his performance. His dad even manufactured a button out of PVC pipe that was attached where a dropper remote would be, so he could start and stop it without taking his hands off the bars.
The 24-hour solo champ | Who needs to brake anyway?
Back in the day, Odams owned a shop in Menai called Bike Culture. If that name sounds familiar, that’s because there is currently a shop in Canberra with the same name — a totally unrelated business. While running the Bike Culture south of Sydney, he was riding and racing the brands he stocked — Kona, Whyte, and Commencal to name a few.
Today his focus has shifted more to the endurance side of off-road racing, but when Odams first signed with Giant, it was for enduro.
“I would just go out and do a single trail like five times and work on things. Or when I was training, I would go and do three or four or five stages in the (National) Park — however many were in the race (I was training for) — to get my mind into the position where I have got to remember that many stages, and that many corners, and that much time worth of racing.
It’s a little bit of undervalued skill, that ability to memorise the track really well,” he says.
And when the sun went down over Lidsdale State Forest near Lithgow, in December 2022, this ability to remember a race track came into its own. This was Odams first appearance at 24-hour Solo Nationals since 2011, where he would beat ten-time 24-hour Solo National Champion and six-time 24-hour Solo World Champion Jason English by an entire lap.
During daylight hours, the lap times at the front of the field were tight, but as night fell, Odams’ lap times didn’t slow like everyone else. The gap to his closes competitor grew by five minutes.
“By the time it got dark, we’d already done like 18-laps. I could ride and not pay too much attention, and still be close to the maximum speed that I thought I was capable of on the course.
Odams hadn’t decided to pull the trigger on 24-hour nationals until October. His form was good after the Epic Series races, where he and pairs teammate Brendan ‘Trekky’ Johnston cleaned up, and the thought of green and gold stripes entered his mind.
“I really wanted to win a nationals jersey. I don’t know why. I just felt like I had to do it,” he said.
After toying with the idea of Masters TT, and CX nationals, neither of which eventuated, he headed for Wagga to race XCM Nationals, where he came fourth — Trekky would steal that green and gold jumper from him. So reverting back to his old habits of repeating a short section of trail over and over again, to extract every millisecond of speed, Odams created a 3-4km loop in the National Park.
“I think I went out there twice a week for the last couple of weeks before 24-hour nationals to get my light setup dialled and my corner speed and the pacing that I could ride at night. It wasn’t a lot of night riding, but it was the most beneficial that I could do,” he says.
You see, Odams has a regular 9-5 job, and a wife and two kids. Despite how he performs on the bike, he’s just a normal guy, and the way he tells it, he didn’t actually get fit until his children came into the world.
“I was wasteful with my time until I had kids. I want to go well at races, so if I have 10 hours of training I can squeeze in, let’s make that 10 hours count,” he says. “The efficiency on the bike matches my focus on the efficiency of the bike. You need to be efficient with your time. You need to use every advantage you can, and you need to look at where the value of the time you can put into training is. What is going to make the biggest difference when you’re out racing?”
Back in Lithgow, at about midnight, event organiser Martin Wisata came out for a lap with Odams and saw this efficiency first-hand.
“It was so weird. I asked him while we were out there, did someone dob on me for taking a shortcut or something? He was like, no, it’s not that at all,” says Odams. “Afterwards, he was like, ‘holy shit, you just don’t brake man. you just hold your speed out there.'”
E-bike nationals at Thredbo | Light but powerful
A month before 24-hour nationals, Odams went to Nowra for the NSW state champs, where he won the XCO and the e-Bike category — which was the only e-MTB race he’d ever done.
“The course was really flat down in Nowra, which was awesome, but it was a lot of work on the speed limiter (the 25kph cutoff). So a lot of strength was required to keep the bike over that limit,” he says.
For 2023, the AusCycling MTB National Championships were moved from Maydena to Thredbo. This got Odams thinking.
“Weight is going to come into it, and the descents are going to be more technical than what a common cross-country loop might be. It sort of brought the two things that I suppose I’m good at together. I’m light, so on an e-Bike, it’s really efficient, and I can ride uphill fast. Then the descent was like an old school downhill, like what I would have ridden and practised for in the National Park training for enduro and downhill.”
In e-Bike racing, weight, and more specifically watts/Kg, plays a big role — or how many watts a rider can produce per kilo of body weight. The drive units are limited to 250-watts of assistance and 25kph. It takes more watts to push heavier objects up a hill, so it’s going to be comparatively easy for a 60kg rider to hit the speed cutoff on a climb, whereas an 80kg rider is going to have to push as hard as they can to match pace.
He was right, and Odams went off the front of the race and was never seen again.
With his skill set, and a green and gold jersey on his shoulders, Odams is already looking further afield and weighing up a start at Worlds in Scotland.
He’s hoping to lean on the experience of Giant teammate and the only Aussie with e-XC World Cup (WES) racing experience, Josh Carlson, to help identify some local training grounds.
“He’s mentioned that a lot of the climbing is super technical on the e-Bike XC tracks. I’ll probably go out and do the same sections as what I did 20 years ago in the (Royal) National Park, but in the opposite direction,” he laughs
Photos: Chris Visvis / @chris_visvis