The Quad Crown is back again with its series of four mini stages racing hitting NSW, Queensland, and Tasmania. Aimed at the weekend warrior, each of these events is designed to be more approachable than some of the longer format marathon races like Cape to Cape — which was founded by this very same group of people.
Now in its third year, the Quad Crown is hitting its stride and further refining the courses and runs sheet of bite-sized multi-day events. With the goal of taking riders to new destinations and giving them a guided tour of the best trails, these events are a great opportunity to grab your family or a few mates and spend a weekend riding somewhere new — even if you’re not aiming for the pointy end of the field.
We caught up with Race Director Jason Dover to see what’s new for this year and what you can expect when you don a Quad Crown number plate.
Jump to info on:
The Black Pearl | Newcastle & Hunter Valley, NSW | 7-9 March 2025
The Sunny 80 | Sunshine Coast, QLD |6-8 June 2025
The Orca | Eden, NSW | 12-14 September 2025
The Wild Penguin | Devonport, TAS | 31 October – 2 November 2025
The Mystic Yack | Bright, Beechworth and Yackandandah, VIC | 6-8 March 2026
What is the Quad Crown?
As we alluded, the people behind the Quad Crown are the same faces that pioneered the Cape to Cape and the dearly departed Port to Port.
While the multi-day racing element in fantastic locations around the country is a cornerstone of Quad Crown, these are expressly designed to be mini-stage races.
“We’re very conscious in terms of the format and what we’re trying to deliver, in that we’re really tailoring these events to the weekend warrior,” says Dover.
He explains the format is designed to give people a taste of what it’s like to participate in these large-scale events, but in a more approachable format that doesn’t require the same level of fitness or a week of annual leave.
With two-and-a-half days of racing on the agenda across a ~10km prelude and two stages — totalling about 30-35km each — now that each of the venues has been raced a couple of times, Dover and Course Director Liam McGuire continue to refine each stage based on not only the trail conditions when they arrive but also feedback they have received over the past two years.
In addition to the racing, the team also puts on family-friendly social events every day where folks can kick back with a burger and beverage and share war stories from the day.
“We’ve seen a lot of people coming to these events and sharing the journey with a few mates, but also bringing their family. It’s a really family-accessible event, with spectator spots out on course, and families are welcome at the social functions. We make it as open and inclusive as possible,” he says.
The other key thing is that while it’s a series, you don’t have to ride every event. You can pick one or two in destinations you want to check out, or you can race them all. Heck, you can race a single stage at one event if you’d like.
The Warrior Crown
What makes the Quad Crown unique is the Warrior Crown, which is based on a handicapping system. The idea is to give everyone something to compete for regardless of where they are in the overall standings and an opportunity to stand on the podium if they nail it.
“You have to do the prelude to set your handicap, which is then applied for stages one and two. I keep coming back to the golf handicap system—if you can play to your handicap on the day, you get a really good score,” says Dover.
Your handicap is set based on the time you set in the prelude. Based on that time they extrapolate your average speed and compare that to the rest of the field. Then, over the following two stages, the rider who has ridden the closest to their initial handicap or improved the most wins the Warrior Crown. And yes, you do get an actual crown.
As an example, Dover went back into the results for the Orca and pulled the stats for the rider who won the Warrior Crown.
“He rode the prelude in 22-minutes, and the overall prelude average was 27-minutes. On stage one, he rode in an hour and 41 minutes and 38 seconds. The overall average was two hours and two minutes. Based on the handicap system, we expected him to ride stage in one hour, 41 minutes and 55 seconds — so he was 17 seconds off his expected time,” says Dover.
This same rider followed up in stage two nine seconds below his handicap, with an expected fishing time of one hour, 53 minutes and eight seconds, making for a combined difference of 26 seconds over the two stages.
With that, he had the smallest gap to his handicap and earned the Warrior Crown at The Orca.
The Black Pearl | Newcastle & Hunter Valley, NSW | 7-9 March 2025
With the Black Pearl kicking off the series at the start of March, this year’s event takes on a new significance in 2025 with Port to Port first moved to Southeast Queensland and then eventually shuttered.
“Newcastle and the Hunter Valley has always been a place we love to run our events, and it’s also the hometown for two of our directors (Sally Hill and Liam McGuire),” says Dover. “We’ve always been conscious of not going head to head with Port to Port if it was going to come back. Now those decisions have been made and it does feel like it’s a different territory now.”
Dover tells us that since the announcement that Port to Port would no longer be based in Newcastle, the local community has rallied behind The Black Pearl.
The event kicks off at Glenrock with a 9km prelude starting and finishing at the Gun Club Road trailhead, and the course will be familiar to folks who raced last time around.
“It’s hard not to do a good 9km prelude course at Glenrock, because it’s just so good and such a great venue. There won’t be many changes to the course design because of the way the park is set up—it just worked so well,” says Dover.
Then it’s off to The Beach Hotel in Merryweather for the presentation and welcome event.
The following morning, stage one will kick off at Awaba, but for this year, the race will start at Mist In the Gums Eco Luxury cabins.
“Awaba is such a hidden gem. Obviously, the locals know about it, and hardcore mountain bikers know about it, but I think the general punter coming to Newcastle and the Hunter Region for the first time is going to leave this place with a massive smile on their face.
McGuire has built a 30km loop that takes in 600m of climbing, and the new start-finish venue has allowed him to create a stage that will flow a bit better and help to manage traffic on the singletrack.
“Last year, we chose to start from the car park, and it was probably a bit more of a confined course. We needed a big climb in the middle to break the riders up. The event was in November, and it was a really hot day, and it cooked a lot of riders,” says Dover. “It was a tough day on the bike.”
Awaba has had a heap of trail work since The Black Pearl last ran in 2022, and with that brutal fire road climb axed from the course, they can focus on trails like Polly Wallfy, Skids for Kids, Tunnel of Love, Biraban and Faulk Line.
Presentations and the social function for the day will be at Mist in the Gums, and there will be a race village with a coffee cart, pizza truck and car bar. There’s even a pool, so bring your togs and go for a post-stage dip.
Stage two we’ve dubbed a Tour De Newcastle, and McGuire has flexed his course design muscles to create a 35km loop taking in Whitebridge, Redhead, Fernleigh and Glenrock, starting and finishing at the Royal Crown Hotel in Dudley.
“Glenrock is quite contained, and there aren’t a ton of options as to what you can do to change up the alignment and build a stage. But coming from the south, going up and back again allows you to incorporate Redhead and Whitebridge on a full assortment of trails to make the whole thing really diverse,” Dover says.
Dover tells us McGuire has done a heap of work along with a crew of local riders to clean up the trails and get everything looking schmick.
Registration is open now, and then the event is quickly approaching! Head over to the Quad Crown site for more info.
Related:
The Sunny 80 | Sunshine Coast, QLD |6-8 June 2025
*Update: On April 2, Event Director Sally Hill shared the unfortunate news that The Sunny 80 would be cancelled.
“We have had to make the very difficult decision to cancel the 2025 Sunny 80. After consultation with National Parks and Council, we have been advised that the damage done by the rainfall of Cyclone Alfred and the last weekend, the trails are not going to be in a position to allow an event to run anytime soon,” she told Flow.
Hill tells us registered riders will be entitled to a full refund or can transfer their entry to a different event on the calendar.
For the second stop of the 2025 series, the Quad Crown crew pulls the anchor, hoists the mainsail and charts a course for Queensland for The Sunny 80 on the Sunshine Coast.
The Sunny 80 is one of the OG Quad Crown events. However, there are some significant changes on the agenda for 2025.
This year, the prelude will occur at Ferny Forest instead of Sugarbag. According to Dover, it was a difficult decision as they love the trails at Sugarbag, but from a race logistics point of view and convenience for folks driving in, it just made a bit more sense.
“We were running a split stage on Sunday, and it was working, and everyone liked it. But, we decided we didn’t want to roll out that format again. So Liam and myself put in a fair bit of work in Dularcha National Park and Ewen Maddock Dam and what we could do to create a stage that would get us to around the 30km mark. And we kind of cracked the code,” he says.
With that, we can reveal that the second stage, which is currently shrouded in mystery on the Quad Crown website, will start and finish at the Mooloolaba Country Club and will feature the trails around Ewen Maddock Dam and the Dularcha railway tunnel. But that left the course team wondering what to do with the Ferny Forest loop.
“I think it was Paul Van Der Ploeg who described it as ‘you feel like you’re in a scene out of Star Wars flowing through the forest.’ It’s just about purpose-built for a time trial format. It’s a great start to the weekend for all the riders, on a super fun loop in amazing scenery,” he says.
With the prelude at Ferny Forest, stage one will return to Parklands. According to Dover, the 30km route was such a hit last year that they only plan to make minor adjustments based on weather and trail conditions as things are finalised.
“Credit to Course Director Liam; he absolutely nailed the stage last year. Even locals who had ridden at Parklands for 20 years said it was the best ride they’d ever had and didn’t even know where they were halfway through the stage,” he says.
As Dover outlined at the top, the final stage will return to Ewen Maddock Dam and Dularcha National Park for a 30 km loop.
The Quaddy team is working away on this event and the routes will be finalised and published about a month out from the race. We’ll update here with more information as it comes to light.
Stay tuned folks!
Related:
The Orca | Eden, NSW | 12-14 September 2025
According to Dover, The Orca is the epitome of what they set out to create with the Quad Crown series.
“Going to a destination like Eden, on the South Coast of New South Wales, a place most people had never heard of. Going somewhere where they’d just built 70km of singletrack within 10km of town and then having Tathra just a bit further up the coast. It’s such an awesome complement to what’s in Eden for a weekend of stage racing,” he says.
It also helps that the Sapphire Coast is a pretty speccy part of the world and is well set up for visitors with plenty of cafes, restaurants, accommodation and the odd deserted white sand beach primed for a post-stage swim.
Dover tells us that Eden was pretty dialled from the start, and there won’t be many course changes here.
The prelude will once again kick off from the trailhead for a 9km loop. In previous editions, this figure-eight route has been overwhelmingly described as ‘flowy’ by riders with massive grins on their faces.
Stage one heads up to Tathra for a 35km loop, starting and finishing at the picturesque Tathra hotel. Riders will pedal from the ocean into the Bundadung trails and then sprint back towards coast. The old-school handbuilt trails around Tathra provide a lovely contrast to the modern machine-built masterpiece Contour Works has assembled in Nullica State Forest near Eden.
To cap off The Orca, it’s back to Gravity Eden for another 30km loop. Staring at the infamous Hotel Australasia, riders will roll out of the main drag in town. As with stage one, the course will be similar to last year, capped off by the EPIC 8km Round the Outside wilderness descent.
As with the Sunny 80, courses aren’t finalised until about a month before the event so that the Quaddy team can ensure everything is running beautifully ahead of the event. We’ll update with more info as it becomes available.
Related:
The Wild Penguin | Devonport, TAS | 31 October – 2 November 2025
The final stop of the 2025 Quad Crown series goes south to Tassie for the Wild Penguin. Shifting this event to the back of the order was strategic, as it now falls on Melbourne Cup Weekend, which also happens to be the Recreation Day long weekend in Tassie.
Dover explains that because of its location, The Wild Penguin is an event that requires a bit more travel logistics and some planning for folks who want to ride. Being able to line up the public holidays for riders from two states was a nice bit of luck in easing some of that planning.
This year, the prelude and both stages will be hosted at the Wild Mersey trail network. Dover tells us they have been working hard to bring a full stage to Penguin to hit the Iron Tor descent. However, they have come up against land tenure issues that haven’t allowed them to pull the trigger. Last year, they ran the prelude in Penguin, and while folks loved it, the feedback they received was that it was difficult for interstate riders to get there in time for the start on Friday afternoon.
However, Dover tells us that a new trail in the works should solve this problem for next year and allow them to run the Saturday stage in Penguin.
So, in the meantime, the event has been centralised around the Wild Mersey trails.
“I think it’s still Tassie’s best-kept secret,” Dover says. “Having the whole weekend based around those trails really allows us to focus the event on those really high-end, well-known trails that have been built.”
The prelude will head for the Warrawee end of the trail network, meaning that those making the journey over on the Spirit of Tasmania can literally ride from the dock to the start. This also makes it a straight shot up the highway for people travelling in from Launceston or Hobart.
Saturday and Sunday will both start at the Seven Sheds brewery in Railton, and riders will be sent into the Wild Mersey trail network. While the courses won’t be released until about a month before the event, we’re told that stage one will include the 10km Raptor Ridge descent.
“The start and finishing line will literally be at the brewery, and then the stages will be different iterations of those stages we designed across the Wild Mersey trails for the first couple of events,” Dover says.
Related:
The Mystic Yack | Bright, Beechworth and Yackandandah, VIC | 6-8 March 2026
The Quad Crown has a deck of five events that originally came out of having to pivot twice as the trails in Omeo weren’t quite ready to host The Big O. The Black Pearl was the first, and The Mystic Yack came to be last year, featuring the Indigo Epic Trail, Mystic Bike Park and the Yack Tracks.
“We decided to announce that as our first event for 2026 because we ran it in 2024, and it was such a hit we didn’t want everyone to go. ‘Where’s it gone?’” says Dover.
While the Mystic Yack is locked in for next year, Dover tells us they’re still working with the folks in Omeo to bring the Quad Crown to the trail network on Sam Hill. He even teased the possibility of a Victorian doubleheader, though this is far from confirmed just yet.
Being the Quad Crown, the intention was only ever to host four events per year, but having five or six events on the roster means they can keep things fresh and rotate through the lineup.
Registration for the Quad Crown events is open now, and you can sign up for one, two, or all of them if you’d like. Head over to the Quad Crown website for more.
Related:
- Flow Destination Hub | Beechworth, VIC
- Flow Destination Hub | Bright, VIC
- Flow Destination Hub | Yackandandah, VIC
Editorial Guidelines
At Flow Mountain Bike, we’re committed to delivering engaging and trustworthy content, from product reviews to destination showcases, news, interviews, and features. While many of the brands and destinations we cover may advertise with us, our editorial team operates independently, ensuring our content is guided by expertise and passion—not commercial influence. Sponsored content is always clearly disclosed, and we remain dedicated to providing honest and unbiased coverage across everything we publish. For more details, see our Transparency Report.