First round of Shimano Trail Born to cover cost of handbuilt trail in Blue Derby

With its new Trail Born initiative, Shimano has committed $1 million USD per year for the next decade to mountain bike trail projects and advocacy organisations. Put simply, Shimano wants to build mountain bike trails, fund maintenance, and expand trail access to create more opportunities for riders, young and old, to ride their bikes.

The initial rollout of this funding will focus on select areas in North America, Europe, and Australia. The first release of funding will pay for a long-talked-about hand-built trail in Blue Derby. This trail will be launched in 2025 as part of the network’s 10-year anniversary.

Shimano says it plans to add Asia, Africa, New Zealand, and Central and South America to the list of places where trails are being built from 2026.

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Aiming to support the grassroots of mountain biking

Toby Shingleton from Shimano Australia tells us that the goal is to highlight the sport’s grassroots and create opportunities that are completely separate from racing or the high-performance side of the sport.

“We invest a lot in the high levels — we’re big partners with the UCI and things like that — and the reality is, that’s not for everybody. Not everybody is interested in (racing) or follows it. I think people can be inspired by it for sure, but it’s harder to connect down to where people get into the sport or how it’s growing,” he says.

With mountain biking’s growth, the focus on infrastructure quality and availability has become more apparent. While the no-dig-no-ride mentality has long been the mantra of the old guard, maintenance programs and trail building are growing up.

“People are finding it harder to get involved; they’ve got other things going on with kids, school, sports, work, and everything. It’s hard to go out there and fit everything in for a lot of mountain bikers, and a lot of the trail maintenance programs are becoming more formalised,” he says.

Trail Born is also being announced alongside the new Anthill Productions movie Anytime which is premiering at Crankworx Whistler. The movie has a Trail Born segment, and the trail in the film was built as part of this initiative.

In collaboration with mountain bike clubs around the country, Shimano Australia is also supporting screenings of the new movie as a vehicle for local mountain bike organisations and advocacy groups to bring riders together and fundraise for trail maintenance.

“It’s a fun thing to have a movie to bring people together, raise a bit of awareness and hopefully raise a little bit of money for their trails,” he says.

Why Derby?

Shingleton says that when he found out that Shimano was creating the Trail Born fund, it was originally going to be limited to North America and a little bit of Europe. Not wanting our region to miss out, he was on the lookout for a trail project that would garner attention but was also waiting in the wings to break ground.

“I think when people see these sorts of announcements from corporations, there is a bit of scepticism attached to it — and rightly so. I wanted to have something ready to go, and have something we could be building in the first phase,” he says.

There have been rumblings of a hand-built trail in Blue Derby for quite some time — we first reported on it in 2022.

As it turns out behind the scenes the gears had been turning to get the required approvals and designs for such a trail.

“Originally, it was going to be built for the EWS, but because of the landslide and continued bad weather basically it just never got around to getting built. Then with the money that had been put into other things, you know, there was no, there was no funding from the Council left to do it,” he says.

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So, the Blue Derby Foundation put together a proposal to send to Shimano US, which was driving the first round of funding, to consider.

(Eds Note: Shingleton is a member of the Board of Directors of the Blue Derby Foundation, and Shimano is a supporter of the trail network)

“Given Derby had something that was in some ways ready to go, I asked them (The Blue Derby Foundation) to put a proposal together, and we’re lucky that they (Shimano US) decided to support it in the first round,” he says.

While the funding will cover the cost of the trail build, one of the requests in the proposal was that a component of the funding be held back and given over three years to cover the maintenance after the initial break in period.

“There is a lot of appeal to something that’s old-school in (the primarily machine-built) Derby. And obviously, with the learnings that these trail builders have with modern techniques, I think there is going to be an interesting mashup of the past and the present,” he says.

Chris Cafe, Chair of the Blue Derby Foundation, is proud to see a project of this scale delivered in Derby.

This is the next stage in the evolution of Derby and its trail network,” he said.

“A recent visitor survey showed statistics that introducing new trails on a regular basis encourages riders to come back and ride Derby again and again,” Cafe says. “This new slimline build will add extra feel to the wide range of trail options available in the region and is situated next door to popular descent trail Flickity Sticks running almost parallel and accessed via shuttles from Black Stump or the existing climbing track.”

How do you nominate a project for Trail Born?

This Shimano initiative is not a one-off to fund a single project, and Shingleton says there will be scope for Shimano to consider proposals from projects in other areas going into 2025.

While there isn’t a golden set of criteria against which these submissions will be judged there are a few things that will help a project’s changes.

“Ideally, we want projects where we can build the maximum amount of trail for the minimum amount of cash. Our goal is to build trail, so our benchmark is to try and build as many kilometres as possible,” he says.

He also notes that underserved regions will likely garner attention, as will building infrastructure that riders of all levels can enjoy.

“It’s great to have high-end trails for really advanced riders, but one of our provisions as a manufacturer is to grow and support mountain biking. So having trails that are more accessible to people getting into riding bikes is something that we would take into consideration because we want more people riding bikes,” he says.

That said, there are a few guidelines: They can only fund legal trails, and they need to work with partners who have a history of trail building, especially in the nominated area.

“We want to eliminate any grey area where a trail we have funded becomes unrideable or has been built in an area where mountain bike trails aren’t allowed,” he says.

Shimano is building out a website and submission portal, which will launch soon, but Shingleton says in the meantime to reach out directly to Shimano AU if you have a proposal.