THE GREAT ESCAPE

By the time you read this, the first World Cup Downhill will have been run and won, and (rain withstanding) it wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch to think that a big wheeled bike would power onto the podium. I feel bad for saying this, but the intrigue surrounding such a technological shift has been great for both fans and riders. Consumer interest in mountain biking is on the rise, with live race feeds now delivered into our homes or sweaty palms anywhere in the world (save for the frequent RedBull TV hiccup). In turn, the popularity is growing to an extent where we are seeing interest from outside the traditional flannel-wearing base we have come to know. The formula is simple and makes for captivating viewing - each rider using every skill and trick they possess to tame some of the hardest terrain on the planet, while seemingly defying physics with the pace they can reach. All of that is done knowing there’s a massive risk of being ejected into the stratosphere should he or she wander more than a centimetre off it. It’s great to watch and this is what World Cup bike racing has always been about. It’s been more than seven months since we witnessed a live World Cup round though, and it’s becoming pretty tiring dragging out a years’ worth of social media posts from just seven or eight World Cups. Don’t worry, I’m not about to bore you with a grandpa article about social media, or a piece on why we need more races, or how it’s hard to keep an audience’s attention when you are only showing one event every third or fourth weekend. Life inside the World Cup circus can sometimes be like a bubble, with all possible distractions put to one side and the bigger pictures of life puton hold in the pursuit to be the fastest rider on the planet. This time of year, it’s always good to reflect on life outside the bubble, given that today as I write, it’s Anzac Day. I recently read an article by Mat Oxley, of MotorSport Online fame, on the International Six Day Trials, a motorbike enduro dating back to the early 1900s. It’s famous for the challenging routes and supreme tests it places on both rider and machine. It can be somewhat hard to break out of the bubble of racing for those that live and breathe it, but as you will read below in an excerpt from that original article, some escapes are harder than others. Oxley wrote: “There’s probably never been a time when global events interrupted the sport more rudely than they did in August 1939, when many of the world’s best riders were contesting the