GLASTO ON TWO WHEELS
We take a fond look back at the Malvern Hills Classic – the bike festival to end all bike festivals!
What happens when you take a few thousand mountain bikers, put them in a field and then add racing, music and alcohol into the mix? The Malvern Hills Classic, that’s what. For those too young to remember, the Classic was the closest mountain biking has ever got to a full-blown festival. It ran throughout most of the ’90s and was a three-day extravaganza of cross-country racing, dual slalom, downhill eliminator (aka 4X), dirt jumping, trials and plenty of, erm, extracurricular activities.
Growing in popularity each year, it was unfortunately the reputation of the Malvern Classic that resulted in its ultimate demise. The parties and laidback atmosphere started attracting some dodgy types and there was a string of incidents, including a stabbing, that meant 1998 was the last year the festival ran. We can’t let that put a downer on our memories though, and the good times far outweighed the bad.
In ’98 the British weather did its favourite thing and doused the Eastnor Park venue in biblical amounts of rain. But did we let that put a dampener on things? Hell no! In fact, the combination of mud, adrenaline and alcohol seemed to make people go a bit more mental, resulting in unofficial mudslide competitions and more than the usual amount of nakedness.
Muddy bar-to-bar racing was a guaranteed recipe for carnage, and it didn’t help matters that the organisers had built a huge wooden tabletop bridge jump, which became more slippery than a KY Jelly wrestling match! It was taking down riders left, right and centre, and the crowd were out in force, baying for blood. It was decided that the most sensible way to clean up afterwards was to hold a lake-jumping competition, followed by plenty of beers to warm back up again.
From there on our recollections are a bit hazy, and the rest probably isn’t suitable for print. Maybe we’re getting old and sentimental but we’d love to see a new event fill the shoes of ‘the Malverns’. Plans are afoot to revive the festival, so watch this space!