The BMC Mountains To Beach - 6 days of awesome mountain bike stage racing from the roof of Australia to the surf

Imagine a week of mountain biking, a week of racing, that will take you from the highest mountains in Australia, across snowgum lined plains, down along rainforest lined creeks and out to finish with your wheels in the sand and surf. Snaking singletrack, ‘wind through the helmet’ downhills, challenging uphills and some of the most varied scenery you could want.

Event promoter, Wild Horizons, are very excited to announce that the inaugural BMC Mountains To Beach will take place from 1-7 March 2009 and would like to welcome Swiss bike brand BMC aboard as Headline Sponsor of the event.

The BMC Mountains To Beach is a ‘tour’ style event. Entrants, solo or pairs, will ride some 400km on a journey from the mountains to the beach, from Thredbo in the Snowy Mountains to Narooma on the South Coast of NSW. The majority of the riding will be in race stages that will test the full range of mountain biking skills - uphill, downhill, cross country, marathon, riding under lights. Geez there will even be a short navigation stage and the potential of a task or two along the way to test riders mental faciltities! Whilst timed race stages will range in length from 5km to over 100km, there will also be a number of non timed, non race cruising stages along the way.

In announcing the event, Huw Kingston of Wild Horizons said:

‘When we announced the retiring of our 11 year old Polaris Challenge event in 2007, the reason was to allow us to run a stage race on mainland Australia in the month of March. Our Course Director Wayne Byard and myself have been working on Mountains to Beach for well over a year now. We’re really excited by the route and the riding we’ve pulled together and the partnerships we’re forming with host communities along the way. As with all our events, we’re putting on a professionally organized, challenging and fun race with the usual Wild Horizons slight offbeat elements included.’

Huw added:

‘It’s great to have BMC on board as the headline sponsor of the event and we will be announcing other major sponsors and host partners in the coming weeks. Our hope is that the event will establish itself as a ‘must do’ event on the Australian and international MTB calendar.’

Further details on The BMC Mountains To Beach will be available on www.wildhorizons.com.au in July

For additional information please contact Huw Kingston on 0418 977609 or huw@wildhorizons.com.au

source: Huw Kingston