Epic hosts 2006 Australian MTB Marathon Championship
The first ever Australian MTB Marathon Championship will be held in September this year as part of the Flight Centre Cycle Epic to be held near Toowoomba in South East Queensland.
In an Australian first for the sport of mountain biking the nation’s peak mountain biking body, Mountain Bike Australia (MTBA), endorsed the Flight Centre Cycle Epic as the inaugural 2006 Australian MTB Marathon Championship.
Cycle Epic co-managers Peter Creagh and Tod Horton are delighted MTBA has endorsed the Epic as the official Australian MTB Marathon Championship.
“The Epic is the perfect event for the national Championships – the race format, its infrastructure, and the team that’s driven its success over the last three years makes it a first class event by any standard,” Epic Co-manager Peter Creagh said.
“Since the event began in 2003 it has grown into one of the largest mountain bike events in the Asia Pacific region,” Peter Creagh said.
“It’s regarded as one of the toughest single endurance events on the cycling calendar making it the ideal event for first Australian MTB marathon Championship.”
Epic Co-manager Tod Horton said the Australian MTB Marathon Championship is a coup for Queensland and importantly the sport of mountain biking.
“It means the Epic will provide the winning open elite riders the national title for that category and the right to represent Australia against the world’s best riders at the 2007 UCI MTB World Championships,” Tod Horton said.
“There is no mountain bike race in Australia that offers this unique opportunity,” he said.
To earn this privilege riders from across Australia will tackle the grueling 106km point-to-point marathon which traverses the National Bicentennial Trail from Preston (Toowoomba) to Grandchester in the first weekend of September 2006.
The world cycling federation endorsed the mountain bike marathon format as an official world championship discipline in 2003 for the UCI MTB Marathon World Championships in Lugano, Switzerland.
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