Photos Adam McLeod Grinta Magazine

You’ll be forgiven if you haven’t heard of Sunbury CC. They’re a small club. With an even smaller CX crew. In the hipster city of Melbs. Back in 2014, that rambunctious rabble had a bold vision that Australia could become a player in the globalisation of cyclocross. Their strategy was to place Straya in the heart of a pre-European circuit that would allow riders from China, Japan, America and their own home-grown talent to chalk up ever elusive UCI points ahead of the traditional huge hitting events in Euroland. And they were gonna convert a disused grassy bank lying at the aviation hub of Essendon Fields to do it.

I’m all for Number 8 Wire ingenuity. It’s the life blood of my adopted home in this wee corner of the world, a land so oft forgotten that Flat Earthers believe it doesn’t actually exist. However, an understandable retort to Sunbury CC’s blueprint to putting Aussie on the map with a supersized “CX” marks the spot could easily have been, “Tell ‘im ‘e’s dreamin’!”. At the very least, it’s a Tui billboard ad.

Fast forward to 2018, that same undeterred posse are now in their second year of kicking off the official UCI Cyclocross calendar season for the whole wide world. This year, clearly determined to nudge the bar up even higher than last, Fields of Joy CX came out like a high speed tram (well, it is Melbourne) with eight international UCI passengers with tickets to ride from Japan, the USA, the Netherlands and the Land of the Long White Cloud. Destination: Promulgate-Next-Level-Stoke; passing through Pump-The-Home-Crowds-Up and next stop Keep-The-Aussie-Crossracers-Honest. All aboard. Toot toot.

Life echoes sport and both deliver learning opportunities with equal regularity. A character building season of stacks and mechanicals has reminded me that every race day is a school day. A full Melbourne Grand Prix of Cyclocross weekend (aka the Southern Hemisphere’s Biggest CX Party) immersion provided a few lessons too.

Lesson #1: If you build it they will come.

The Essendon Fields custom built cross course with Belgian steps, a rhythm section, berms and a grassy bank (that provides as much thirty percent pinch climbing as your stem chewing satiety can handle) is next level rad. They have something similar in Virginia which will be raced this weekend as part of the GO Cross weekend. It could be replicated on Kiwi soil using a modest patch of turf and could be an asset to any local community. It was built from the sweat of a small dedicated crew and mostly fuelled by enthusiasm and the determination to prove that our lesser nations can play in the big sandpit too.

Lesson #2: Fake it til you make it.

Non-sprinters can sprint too. It ain’t over til it’s over. Sometimes it’s faster to play it safe and run rather than ride. The crowd loves it if you don’t play it safe and ride it anyway. Plus, racing bar-to-bar against riders of similar calibre is critical for progression and an experience that cannot be replicated in any other way (trust me, I’ve tried many, many alternatives).

Lesson #3: Party poopers need not apply.

UCI sanctioning doesn’t signal the tolling of the death knell to community spirit nor tarnish the sheen from welcoming and inclusive racing. If you felt excluded at FOJCX, it was probably because you didn’t get your entry in on time.

Lesson #4: The Australians will try to lay claim to anything.

You can add a visiting international Dutch Pro CX racer to the ownership rights controversy surrounding pavlova and pineapple lumps.

Lesson #5: The CX-is-going-global train is leaving the station.

Cross fever is breaching its traditional boundaries and refuses to be quarantined to the winter of Europe. The list of nations hosting UCI National CX Championships is ever increasing (and currently sits at 18 countries) with perhaps surprising additions like Romania and Chile. The last edition of Rapha Supercross in Nobeyama, Japan boasted huge fields, with over a hundred die hards racing the Elite Men’s races, and over thirty fierce femmes in the Elite Women’s races. It’s happening, right now. The enthusiasm of the rattlecan Squid kids has clearly rubbed off during their World Tours and we should tip our hats to them as the early pioneers of new cyclocross frontiers.

New Zealand needs to jump on board the bullet train, which will only strengthen the offering for our own Kiwi hitters (across all flavours of pushbike racers), bring the big guns to Aotearoa as well as Australia and, most importantly, add more members to our wider whanau.

It doesn’t take too much daydreaming to imagine a back-to-back schedule of international CX racing both sides of the Tasman with cowbells and glorious Flandrian-esque mud guaranteed for at least one outing.

O come, all ye faithful.