One Festival, Six Disciplines. Your Ultimate Guide to Cycling at the Santos Festival of Cycling
The Santos Festival of Cycling in 2021 is celebrating everything that’s great about cycling and its various disciplines. On road, off road, sprint, endurance, and obstacle based: We’ve got your summer covered for adrenalin-filled cycling action! Explore this great sport via each our discipline offerings below.
Road Racing (National Road Series)
As we’re SURE you’re already aware, Road Racing is the most popular form of bicycle racing worldwide. As the typical focal point of the Santos Tour Down Under, the sport of Road Racing sees teams and riders battle it out over multiple stages in either mass-start races or time trials.
We love Road Racing for the astute strategies and crafty tactics riders use to come out on top and keep us as spectators entertained!
While the Santos Tour Down Under usually hosts international teams in first UCI World Tour race of the season, in 2021 we are absolutely stoked to be hosting our home grown Aussie riders with Cycling Australia’s National Road Series (NRS) at the 2021 Santos Festival of Cycling. NRS is Australia and New Zealand’s principal domestic road racing series and provides the ultimate opportunity for young, up and coming riders to make headway into professional riding with the UCI World Tour, and we can’t wait to see what the race and riders have in store.
Explore the four stage NRS and NRSW races here.
Track Racing
Track cycling is one of the most exciting cycling formats for spectators. Whether it be a sprint or endurance race, track riders can obtain whopping fast speeds, and their bikes don’t have brakes. Sounds exhilarating, right? The build of track bikes is relatively simple, with no traditional groupsets, few components, and specific handlebars allowing for optimum aerodynamics. High levels of skill, guts, aggression, strength and power make a successful track rider.
Track cycling is an adrenalin filled sport. Trust us: Wait ‘till you see an arm sling!
The Adelaide Track league injects life and SPEED into the Adelaide Superdrome. Home to the Australian Cycling Team, the league hosts the State’s best athletes alongside Olympic hopefuls. And you can check out the 2021 Tokyo Olympic team tear up the track at the Santos Festival of Cycling!
Paracycling
Paracycling facilitates significant inclusion within cycling, with the UCI defining a total of 14 sport categories to accommodate all types of rider functionality! Encompassing both road and track events, the sport of paracycling allows riders to pursue excellence and thrive.
What an awesome privilege we have to see the best of Australia’s Men’s and Women’s Paracyclists battle it out in preparation for the Tokyo Paralympic games this year! Riders will take on the Santos Festival of Cycling criterium track at Victoria Park in 2021.
Cyclo-Cross
The most iconic images of cyclo-cross include riders carrying their bicycles up steep slopes or over obstacles. This is necessitated by the difficult and technical Cyclo-Cross courses featuring harsh ground conditions, varying terrains and gruelling steep hills. Unlike other cycling disciplines, success in Cyclo-Cross is not just determined by speed, but also by killer bike-handling skills and massive aerobic endurance.
Being a mostly Winter event, the Cyclo-Cross season in Adelaide and Australia was hit hard by COVID-19 restrictions in 2020. But Port Adelaide Cycling Club have stepped up to deliver a Summer race worth travelling for! Local dust bandits will congregate on the Adelaide Parklands and whip up a summer storm around a short off-road circuit as the evening light fades.
Want to be there when it happens? Find out more here.
BMX
BMX bicycle races provide the ultimate off-road challenge. Courses are made of dirt and consist of various jumps and rollers that facilitate the crash and tumble that you would hope and expect to witness as a spectator from a contact sport. BMX courses see riders navigating these obstacles while sprinting towards the finish line around tight corners. The Australian BMX race scene is vibrant, family friendly and community based.
At the 2021 Santos Festival of Cycling, The Cove BMX Club is putting on a Summer Showdown: the first major BMX event put on by AusCycling. Kick 2021 off with a bang at this event ideal for thrill-seekers and adrenalin junkies!
Mountain Biking
Another off-road cycling discipline, Mountain Biking races see riders hurtling downhill fed by gravity or cross-country backed by rider strength across natural rough terrain. Mountain Bike riders are tough, possess superior balance, and are highly self-reliant due to the often remote nature of the pastime.
The Santos Festival of Cycling will see a Short Circuit race take place courtesy of the Adelaide Mountain Bike Club. Short in lap length and overall length, these races are usually an all-out attack-fest that make for great watching. Short, sharp, bumpy and shiny!
Excited? Us too. We’ll see you there!
