Issue 161: Wacky Races

Hannah wants bike races to involve fewer clipboards and more pallets.

Words and photos Hannah Dobson

If you ask someone who doesn’t cycle what they know about cycling, they’ll probably mention the Tour de France. If you ask someone who has switched from golf to cycling what they think about cycling, they’ll probably point you at the Velominati. Between them and the UCI, it’s pretty easy to suck all the fun out of riding bikes. YOUR SOCKS ARE THEwROnG LeNGTh. Suffering is the path to success. Pan y agua. FML.

There is, of course, room for serious racing in the big bike church, but I don’t think putting it front and centre of the public’s first impressions helps us get a bigger congregation. We need more fun. More silly. More just for the sake of it riding bikes. A little less regard for rules, and even perhaps a touch of risk and disregard for health and safety. Or, taking responsibility for our own injuries and peril.

The 2025 Bespoked bike show in Manchester held an Apocalypse Bike Build-Off. There were rules and entry criteria. Stuff like having the means to make fire and cook, carrying a shelter, having storage capacity for scavenged finds and being able to chop wood. Except these ‘rules’ were mostly ignored. What happened was creativity and imagination. Political commentary and silliness. Portable sawmills and grilled babies. Nuclear disaster and a life of foraging. Tall bikes, fat bikes, multiple drivetrain bikes. An appropriate level of creative hyperbole, and accessories to the max.
And then they were raced.

Over jumps, under obstacles, in and out of cones. A not-completely-empty car park and an empty outbuilding. Pallets and a paddling pool. Smoke flares. Crowds. An appropriate level of chaos. Planned, but not regulated. Only one helmet was worn – by a guy riding a tall bike, who did, in fact, hit his head on a doorway. Everyone else assessed their risks and made their choices. Two hands were skinned in a practice lap, which meant by the finals there were two bandages adding to the apocalyptic scene. The crowd oohed, and aahed, and occasionally helped push or steer.

No cars were damaged, no crowds were crashed into. No major injuries were sustained. Yet much fun was had. It might even have been the highlight of the show. Certainly, those who were there the day after were sad to have missed it (the bikes had mostly not survived to ride a second day, which does not bode well for their riders’ survival during the apocalypse). It was certainly a happening – an hour or so of collective joy, with tendrils of happiness reaching out through photos and social media. If you were there, you got the strongest dose of fun. Thank goodness for the organisers of Bespoked and their willingness to put pageant ahead of protection. I strongly suspect that had someone with a clipboard been on the scene, none of it would have happened at all.

I’ve seen similarly joy-filled silly races before. Kids’ bikes with dolly seats doing dual slalom. Fancy dress cycle speedway. Pixie bike racing with pimped-up kids’ bikes, tiny wheels, and big tumbles. Obstacle courses around car parks with pro racers fighting for the win over wobbly plank skinnies and hopper jumps. Of course, these races are not really about the winning, but it’s fun to try. And they are never not fun to watch, no matter how much or how little you actually know about bikes or the people involved.

For some, events will always be about goody bags or timed results. And yes, you can always go and ride with your mates on the trails. But there’s something about this type of spectacle of fun and silly that’s hard to beat. It brings out the best in people – smiles, effort, abandon, camaraderie. Onlookers share in the waves of emotion that come with each wild turn, lucky save, or tumbling crash.

You don’t need to know about bikes to know that this is fun. You don’t need to know the people to feel part of the event, to join in with the whoops and low oohs. It’s a few shared minutes of happiness, excitement, and silliness. There are no strangers, only humans, escaping their daily sensibilities and recapturing a time of childhood play.

Wouldn’t it be great if when you asked people about cycling they said ‘It looks like fun’?