The Graft-TON Grind comes to Bom Bom this May

Grafton is one of Australi’s most historic cycling cities, with the road cycling club dating back to the the 1890’s. More recently, locals have swapped slicks for knobbies helped in part by a developing network of singletrack in BomBom State forest.

We caught up with Grant from the BomBom Racing MTB club to get the local beta on the Jacaranda City.

AMB: Why come to Grafton?

Grant: Grafton is pretty much half a day drive to either Sydney and Brisbane, so not a bad holiday or event destination to escape to from the city to a more laid-back rural setting. It’s the major centre of the Clarence valley which has so much to offer for lovers of the outdoors: There are secluded pristine beaches; white water paddling; National Park and State Forests recreation all around. The Clarence Valley Council is always supportive of sports tourism and has supported us for the Graft-TON Grind and many past GBomb endurance events.

Grafton is a town with a lot of history, especially in cycling, our club was established in the 1890s and in the road scene, the Grafton to Inverell Classic celebrates it 59th running in May this year. There is a bit of a push to re-engage the community with cycling and we like to think the MTB scene at Bom Bom contributes to this.

AMB: What can people expect from the trails? And the town?

Grant: Our Trails in Bom Bom State Forest were some of the first established on the north coast, from a time when most people were on 26er hardtails with narrow bars. The trails have that old school feel; the older tracks were all hand cut, twisty but fast with minimal berming and minimal technical features, other than the odd drop off, bridges and tight gaps between trees. We don’t have much elevation to play with, so there’s not much climbing, which means also not much downhill, a fast rider at Bom Bom is someone who can carry corner speed and keep the power on. Our club used to be full of single speeders, because the place is perfect for it!

For the Graft-TON Grind, we wanted to use the classic Marathon distance of 100k, in order to meet the Tech Regs we had to set a max of 3 laps, so a bunch of us have tried to come up with the perfect mix of mainly singletrack with a few bits of fire road thrown in to get to the magic number of a 33km lap. I think the course we have come up with ticks all those boxes, and we have the added bonus that to make the event more spectator friendly riders will come close to the event centre 3 times in a lap.

When we run our events we have the added bonus that the farmer next door usually allows us to use his paddock for camping. This offers our competitors the option of free accommodation, and the ability sit down and rehydrate with their favourite beverage and not worry about driving back to accommodation.

AMB: What else shouldn’t be missed? Hot spots for food, culture or best place for a beer?

Grant: Pretty much every pub in town does a good job of your classic pub meals, however the closest pub to Bom Bom is the Hotel 5 mile, they supported the Gbomb last year, and I can vouch for them doing a massive feed if you need some carb loading!

If you are going to stay around for the weekend and explore the area a little, the coastal town of Yamba has some great options including a French restaurant, the town of Maclean has a top class coffee roaster called Botero, they do a great breaky/brunch/lunch and supply damned good coffee to all the best Café’s in Grafton, which is quite a few! Our favourites that support us are Toast and ESPresso.

As for beer, well, you may not have to leave the tracks for that one. A national level rider, Jayne Rutter, recently started up a craft-beer brewery based in Brisbane called Helios Brewing, a mutual friend put us in contact, and we are pleased to say they have come on board as a sponsor. Helios will be providing a collection of prizes as well as running a licenced mobile bar on site after the race has finished.

AMB: Where to from here, in 2020 and beyond?

Grant: Our club has always been about providing races for everyone to enjoy, from beginners to elite. 10 years ago there just wasn’t much on the race calendar in Northern NSW, so we started providing fun XC endurance racing for the region, always making sure that inexperienced locals and our local roadies wouldn’t be too daunted to give it a go and join in. The MTB scene has changed a lot now, there is racing happening everywhere and every weekend. I think we will still focus on providing events for the riders that offer something different. Hopefully a National cup Tier 1 race is something we continue running as the big ticket race for the year, depending on feedback from this year’s event, we are likely to mix up the format, there is a lot of epic forestry rides in the region, that we could consider.

Bom Bom is too flat to be used for gravity style riding, so our focus will always be fast and flowy XC. The Club has identified we want to spend some money on the trail network, particularly renewing our trail signs. To a lot of people our trails probably aren’t very impressive based on the new standard of big berms and lots of features, so we may look to modernise a few tracks with a bit of earth works. Whilst we don’t really look to raise funds out of our events, if we do end up banking some money, we hope we can invest it back into the tracks.

AMB: Anything else we need to know?

Grant: While the main aim of the event is to provide a 100km race for all the riders keen on some National Cup Tier 1 XCM points, we like to provide a race for all riders. So we are offering the 3×33 – 3 person teams to do a lap each; the Survive Sixty-five – for all those who want to race their age group don’t feel like 100k is for them; then we have the Dirty Thirty3 – this one is a much more introductory event, and thankfully the rule books allow juniors from 13yo and up to enter this race. All 3 races distances will also have an eBike category and what we call the Hard-Arse category, this is for full rigid bikes, single speeds, Cyclocross bikes and maybe even unicycles??

You can enter the Graft-TON Grind right now!