Australian National CX Championships 2023: U23 and U19 Men’s Preview

The biggest race in Australian CX is taking place this Saturday in the Victorian town of Ballarat - the AusCycling National Cyclocross Championships. Read all about it below!

The Venue

The course will be a mostly flat circuit at Victoria Park, on the western side of Ballarat’s Lake Wendouree. Ballarat is a notoriously cold town, and the wind whipping off the lake can create very wintry conditions for riders and spectators alike.

The majority of the course will be on open grassy terrain, with occasional turns under the canopies of local pine trees.
The park’s grass is likely to be initially dewy for the early morning practice laps, before being churned to mud by the Masters categories that will be racing before the Elite categories. The course’s many corners that would ordinarily be straightforward are likely to get significantly trickier as a result.

There’s very little elevation gain for much of the lap, with the exception of the course’s main feature at the southern end of the track. It’s a short, steep climb, followed by an immediate steep descent into a hairpin turn, and a run-up the same hill that the organisers have dubbed ‘The Mound.’

The Mound is the course’s most technical feature, and - due to the carpet of pine needles that cover the ground - one of the few places on course that’s not likely to be muddy.

Once The Mound has been completed, riders will make their way back to the start village at the north end of the course, passing by the pits on the way.

Cyclocross courses are often thought of as being on a spectrum of technical difficulty, with easier courses with more steady pedalling tending to favour those with a road background, while technically challenging courses with on-off power thought to give an advantage to mountain bikers.
When measured against that metric the Ballarat course is definitely more to the road side - it favours riders with raw power over remarkable technical prowess, but depending on the weather conditions on race day it could still produce a variety of winners.

If you want to know about the course in more detail, you can check out our full course preview, or take a look at our race video from the same event last year.

The Weather

Last year’s Ballarat course saw wet and muddy conditions that turned large stretches of the course into a tractor pull. The terrain was so heavy that even Elite riders opted to run straight flat sections rather than continue to slog through the mire.

Conditions for the national championship weekend look broadly similar, with rain projected to fall on the two days prior to the big event, which should see riders reaching for their mud tyres and running the lowest pressures they can get away with.

The weather in Australian cyclocross this year has tended towards the warm and sunny, but with the projected low temperatures course likely to be muddy you can expect to see some riders heading into the pits for clean bikes during their race, as well as plenty of action from mechanics at the bike washing stations.

Last year’s Ballarat course was definitely a muddy one - though thankfully this calf-deep puddle won’t be a feature of the 2023 course.
Photo: @thatbikenerd

U23 Men

Declan Trezise on his way to a national title in 2022.
Photo: @some.pics_i.took

The Champion - Declan Trezise (QLD / ARA Skip Capital)

Declan Tresize has had a very busy year racing on the road for ARA Skip Capital, including finishing the U23 Giro d’Italia. We reached out to him and he confirmed that he won’t be defending his national title in 2023.

The Challenger - Tristan Nash (WA / Unicorn Racing Australia)

Former Between The Tape star Tristan Nash is the fastest man in the West, as he’s utterly dominated the sport of cyclocross on the far side of the Nullarbor for the past two years. He raced a full AusCycling Cyclocross National Series (CXNS) schedule last year, placed well at the 2022 National Series rounds in Ballarat - leading the Elite Men’s race on both days before eventually being overhauled by Chris Aitken - and finished second behind Declan Trezise at the national championships.

He represented Australia at the CX World Championships in the Netherlands earlier this year, managing 48th and a lead lap finish. He liked the taste of European cross so much that he’s heading back north for another stint at the end of 2023.

He only competed in the CXNS when it visited his hometown of Perth this year, dominating the likes of Garry Millburn, Chris Aitken and Nick Smith on a sandy course at Garvey Park to win his first two rounds of the CXNS. before helping to pack up the course when it was all done.

Can he go one better in the U23 race in 2023? Considering that U23 riders are also able to win the Elite titles if they finish ahead of all the Elite riders, could he even challenge for the Elite Men’s national title?

Tristan Nash kicks up some dust on his way to victory in round 1 of the 2023 CNXS in his native Perth.
Photo: @thatbikenerd

The smokeys - Jack Ward (VIC / Berwick Cycles)

Jack Ward is the current Junior XCO MTB national champion and has just returned from racing at the world championships in Glasgow, where he finished 46th in the Junior race after an early crash. As the Aussie CX champs are the first event of the new UCI season, he’s considered to have aged up and will have to compete in the U23 race in Ballarat.

Although he’s a rider who’s much more used to flat bars he has raced a little bit of cyclocross before, winning the B grade event in his first CX start on an extremely muddy Creswick course in 2021, before recording a top 10 finish in A gragde the next day at the age of just 16.

He’s got power and technical skill to spare and is sure to have plenty of crowd support, but how will the long flight back from Scotland affect his form?

Jack Ward celebrates his victory at the OKK Bike Revolution XCO race in Switzerland in May.
Photo: @egopromotion

Max Hobson (QLD / RATS Cycling Club)

The Elite Men’s state champion for Queensland this year, Max Hobson has also had a breakout 12 months on the cyclocross course. He finished 4th at the National Championships last year, before joining the Australian CX development team trip to Japan, where he finished 22nd and 14th on back to back days against a field of Elite riders.

This season he’s taken a noticeable step up, challenging some of the best riders in the country at the CXNS, including a second place finish at round 5 in his native Queensland.

Max Hobson is undeterred by a snapped chain guard at round 3 of the CXNS in Adelaide.
Photo: @thatbikenerd

Junior (U19) Men

Ruby Dobson slogs through the pinwheel at Fruits of the Valley Cyclocross in Shepparton in July.
Photo: @shotbyleealexand3r

The Champion - Levi Dougherty (QLD)

A multi-discipline athlete, Levi Dougherty dabbled in CX for the first time in 2022 - competing in A Grade a couple of times in the Queensland State Series before winning the national title for U19 Men.

He won a couple of rounds of the 2023 National Series in his national champ’s jersey, but has just finished competing at the Junior XCO MTB World Championships (where he finished a creditable 51st) and won’t be recovered in time to defend his title.

The challenger - Sam Northey (VIC / Alpine CC)

Hailing from Bright in Victoria’s high country, Sam Northey represented Australia at the World Championships earlier this year, overcoming a crash on the starting straight to eventually finish 67th.

Easily spotted on course by his bright red jersey and equally red hair, he’s consistently competed at the front end of both the Men’s A grade field in Victoria and the Junior Men’s field at the CX National Series, with his best results being 8th and 1st respectively. He loves shredding on his MTB in his spare time, so the more technical aspects of the Ballarat course surely won’t faze him.

Both his parents won national titles in their respective age groups last year - will he be able to bring home a matching jersey in 2023?

Sam Northey gets stuck in at Dirty Deeds Cx in late July.
Photo: @shotbyleealexand3r

The smokey - Campbell McConnell (VIC / Alpine CC)

A pocket rocket from Victoria’s high country, Campbell McConnell is a regular riding buddy and training partner of the brothers Sam and Cooper Northey, in the sort of friendly competition among juniors that tends to make them extremely fast. This author recalls a very muddy race in Mt Beauty in 2019 where after crushing the souls of C graders for 45 minutes on a hilly course, McConnell and the Northey brothers immediately started riding a unicycle down the steepest hill they could find. That tends to have a pretty profound impact on handling confidence - he had the flair to pull a wheelie while sitting on the wheel of Garry Millburn during the men’s A Grade race at Dirty Deeds CX in late July, so he knows how to entertain a crowd.

McConnell has been duelling with Sam Northey, Queenslander Liam Cuthbertson and his cousin James Stamp at the CXNS this year, with three third place finishes to his name. He’s also put up some very impressive performance in the Victorian CX Series, including a second place finish at Fruits of the Valley Cyclocross in July.

Campbell McConnell grits his teeth while cornering at Dirty Deeds CX in late July.
Photo: @shotbyleealexand3r

The U19 men’s race will take place at the same time as the other men’s Masters grades at 11:00am AEST, while the U23 Men will start with the Elite Men at 3:30pm.

The race won’t be televised, but you can follow all the action by following CX Down Under on Facebook and Instagram - we’ll be doing our best to document all the highs and lows of the day!

Who’s your tip to for the win in each race? Let us know in the comments below!