The state of Australian CX: 2019 CX National Series
Welcome to the first in a series of longform articles about Australian cyclocross, in which we’ll dive into statistics to examine the state of Australian cyclocross in 2019. We’re viewing this through the lens of publicly available participation data, with results taken from 46 different race days across the seven Australian states and territories with regular cyclocross racing.
We’re starting this series with a look at the 2019 CX National Series, organised by Mountain Bike Australia. After this article, we’ll be running through the statistics for each of the highest-level state series for Queensland, NSW/ACT, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia.
Methodology
Where ages of participants are referred to, these will refer to racing ages (effectively one year older than most people are IRL). The participation figures are for each individual race day, so a person who entered every round would account for 10 people in the figure below. While this may skew results slightly in favour of those who turn up most regularly, we feel it’s most representative of what the sport as a whole looks like from race day to race day.
Things we’ve included in this article:
Race results from the 2019 MTBA CX National Series, including results by age and gender;
Race results from the 2019 MTBA CX National Championships, including results by age and gender; and
People who started races, but did not finish, and are marked as DNF on the results sheet.
Things we’ve not included in this article:
Data for kids races where participants are 10 and under, because:
Most kids races don’t give their smallest racers timing chips (meaning they won’t show up in officially timed results);
We believe that the priority for young kids is to get them enjoying bikes, and we want to encourage race organisers to promote having fun over racing; and
We want to respect the privacy of the kids and their loved ones.
People who entered races, but didn’t start, and are marked as DNS on the results sheet.
The 2019 CX National Series
The highest level of domestic-level cyclocross in Australia, the 2019 edition of the CX National Series was held over five weekends from early June to late August.
Rounds One & Two: Adelaide, SA, June 1st & 2nd
Rounds Three & Four: Creswick, VIC, June 22nd & 23rd
Rounds Five & Six: Samford, QLD, July 20th & 21st
National Championships: Sam Miranda Winery, VIC, August 10th
Round Seven: Sam Miranda Winery, VIC, August 11th
Rounds Eight & Nine: Melbourne Grand Prix of CX (Broadford, VIC), August 17th & 18th
Six of the ten race days above were based in Victoria, which caused considerable consternation at the time of the release of the schedule in February. While this meant that non-Victorian racers had to incur significant costs in order to attend most race days in the series, the concentration of National Series rounds in Victoria is more easily explained by a greater number of Victorian clubs willing to host rounds of the National Series than a grand pro-Victorian conspiracy.
(L-R) Chris Aitken, Tom Chapman and Chris Jongewaard negotiate the sandpit in round 5 of the 2019 CX National Series in Samford, QLD.
Photo credit: @thatbikenerd
Time for the numbers!
Here are the overall participation statistics for each of those race days across all categories for each of the 10 race days we’re looking at - spanning from Rounds 1 &2 at the start of June 2019 all the way through to the season-ending Melbourne Grand Prix of CX at the end of August.
Participation in 2019 MTBA CX National Series, by Race Day
The numbers of participants in the 2019 CX National Series averaged around 179 riders per race day, and ranged from a low of 135 participants in round 5 - the first Saturday of the Queensland double-header - to a high of 226 for the National Championships.
The high for the National Championships is perhaps unsurprising given that there were green and gold jerseys on the line, but interestingly it was only the third highest attendance at an Australian cyclocross race in 2019 - as two rounds of the Victorian CX Series recorded larger numbers of participants.
Victorian rounds of the National Series tended to have the highest levels of participation, which is perhaps unsurprising given that the majority of race days in the Series were based in Victoria, and that Victoria’s is the best attended of Australia’s state CX series. The one exception to this was the season-ending Melbourne Grand Prix of Cyclocross at the new Fields of Joy course in Broadford - perhaps unusual, given that that race weekend is the only UCI-accredited race day (outside of national championships) in the southern hemisphere.
Participation by age group - dominated by Elites, Masters aged 40-49
For those not familiar with how MTBA’s age classification system works, Junior grades are divided into 2 year increments (Under 13, Under 15, Under 17 and Under 19), with younger adults (racing ages 19-29) getting to choose between Elite (faster and more serious) and Expert (slower and less serious) categories depending on their fitness level.
Masters age groups start at age 30 and are handled in 5-year increments. The youngest of these is Masters 1 for those with racing ages 30-34, then Masters 2 from 35-39, Masters 3 from 40-45 and so on until Masters 8+ for riders over the age of 65. If you’re not sure which age group you would have been part of, you can check it out in more detail on MTBA’s 2019 category calculation sheet.
When we separate out the participation data for the 2019 CX National Series into the different age groups that riders compete in, a few trends become obvious.
Participation in 2019 MTBA CX National Series, by Age Group
The two largest groups represented in the chart above are Elite racers and racers aged between 40-49 (who compete in either the Masters 3 or Masters 4 category), with both recording upwards of 400 participants over the course of the 2019 National Series.
Cyclocross racing in English-speaking countries is typically a discipline dominated by Masters racers, but this phenomenon is less obvious in Australia than countries such as the US, UK or Canada - where fields in men’s Masters categories are typically much larger than the Elite fields (as an example, there were 33 more participants in last year’s US National Championships for the Men’s 50-54 category than in the Elite Men’s race).
Catherine Seal Yates wasn’t taking racing too seriously on her way to a 2nd place finish in Women’s Masters 2 in R2 of the 2019 CX National Series in Adelaide.
Photo credit: @thatbikenerd
It should be noted that we can’t accurately account for the ages of Elite and Open/Support racers, as these categories aren’t defined by the age of the participants, and the ages of participants aren’t always made publicly available on results sheets. Were we able to accurately account for their ages, the 400 Elite racers would be spread over the 10-19, 20-29 and 30-39 brackets, with a couple of notable outliers still competing in Elite racing on the other side of 40!
It’s notable that the grades with the highest level of Masters participation are those between the ages of 30 and 50, an age range where two trends converge. First, it’s the age range when former Elite cyclists are likely to give up keeping up with the young’uns and begin racing in Masters grades. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it’s also the age range where newcomers to the sport are most likely to take up competitive cycling, and give cyclocross racing a try for the first time.
(L-R) Garry Millburn, Chris Jongewaard and Tom Chapman find different lines in the final minutes of R1 of the 2019 CX National Series in Adelaide.
Photo credit: @thatbikenerd
Elite racers are most willing to travel for their CX fix
Elite racers typically race in the most crowded fields at the end of the day, and are the most likely to be top-level cyclists in other disciplines - several regulars in the Australian Elite cyclocross fields race in the top domestic competitions in mountain biking and/or road cycling.
They’re also the most likely to want to travel interstate for multiple rounds of competition, either due to being part of a team with national aspirations, or for the love of competing against the other best racers in Australia.
We can see this trend by looking at the numbers of racers in each who qualified for an overall series result by racing in 7 of the 9 rounds of the 2019 CX National Series. The threshold of 7 race attendances allowed competitors to miss one weekend of racing and qualify for an overall National Series result, but also necessitated some out-of-state travel to do so.
Looking across the various women’s fields, it was obvious that there were more Elite racers willing to travel to race their cross bikes - the number of racers who qualified for a series result in the Elite Women’s category doubled that of the next highest Masters category (Women’s Masters 4).
Female racers who qualified for a 2019 CX National Series overall result, by category
For the Elite Men, there were 21 racers who raced 7 out of the 9 weekends and qualified for an overall National Series result, more than triple that of the next highest Masters category, that of Men’s Masters 3.
Male racers who qualified for a 2019 CX National Series overall result, by category
Gender in the CX National Series
Cyclocross has long prided itself on being one of the most inclusive forms of cycle sport, and breaking down the numbers of participants of each gender from the 2019 CX National Series proves this to be the case in terms of gender. Adult men (Expert, Elite and all Masters grades) participating in the CX National Series made up 58% of all participants, while adult women made up a full quarter of all those pinning on a number.
When it came to younger participants (U19 and younger), there were still more boys racing in the 2019 CX National Series than girls, but the ratio was not quite as pronounced - boys made up 11% of all participants at the 2019 CXNS, compared to 6% for girls.
Participation in 2019 MTBA CX National Series, by Gender
While a male:female ratio of around 2:1 across junior and senior riders may not make cyclocross seem like the most gender-equal sport in the world, compared to other forms of cycling this actually isn’t too bad. According to the most recent annual reports from Cycling Australia and Mountain Bike Australia, female race licence holders are a considerably smaller minority in both sports - in road cycling women made up just 15.7% of race licence holders, while in mountain biking this was only slightly higher at 18%.
Table taken from Cycling Australia’s 2019 Annual Report.
Image taken from Mountain Bike Australia’s 2019 Annual Report.
Was there a particular age group that featured a higher proportion of female riders? Yes, and encouragingly for the future of Aussie cyclocross the two grades with the highest proportions of female riders were both junior grades - U17s and U15s, with female riders making up 47.7% and 42.5% of fields respectively.
Are there any noticeable trends that can be teased out from the graph below? It’s probably not a surprise that the grades with the highest numbers of participants (Elites and Masters 2-5) matched up most closely to the overall percentage of women participating in the 2019 CX National Series, with women making up around 30% of riders in those age groups.
Aside from that, the most noticeable trend is that the divide between levels of men’s and women’s participation in the 2019 CX National Series widened once riders got past the age of 55 - while women made up 34.3% of all Masters 5 riders (with racing ages of 50-54).
2019 CX National Series, by Gender % per age group
Was any particular round of the CX National Series particularly good at attracting female racers? In short, not to any significant degree - the overall percentage of female participants hovered around 30% for the entirety of the CX National Series and National Championships, with a low of 29.2% in Round 6 - day 2 of the Queensland double-header - to a high of 33% for Round 2 - day 2 of the Adelaide double-header.
This points to cyclocross being roughly equally appealing to female racers all around the country, with no one state or host club being able to boast a significantly higher female turnout for their rounds of the National Series. That being said, some clubs were able to have greater success by implementing initiatives to boost women’s participation at specific race days (e.g. advertising certain races as ‘Ladies’ Day’ or allowing new racers to borrow bikes) in their respective state series, which we’ll dive into further in our analysis of each of the respective state CX series in the coming days.
Participation in 2019 MTBA CX National Series, by Gender and Race Day
Where to from here?
So after looking at all of those statistics, what do they tell us about the state of the Australian Cyclocross National Series?
More importantly, how can the National Series, and Australian cyclocross more generally, improve from here?
After looking at the numbers, we can conclude that cyclocross in Australia is predominantly male, middle-aged and centred around racing in Victoria, particularly at the National Series level. While it is encouraging that cyclocross has higher levels of women’s participation than road cycling or mountain biking, the current women’s participation rate of around 30% still has room to improve. As we’ll explore in more detail in our coming articles on Australia’s various state CX series, race days specifically marketed as trying to increase women’s participation usually prove effective at increasing turnout.
In terms of age groups, the bread and butter of domestic cyclocross racing is in Masters racing (especially for men), but given the low levels of participation among non-Elite racers under the age of 30, there’s a definite opportunity for cyclocross to pick up some younger adult riders less focused on elite performance - especially university students or young professionals.
Ella Baxter takes on the Creswick course in R3 of the National Series. She’d finish 2nd in Women’s Expert on the day.
Photo credit: @thatbikenerd
What’s not captured in the data listed above?
Data examining the socio-economic status of participants in cyclocross certainly wouldn’t go amiss, as cyclocross in Australia is generally considered a middle-class sport - a departure from its less wealthy roots in Europe. A cyclocross bike is rarely the first one purchased by someone thinking of taking up CX racing, who is likely to have at least one other bike in their shed before deciding to buy a CX racer, and lowering the barrier of entry to newcomers by making bikes available for hire or loan at races may be an avenue worth exploring.
Another aspect that is worth addressing is that cyclocross in Australia operates on a gender binary, with racing for men and racing for women. This doesn’t leave room for racers who identify as gender non-binary or gender non-conforming to participate in a way that meshes properly with their orientation, which could act as a potential barrier to entry for prospective non-binary or non-GNC racers.
Although it’s not recorded in any of the statistics from participants, the sport of cyclocross is also overwhelmingly white - even more so than other disciplines of cycling, which has itself traditionally been a sport with a mostly white base of participants. The #BlackLivesMatter protests in the wake of the death of George Floyd have brought issues of race to national and international attention, and it’s an area where cyclocross - and society in general - has a lot of room to improve. Making Australian cyclocross more culturally and racially diverse isn’t something that can be fixed overnight, but we’re taking steps that we think will help make cyclocross more welcoming, and we hope race organisers and participants will join us on the journey.
Claire Aubrey powers onto a straight in the Elite Women’s race in R1 of the 2019 National Series in Adelaide.
Photo credit: @thatbikenerd
Do you have thoughts on how the CX National Series can improve? What changes would you like to see going further into the future?
Tell us all about your ideas in the comments below! If you have more extensive thoughts, please email us at cxdownunder@gmail.com - especially if you know someone involved in cycling’s governing bodies in Australia!