Look through the newspaper archives from the late 1890’s and early 1900’s and they paint a picture of a Melbourne to Warrnambool – or Warrnambool to Melbourne as it was back then – where the hardiest of souls raced through a long and unpredictable day on rough roads, with cheering crowds lining the streets to spur them as they charged through the towns along the way.
The race that wound its way through locations like Camperdown and Winchelsea had an undeniable spirit of adventure as it traversed the course which included large swathes of unsealed roads that tested both man and machine, with a 1904 publication describing some as “inches deep with sticky mud, and, in some places, they were swamps.”
Today’s version of the long-running road race, known as the Warrny for short, still holds a strong historical anchor and a reputation as one of the hardest events on the calendar but the change to smoother more predictable road surfaces and to the route of the race so it mostly skirt around population centres – largely dictated by traffic management considerations – has altered the feel. However, the newest of gravel events in Australia, the 246km Dirty Warrny, on Saturday November 5 is expected to make what was old, new again.
“We wanted that feel of an epic, tough event – what the Warrny used to be like 100 years ago,” Dirty Warrny event director Karin Jones told Cyclingnews in the months leading up to the first edition of the new timed gravel challenge.
“It will definitely be a throwback to history. Many, many years ago they did ride on gravel roads and go through towns and the crowds were just incredible.”
The inaugural edition of the Dirty Warrny – which carries the tag line of ‘For Gravel. For Guts. For Glory.’ – is 84% unsealed and the 246km course includes over 3,000m of climbing.
It will start at a winery, Mt Duneed Estate, near Geelong. The riders will then go through Deans Marsh and toward the towering trees of the Otways, with riders tackling the longest climb of the event, Norman Track, before reaching Barwon Downs. After that it is onto the mountain bike town of Forrest, nearly 110km in.
After riders head out of the Otways and through the town of Simpson they will work their way over the rolling hills of the Heytesbury and into Timboon as just a few kilometres shy of 200km into the event. After leaving the town of Timboon it is onto the long straight roads surrounding Warrnambool for the final push through to finish on the…
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