Manitoba cycling championship to be awarded

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This article was published 30/05/2025 (310 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The south side of Riding Mountain National Park has dominated headlines the past few weeks, but Manitoba’s cycling community is trying to bring attention to the north side.

The Tour de Riding Mountain runs Saturday and Sunday, starting with the Manitoba championships at Northgate Trailhead, on the north face of the park, just south of Dauphin.

The cycling champions will be awarded — yellow jersey and all — following the weekend’s events, which are essentially taking over the north side of Riding Mountain and Dauphin for the two-day event.

“There is a podium, but just the achievement of completing it is something to chase as well,” said Nick Bergen, head of Cycling Manitoba’s provincial team program.

The championship will likely be won by one of the high-performance athletes on Manitoba’s provincial cycling team, but the event will effectively be a festival-style event based around cycling, Riding Mountain’s north face and the city of Dauphin.

Saturday’s main road race will start at the Northgate Trailhead and head south along Highway 10, and is the behemoth to begin the weekend.

Competitors will race in either the 100-kilometre course or the 60-km course in five different categories based on time.

All events are chip-timed, providing accurate time assessments through the wearable technology.

The shorter 60-km distance embarks from Northgate and turns around at the first fork in Highway 10 north of Clear Lake where the lanes of the highway separate. The turn-around point for the longer 100-km event is the south gate and includes a brief sojourn down North Shore road.

Staging begins Saturday morning at 9:55 a.m. before races officially begin based on category at 10 a.m.

A few hours later, Manitoba champions will be claimed according to categories, and yellow jerseys will be bestowed as provincial champions.

It will also feature a gran fondo — a way for recreational riders to try their hand at a demanding road-style course without the pressure of chasing a podium finish.

“For most cyclists in Manitoba this is a pretty special event,” said Bergen.

“It’s demanding terrain. There really aren’t many climbs like this around, combined with the beauty of the park and the quality of the roads and shoulders. For the average recreational cyclist, 100 kilometres with 1,000 feet of elevation change is a bit much to race, but it is a very fun way to spend a day riding with a great group of cycling enthusiasts.”

Technically to compete in the official Manitoba Road provincial championship race, you need to have an active Manitoba Cycling Association race license.

And in order to be considered Manitoba champion, you must also be a resident of Manitoba.

Participants are traveling from as far as British Columbia and Ontario for the event in the categories known as Cat 1/2/3 — the “top dogs” chasing the yellow jersey that denotes them as Manitoba champion — as well as Cat 4 and Cat 5 and gran fondo.

So anyone that wants to give it a shot against the top road racers in the province, the road is yours.

You are simply asked to register in advance, but for the sake of growing the sport, it’s technically an open event. If you think you can bike 100 km with the elevation change that comes with Manitoba, you’re more than welcome to give it a shot.

“The reason we do the fondo is we want to bring in those people that are a little timid about racing. It’s a good way to dip your feet into it, and you’ll be riding with a great community. It’s a timed event, but you can do it as fast or as leisurely as you like,” said Bergen.

“We’re hoping that more people will try it with the intent of competing in future races,” Bergen added.

The gran fondo is the first official road race of its kind in Manitoba, and Grant Hamilton is doing it.

Hamilton is a Brandon-based cyclist who had his life set on a new path, not only as a cycling enthusiast but also a safety advocate after a collision altered his course in life.

Three years ago he was hit by a car while cycling in Brandon’s east end.

The collision resulted in plenty of cuts, scrapes, bruises, a concussion, a dislocated shoulder, torn meniscus in his knee, and a pinky finger that stayed stuck in the grill of the car as Hamilton’s body bounced off the hood.

Since then he’s been on a mission – which will now include cycling the most famous course in the world.

On top of traveling all over the world to pitch cycling safety, Hamilton is about to roll into his biggest challenge yet: the Tour de France course.

Hamilton is the lone Canadian on a team of 25 amateur cyclists who will ride the full 21 stages of the Tour de France as part of The Tour 21.

He and the team will cycle the near 3,400 kilometres of the gruelling course — although they have no ambitions of coming anywhere near times of the field that will compete in the famous race starting July 5.

Hamilton is raising funds for leukemia research, and while he’s approaching his fundraising goal, he’s still very much generating interest and money in his upcoming ride through the most famous cycling course in the world in a little over a month’s time.

He’s gladly accepting any donations toward the cause as the deadline approaches, and continually advocating for cycling safety.

“I’ve had many people approach me and say they’ve had close calls too,” said Hamilton. “Not everybody loses a pinky or goes to a hospital, but it does reinforce how common it is.”

The Tour de Riding Mountain will serve as just one more tune-up. He’ll continue training over the next few weeks before setting out from Lille.

In another twist of fate, Hamilton will be setting out on his journey across France three years to do the day of the crash that set the course for his new passion, albeit short a pinky finger.

“If you want to golf, you go to a golf course. If you want to play basketball, you go to a gym. If you want to cycle, you have to go on the highway,” said Hamilton.

“It provides a lot of time to think, it’s meditative in a way, but to be riding with a group in an environment like this with like-minded individuals is always a treat. Do I think I’m going to win anything this weekend? Absolutely not, but I’m going to go and push myself and have a good time doing it.”

Hamilton will compete in the gran fondo of this weekend’s championship.

He’s been training all over Manitoba regardless the weather as well as his living room, often-times watching cycling races while logging hours on a stationary trainer.

Hamilton noted how nothing beats training on the open road, which of late has been significantly easier.

The paved shoulders of Highway 1 and 10 are also a tremendous asset, especially for days like last Saturday when Hamilton rode from his house in Brandon to the famed halfway-tree near MacGregor and back.

The flat terrain of Manitoba’s prairies will seem like nothing compared to the distances, and more importantly the elevation changes in France, so this weekend’s tune-up serves as another great training opportunity.

Sunday’s festivities of the Tour de Riding Mountain will include a time trial event — an 11-kilometre hill climb to Kippan’s Mill trailhead parking lot and back from the Northgate — and a criterium that will lead to closed roads in Dauphin.

The criterium is a short-course, high-intensity race around city streets. It will start at Obsolete Brewing and serves as a Canada Summer Games qualifier, and is a completely different ball game compared to the long slog of the road race. The criterium should feature aggressive turns, fast-pace in tight situations, and likely some thrilling chases.

About 110 have registered in advance for the weekend’s races, and Bergen expects it to climb to around 125 by the weekend.

Registration technically closed Wednesday at midnight, but they will accept walk-up registrants that have registered online in advance and pay cash.

Motorists will be urged to take extra caution through the race area. Marshalls will be on the course at all turning points and all points should be well-marked and more than visible on the highway, but it never hurts to use extra caution.

Sunday’s time trial starts at 9 a.m. at the Northgate Trailhead with the criterium starting with an intro to crit racing session at 12:30 p.m. The course will be then closed to all traffic with the categories of racers having staggered starts at 2 p.m.

» mpackwood@brandonsun.com