The 53rd Grafton to Inverell Cycle Classic

The Start

Grafton, Saturday 26 October 2013. The sea of cyclists gathers beneath a huge blue inflatable arch with the golden McDonald's arches blazing above. The road is packed with riders in every colour, helmets glinting, the air thick with the hum of chains and the murmur of 251 starters waiting for the gun.

There's a moment before the start — a one-minute silence honouring Jack Griffin, the race director who ran this event for 31 years (1962–1993) and died just months earlier, in March 2013. He was an OAM, a founding figure of the race, and the man who, with Malcolm Campbell, converted it from a handicap event to a mass start in 1979.

Brett is in the support vehicle, the camera rolling. Beside him is Michael — Simon's brother. Simon is behind the wheel, black cap, sunglasses, tattooed arm resting on the steering wheel. He's going to drive this 228-kilometre route alongside his own ride, following the race from start to finish.

The overlay reads "A Grade" — the category for the riders who left first. Simon is racing in C Grade. Behind the A-Grade peloton, B and C grades set off together. The white race director car sits at the front of the pack, and then it's off.

The Road Out

The first hours are the flat coastal plains of northern NSW. Two-lane ribbon of asphalt, guardrails, eucalyptus trees, grassy fields stretching to the horizon. The support vehicle follows the pack, Simon driving, Brett filming, Michael settling in. The landscape is open, bright, almost flat — a warm-up before the real work.

At one point a large white bus shares the road, the three of them squeezed between the forest and the oncoming lane. Rain streaks the windshield for a stretch, adding a hazy, atmospheric quality to the drive through the dense forest.

Passing through a town, the road signs point to Casino and Grafton. Cyclists wheel through the streets past buildings and palm trees. A sign on one building reads "Chris Guleptis" — a local name, a local business, part of the fabric of the route.

The Gibraltar Range

Then the road starts climbing.

At about 68 kilometres from the start, the route leaves the open plains and enters the Gibraltar Range — the feature climb of the entire race. Seventeen kilometres of steady ascent through World Heritage-listed rainforest, the gradient holding at around 5.6% for most of the way, with steeper switchbacks up to 8%. The summit is at roughly 1,020 metres. The trees close in. The road narrows. Yellow chevron signs mark the curves.

Simon rides it. The support vehicle follows, weaving through the same winding roads, the dashboard full of coins or small objects, the windshield reflecting the canopy overhead. The light filters through the leaves in hazy shafts. The air is cool and damp. This is the part of the race that breaks people.

At the top of the range, riders encounter a wind that's famous in its own right — swirling through the treetops, arctic cold, straight into the face, with broken branches scattered across the road. Near the top there's Boundary Waterfall, a small side-trip for those with the legs left for it.

But the video captures the descent — the long, winding road back down through the dense forest. Simon in a white shirt and dark shorts, riding away from the camera on the curving road, the guardrail on one side, the trees closing in on the other. The descent is long and technical, and it's where the support vehicle really earns its place, following at speed, the road twisting and turning through the green.

And then, on a gravel shoulder off the main road, Simon stops. He's out of his jersey, in a white striped polo shirt, grinning at the camera, arm raised. Someone is walking behind him. The exhaustion is there but so is the joy — the kind of grin that only comes after you've just done something hard and you know you've got it in you for the rest.

Mt Mitchell — The First Feed Zone

The road levels out. The forest thins. At the 120-kilometre mark, the text overlay appears: "THE 1st FEED ZONE / Mt Mitchell."

Mt Mitchell is a King-of-the-Mountains sprint — a short, steep punch of road on the New England plateau. The road is lined with orange cones, people standing on the shoulder, a car parked at the edge. A spectator points towards the incoming riders.

A feed zone is where handlers pass food bags to riders as they roll through — no stopping, just grabbing your musette and keeping moving.

Simon rolls through. He's survived the Gibraltar Range. He's in the middle of the race now, two-thirds of the way there.

The Long Middle

The next 40 kilometres between feed zones are considered a key period for most riders. The road is rural, the grass dry, the eucalyptus trees lining the sides. The route passes through Glen Innes — the only real town on the course — and the second feed zone.

Then, near the 180-kilometre mark, the overlay reads: "Pringle had a hard fall."

The crowd is walking down the road. People have stopped. Curtis Pringle — Simon's training partner from Glen Innes — has crashed, badly. The celebratory rhythm of the race is interrupted by a moment of concern. In a race like this, where the peloton is spread out over hundreds of kilometres and the roads are narrow and winding, falls happen. The video doesn't linger, but the text stays on screen. A name, a friend, a moment of misfortune in an otherwise triumphant day.

The Finish — Inverell

The final stretch includes the Waterloo Range and a sharp short climb called Wire Gully about 23 kilometres from the finish. Then a short, nasty climb called Gibsons Hill — 1.4 kilometres at 5% — before a speedy downhill run into the Inverell CBD.

The finish is on Grey Street, in Simon's home town of Inverell. The road is cordoned off, sponsor banners along the barriers — Subaru, McDonald's. Another inflatable McDonald's arch marks the line, bookending the start at Grafton. The crowd is on both sides — historically around 6,000 people on the final two kilometres — leaning over the barriers, phones raised, cheering. For Simon, this is where the day ends: 228 kilometres, three mountains, and a finish on the street where he lives.

A cyclist in a blue jersey rides through the arch, arms out, the finish line behind him. The race is over.

The A-Grade winner that day was Jack Anderson (Team Budget Forklifts), finishing in 6:38:07 in a two-up sprint against Benjamin Johnson. But the race is bigger than the winner — it's the 251 riders who set off from Grafton, the support vehicles, the feed zones, the small towns, the mountains, and the finish line where the community turns out.

The Training — Motor-Pacing

The last section of the video isn't from race day. It's from the weeks leading up to the Grafton to Inverell — motor-pacing, a training technique where a cyclist rides behind a moving vehicle to hold a steady race speed with no wind resistance.

Shot through the rear window of the support vehicle, Simon and Sam Horwood — his work mate — ride side by side, helmets on, following the car along a rural road. One is drinking from a bottle. They're holding a fast, even pace, legs turning in rhythm, the kind of sustained effort that builds the legs for 228 kilometres.

Brett added the title card in post — "53rd Grafton To Inverell Cycle Classic 2013" — overlaid on the frame of the two riders behind the car. The date, the number, the place. A small piece of history, captured by a friend, on a camera, from the passenger seat.

This is the work done quietly, before the start line, before the crowd, before the McDonald's arch. The training that makes the race possible.

The Race

The Grafton to Inverell Classic has been run since 1961 — 53 editions by 2013. It was conceived by Inverell resident Harold Strahley. It's 228 kilometres of road, from sea-level Grafton, over the Gibraltar Range, through the New England highlands, and down into Inverell at roughly 610 metres. It's been called "the toughest one-day race in Australia."

The race has a long history of attrition — high drop-out rates, harsh conditions, wind, cold, and a climb that doesn't let up. The international era saw UCI teams in the 1980s; Simon Gerrans won it during that period. The current record is 6:00:21, set by Mark Jamieson in 2011.

By 2025 it had become a round in the ProVelo Super League. But in 2013, it was a National Road Series round — a day in the life of a small-town road race, with a McDonald's arch at each end, a one-minute silence for a race director who'd given 31 years to it, and a support vehicle full of friends.

The video is 37 minutes long. The race was much longer. The amount of training that goes into these, most people wouldn't believe...