As you’re probably well aware, the 24th edition of our beloved Bright Brewery Tour of Bright has been cancelled due to unforgiving weather. As an event organiser myself, I know how much work would have gone into this and what the financial exposure would have been like for the Alpine Cycling Club and sponsors.

These events cost tens of thousands of dollars to put on, if not more. As a longtime competitor in this event, I know how hard everyone has worked and how disappointed we all are.

As we’re all part of this tight-knit community, please consider donating a portion of your refunded entry fee to the club so that this unfortunate event doesn’t cripple the organisers for future years.

Now for the good news. Overnight I’ve been in touch with Zwift to see if we can put on a ‘virtual Tour of Bright’ over the weekend. We’re all in top form and busting out of our skin to use that form, so it would be a shame not to run the race in some form.

With the blessing of the Tour of Bright organisers, we’ve engaged Zwift who have bent over backwards to set up a two-stage race this Saturday and Sunday.

It’s not perfect — we’ve only had a few hours to put this together — but it’s everything we could do at such short notice.

All Tour of Bright competitors, and anyone else who wants to have a crack, are welcome to join us this weekend to race ourselves silly. The details are as follows:

– Stage 1: 9am AEDT, 55.7km

– Stage 2: 9:30am AEDT, 72.2km

IMPORTANT: If you’ve entered Tour of Bright, please write your name and grade in your profile (example: “Wade ‘Masters A’ Wallace”) so you can see who you’re racing against.

There is only one mass-start grade. We will do our best to sort out the results after each stage for those on the official Tour of Bright startlist. However, with timezone differences separating us and the Zwift technical team, this may not be possible quickly. Please understand that this was something thrown together very quickly and we can only do our best at this stage!

For those of you not set up on Zwift, here are some helpful links to get you started:

– Getting set up – A beginner’s guide to Zwift

– Shane Miller’s YouTube channel for lots of good advice

– How to race on Zwift

We hope to see you there!