Impeccably organised, fiercely competitive and supported by crowds that wouldn’t look out of place on an Alpine Tour de France stage, the 2025 National Hill Climb Championship redefined what a grassroots sporting event can be.
It was a showcase of how far the hill climb scene has come, and a glimpse of where it could go next. Its impact will be felt for years – not only in how future events should be run, but especially in the minds of the young riders who raced and spectated.
I rode my only UK National Hill Climb Championship in 2018, and I will never forget that day – not least because I was so devastatingly overgeared on my idiotic fixie that I think I had an out-of-body experience at the summit.
BikeRadar had gained some modest notoriety that year through the first season of our Hill Climb Diaries series. Approaching the steepest part of the climb, where most of the crowd had congregated, the commentator called out my name (and chided my appalling choice of gearing).
The feverish roar built as I came into the corner and, for the only time in my limited racing ‘career’, I felt like an actual cycling hero, with a 200-strong crowd screaming me on, pots and pans smashing around my oxygen-deprived, dazed coconut. Bigger cheers were reserved for colleagues and real athletes, Joe and Reuben.
But even my smug moment of D-list cycling celebrity fame paled in comparison to the thunderous atmosphere enjoyed by all competitors last weekend at the 2025 National Championship.
Like a skinsuit-wearing Moses
Vets rider Chris Green kicked off proceedings at 10.45am. Vying for a glimpse of agape mouths foaming with effort, the early spectators congregated around the junction with Smedley Street, where the road reaches a sustained 20 per cent.
Even from the bottom of the climb, I could hear the tinkle of cowbells and cheers go up as Green waggled out of sight into the heart of the climb.
Egged on by commentator Matt Stephens, the atmosphere grew wilder as successive waves of racers – faces vacant and peaky as they recovered from their heart-exploding efforts – descended the hill, joining the growing crowd of committed fans and curious onlookers.
Attending the event on bike-check duty, we dipped in and out of the racing, returning to catch the meat of the action from the top of the climb after the break at 1.15pm.
By this point, the crowd looked like something from a Tour summit finish, with a line of spectators along the whole 860m course, and a solid four-to-five deep throng from Smedley Street through to the final sprint.
The inimitable hand cyclist, Geoff Pickin, was off first after the break in racing. I caught him as he approached the end of his 14-minute 22-second effort, cheered on by the frenzied crowd right to the finish line.
Speaking after the event, Pickin told me: “Competing in the UK hill climb scene, and particularly the Nationals, is an experience like no other for me.
“It’s more akin to a mountain stage at the Tour de France, and that’s what makes the experience special to me.”
He was followed closely by the adorable junior riders on minuscule bikes, all of whom melted my heart as they wound their way up Bank Road, cheered with support reserved for the superstars of the sport.
As the competitive field of older boys and girls set off, things reached an early crescendo as local hero and reigning junior boys’ world champion – a world champion, at a hill climb in the UK! – Harry Hudson set an early high-water mark of 2 minutes 20.8 seconds, a time that would have been good enough to put him in fifth place in the senior men’s race.
That the juniors would enjoy such a hearty crowd is no accident.
Darren Miller – father of the affable 14-year-old Finn, whose bike I photographed – played a key role in organising the event.
Miller says that “as a club that prides itself on developing the riders of tomorrow, having the juniors midway through the running order was really important”.
Although faultlessly good-natured, the atmosphere became rowdier as we descended the hill to catch the final 20 competitors in the senior men’s and women’s field.
In the guts of the baying crowd, the race felt every bit as serious as any World Tour event I’ve been to, with chanting fans, booze flowing and costumes to rival a Belgian berg – I have never seen anything like it at a race in the UK.
The headcam footage from Harry Mac’s race-winning run says it better than I ever could.
Parting a sea of spectators like a skinsuit-wearing Moses, the footage is incredible – almost as incredible as the numbers behind Mac’s unbelievable performance on the day.
‘It took 12 months to achieve what we did’
Crowd and competitors aside, the event was so slickly organised, pushing the UK hill climb scene into new territory comparable to the best-organised races I’ve participated in abroad, and absolutely befitting of its status as a National-level event.
Electronic timing, a thorough rider handbook shared well in advance, the crowds, a solid list of sponsors putting real support behind the event, a professional commentator, a suitably large venue, and a head-spinning start sheet. This is all a far cry from charming village-hall events with homemade cakes, paper time sheets, an urn of tea and open roads usually seen at hill climbs.
I don’t want to discredit the Herculean effort that has gone into organising the other fantastic hill climb events, not least recent National-level events, but this really was something else.
However, one thing made it stand apart more than any other event – it didn’t start at the bloody crack of dawn.
Early starts are nothing unusual in UK road racing, a tradition probably borne out of the days when mass-start events were banned and organisers had to practically sneak time trials onto public roads.
There are arguments both ways – an early start lets organisers and marshals get on with their real lives.
However, starting a National event, which by its nature attracts competitors from across the country, later in the day makes it feasible for riders to travel to and from the event without needing to stay overnight. That’s a huge boon for those who can’t afford the costs or time of such indulgences.
Farmer Geoff Ware is a legend of the hill climb scene, racing without fail in his signature check shirt and baggy shorts. However, farmers, famously, don’t enjoy days off.
Posting on his Strava before the 2022 Championship held on Winnats Pass, Ware explained he was up at 2am on his quadbike to give the cows a fresh cut of grass and move four electric fences (“it's a few hours early but they seem to get the idea,” he notes).
He then set off from close to Minehead in Somerset on a four-hour drive to Winnats for his 8.38am start. Of everyone on the hill, I’m sure Ware appreciated this year’s later start more than most.
Keen racer Sam Marshall, who drove down from Stirling in central Scotland the night before, said the later start enabled more people to spectate, especially other riders: “We watched the first hour or so of the event before getting ready, shouting at people we know, and some we didn’t.
“I think that helps a lot with the camaraderie between riders. I wouldn't be able or inclined to do that if it started first thing in the morning.”
The town-centre setting helped build that incredible atmosphere, but it also makes logistical sense, with ample parking, shops and accommodation nearby.
The fact that the event was held in a town and started suitably late meant it was also (theoretically) possible to get there by public transport. That made attending the event possible for many who don’t drive – a key barrier to entry for many races.
Of course, there are only so many urban venues with a suitably disgusting hill, a club willing to take on the huge job of running the event, and a local administration happy to close a road for a day to let 450 riders puke all over it – but Bank Road sets a standard by which all future Hill Climb National Championships will be measured.
Even the organisers can’t quite believe what they achieved.
“We are honestly all still on cloud nine”, says Miller.
“The National Hill Climb Championship has grown and grown over the past few years, and we wanted to maintain the high level that Muckle CC set [for the Nationals] in 2024.
“This has been pretty much 12 months of work to achieve what we did.”
Hill climbs have so much more to give
Bank Road’s specifics aside, the hill-climb format remains uniquely accessible in a way few, if any, other disciplines can match.
To start, the format suits riders of all abilities.
With kindness in my heart, I can confidently say many of the riders – who had earned every right to be there – would never be confident enough to line up for another National-level event.
The scene is also uniquely welcoming. Pickin adds that, even as an older competitor at 62 and paralysed from the waist down, he’s been buoyed by the support of the hill climb community: “Everybody is cheering you and everyone else on, and it doesn’t matter how fast or slow you are – they and your fellow competitors just want you to do well.
“The noise and support of the crowd with people you’ve never met shouting your name just spurs me on, and when I’m finding it hard going on the steeper gradients, I seem to find that extra bit in my arms to keep going.”
Ever the nerd, I’m obligated to point out that hill-climb tech is also refreshingly easy to understand to the lay rider. It’s one of the few places where making your bike significantly lighter makes a tangible difference for most riders.
Rolling resistance and aerodynamics also matter, and the real nerds will optimise every last detail within an inch – nay, a nanometre – of usability. But the gains of such mods are more marginal than in conventional road racing.
It would be disingenuous for anyone to claim cycling isn’t at least a little about buying new tech and ogling the creations of competitors – from the free to the outrageous, I have no doubt this is part of the draw of hill climb racing.
But all of that matters for nought if the event itself isn’t well-organised, well-attended and, well, fun.
The true grassroots of the hill-climb scene – your local open with a few dozen riders lining up for five minutes of lung-putrifying pain on a random hill known only to gradient-seeking sickos – will always remain an important part of the sport.
But events such as Matlock CC’s promotion on Bank Road show just how much hill climbing has to offer the wider UK cycling scene.
An addictively simple format, a genuine spectacle, accessible venues and sensible start times have the power to attract racers young and old.
The calibre of competitors in the senior events, the tech on show and the media feeding frenzy on the hillside reached new heights for 2025 – all signs that the UK hill climb scene is in rude health, and long may it continue.
But the impact of the event will be felt most keenly by the junior racers.
If a fleeting moment cheered on by a modest but rowdy crowd in 2018 has left such a lasting mark on a bike media attention seeker in his mid-twenties, what impact will racing and spectating at Bank Road have had on these young, impressionable minds?
To suggest that the experience of racing Bank Road could well inspire the next Harry Hudson or Paula Ostiz Taco, taking them onto even greater things – greater than what is now surely the most important event in the UK road racing calendar – is not a stretch.
