Singletrack/MTB
Gravel/All-road
Dirt-road Touring
Fat-bike
The inaugural Wildcard Bikepacking Rally in Amsterdam offered a unique experience with no set route and points awarded for distance traveled and meters climbed. Find a recap and photos from the event from co-organizer Leanne Bentley here…
Words and photos by Leanne Bentley
On May 17th at 9:00 a.m., riders gathered at Workspace6 in Amsterdam to take part in the first edition of Wildcard, a cycling rally with no set route and many ways to win.
Participants had 10 hours to cover as much ground as possible between the start and finish locations, earning 1 point per kilometre and 1 point for every 10 metres of climbing. Extra points could be earned by completing missions, like riding 10 kilometres of a mountain bike trail, picking up trash, going for a swim, or carrying a log for the campfire.
To keep things interesting, we had three categories you could win, allowing riders to develop their own strategies—and crucially, giving them the chance to compete in a way that didn’t just come down to who had the strongest legs or the fastest bike. The three categories were:
- Rally winner: The person who accumulated the most points
- Distance winner: The person who covered the most distance
- Missions winner: The person who completed the most missions
Riders showed up to the start line on all kinds of bikes – from brakeless track bikes to cargo bikes to 26” beaters. We spotted several homemade bags, including a frame ‘bag’ made entirely from inner tubes, and many freshly baked cakes; it was clear people were taking the missions seriously!
When the clock struck nine, a few keen riders raced off down the road, leaving the more chilled participants to finish their coffees and tinker with their bikes and bags for a few more minutes. With the riders totally self-sufficient, Melvin, Jack, and I headed towards the finish to organise food and drinks for the party, before sneaking in a quick mountain bike ride on the local trails.
Our finish location was a campsite in the beautiful Veluwe. The shortest distance riders would need to travel was 100km, which seemed doable even for relative beginners over the 10 hours. If riders wanted to pick a more adventurous route, there was plenty of forest kilometres they could build into their day.
As 7 p.m. drew closer, riders started to trickle into camp. First in were Callum and Chris. Callum rode into camp with a massive smile on his face after completing his first-ever long-distance ride, on a bike he’d borrowed just two days previously.
At least 10 people had huge logs strapped to their bikes, some many kilos over the requirement, and it seemed like most riders completed the ‘go for a swim’ mission—we really lucked out with the weather. Perhaps most impressively, a group of fixie riders managed to complete the MTB trail mission, with Richard showing off GoPro footage of him stacking it into a tree as evidence of completion.
We set up a scoring station and slowly made our way through each rider’s GPS data and photographic evidence while everyone enjoyed pizza and cold beer. It was really fun to see how many missions everyone had completed and all the different routes they took. As we’d hoped when designing the event, each winner went with a completely different strategy.
The Rally win went to Tim Wassenaar, who meticulously planned his route to maximise points, heading for the famous Rozenbos to do hill reps on his Omnium cargo bike. He totalled 1,600m of elevation over 226km, a massive achievement for the Netherlands. Tim also found time to complete 10 of the 12 missions, bringing his total score to an outstanding 736 points.
The Distance category was won by Myles Merckel, who skipped most of the missions to focus on pure speed. He covered an impressive 270km in just 10 hours.
Elvert Arnold and Lizzie Kroeze took the Missions win, completing all 12. They arrived on 26” mountain bikes they’d built specifically for the event, with full sets of bikepacking bags made from IKEA bags. A huge thanks to them for thoroughly stress-testing the rules – let’s just say the ‘fix a puncture’ mission was completed in a slightly questionable way.
Finally, Tim Schrenk focused on being the first to reach the firetower to collect a hidden joker card. He was so fast he actually beat us there. After recruiting a group of hikers to help him search, he gave up and messaged us asking for a more precise location. We saved the card for him, and the prize was his.
As the sun went down we enjoyed a campfire run entirely on the logs people carried with them, and then everyone hunkered down to complete the final mission: sleep in a bivy bag. Thankfully, for the many first-time bivy-ers, it was a warm and dry night.
Learn more about the Wildcard Rally on Instagram.
Further Reading
Make sure to dig into these related articles for more info...
Please keep the conversation civil, constructive, and inclusive, or your comment will be removed.
