#IWD2024: How Gravity Girls South Australia is paving the way for female MTB riders

It started a decade ago as a grassroots Facebook group for female mountain bike riders to connect and ride with each other.

From these humble beginnings, Gravity Girls South Australia has blazed a trail for women in the sport, with the group this year becoming the first official women-only mountain bike club in South Australia.

The move to become an affiliated AusCycling club was in part due to the group’s ambition to run a women’s-only racing series, incorporating different mountain bike disciplines.

With nothing of the kind already available in SA, the group took matters into their own hands, and despite only launching as a club a few months ago, the first of the three-race series – a Cross Country Marathon race - will be held on March 24.

It will be followed in April by a Gravity Enduro race, and finish with a Downhill race.

“It’s been a hectic, wild ride,” Gravity Girls SA founder Moira Love said.

How Gravity Girls SA started?

Love started the Facebook group back in 2014 as way to connect and engage with female mountain bike riders, and to try to increase female participation in the sport.

“In my 20s I went over to Europe for a ski season and decided to stay for summer. I got into mountain biking and loved it. I moved back to Adelaide and a friend was like, ’You should race,’ Love recalls.

“So, I started downhill racing, but there just weren’t many women racing. We would maybe fill a podium.”.

After racing a couple of seasons of Downhill and Gravity Enduro, she decided to start a Facebook group for women.

“As the years went on, the group grew organically a naturally it became a platform where women (can) talk all things mountain biking - from saddle recommendations to which clothing and gear fit which body types better,” Love said.

Since 2014 the South Australian Facebook page has amassed more than 600 members, and Gravity Girls has spread across Australia, with women in other states starting their own social groups, from Western Australia, to Tasmania, to Cairns and Canberra.

“We are all slightly different in the way we do things, but ultimately are all about supporting women in the sport of mountain biking. Each group if kicking massive goals for the sport in their own ways,” she said.

“We are definitely all connecting more now which is awesome and we would very much like to travel to the other states to connect and ride with the other groups.”

If it doesn’t exist, you have to build it yourself

Love said she always had it in the back of her mind to make it an official club one day.

Whilst living in Vancouver for a year, she noted the number of women riding mountain bikes and took inspiration from a local mountain bike club she joined.

“I joined a club called MudBunnies and I loved that model. It was a membership-based club where you paid an annual fee, which gave you access to the group, weekly guided rides (during the summer) as well as coaching opportunities and organised trips away,” she said.

Love took the MudBunnies idea with her back to South Australia, but a real push came when members of the group wanted to start a women-only race series.

There was nothing that existed that ticked all the boxes for what the group wanted, so Love and her girls decided to dive head-first into setting up the club and race series.

“It’s about creating an environment where we can celebrate and explore all forms of mountain biking,” Love said.

“One of our members Talia Simpson had the idea to create a women's only race series which gives women a taste of all three disciplines of racing - and in a super fun and low-pressure environment.

“Our idea is to encourage the ladies to sign up for the races as a team / pair. They can race the XCM in a pair and then their points for the DH and GE races will be combined to go towards an overall 'team' points system.

“Our hope is that some of the more experienced girls will team up with someone less experienced so that they can show them the ropes.”

And keeping it simple is part of keeping the series fun too.

“We aren’t overcomplicating it with a bunch of different categories. For seniors we will have competitive and ‘just for fun’ categories. There is also an e-bike category and a couple of categories for Juniors.

“The goal is to have an annual race series, an annual event where it’s a big come and try day, we will have monthly rides, shuttles, coaching, and each year do a trip somewhere.

“I’m also fine-tuning a classification system. Rather than labelling our rides as 'beginner', 'intermediate' or 'advanced', I have decided to go for a level system:

“Level 1 rides - mostly green trails, some easy blues possibly with a slower pace both up and down the trails. Level 2 - green, blue and easy black trails with a slightly quicker pace both up and down. Level 3 - green, blue, black and double black trails - not many stops on a climb and a quicker pace down hill.”

Creating a club from scratch

Love says the process of formalising the club was a huge learning curve, but the women had used their various skills and background to get it off the ground.

“You have to become incorporated, you have to have a board, and have an AGM, and have a constitution. That’s before you can become affiliated with AusCycling,” Love said.

“It was a process putting it all together, but it has been so great that so many amazingly talented women have put their hands up to help with the club as they all really believe in what it is about and want to be a part of it.

Since launching at the end of last year, the club has had about 60 women join, and at the club’s launch late last year more than 100 women registered with Gravity Girls SA.

“People were saying I didn’t realise that many women rode mountain bikes here,” Love adds.

Why women only?

“There’s something about women doing this together that’s really empowering,” Love responded when asked why it was important to have women-only riding groups and clubs.

“I’m someone who from the beginning was happy to ride with the guys. I’m comfortable in that environment, but a lot of people aren’t. It’s a male dominated sport - it’s important for women to see other women doing something like going over a jump, to show they can do it too.”

Love said it wasn’t just on the bike that the group wanted to women to be empowered, it was off the bike too.

“As a committee we have discussed that we would like to have as many women involved as possible - across the races and the general running of the club - this includes race directing, race commissaires, learning how the timing system works, everything really.

“It’s a female group and we want to empower women to join and be part of it, and all parts of it.”

Learn more about Gravity Girls here.