LOCALE events, this year's organisers of the Dirty Warrny gravel fondo in Southwest Victoria, have just announced that the 2025 event is cancelled.

This news comes just two weeks and two days before the starting gun was set to go off. It is a shock and disappointment to many riders.

Gravel cyclists loved the Dirty Warrny for the sheer scale and the beauty of its courses. The long course is 246 kilometres and comes with about 3,000 metres of climbing across the Otways to a Warrnambool foreshore finish.

Cyclist Anthony Somers completed the event in 2024. “The event was epic,” he wrote in his recap, “one of those rides where you wonder how it all happened in just one day. With a little time to recover, I am now happy I did it. Will I do it again? Too soon to answer.”

CycleHub believes it's safe to say that the seeds for the catastrophic, last-minute cancelling of the event were planted on July 2, when the ride swapped event organisers. That was only four months before this year's event and created a scarily short timeline for even the best event organisers to get things together.

To be fair to LOCALE, they are a dedicated group of people who put on some excellent events, many of which Andrea or Dave at CycleHub have attended.

You might know the Dirty Pig & Whistle, the Car Park Climb in Wollongong, the Spoken custom cycle event, Gravelista, and CX Ballarat. These are all events put on by LOCALE. They work very hard to put on exciting events, despite the economics of event management not permitting them to make much money.

That said, many riders found their Facebook post announcing Dirty Warrny’s cancellation to be tone-deaf.

As Rick Goullet commented, it “sounds like a lot of words with no explanation for people who have paid for flights, accommodation, coaching and conducted hours of training."

Another Facebook user said the “apology” sounded like it had been drafted by ChatGPT. A third said that, actually, it was Kamala Harris.

Perhaps the most even-handed rider to comment was Tobia Kipper. “As much as this is disappointing and frustrating for a lot of people who have trained, spent money on flights etc. it's unimaginable to many the amount of hours, money, logistics and resources that go into creating these events. State and local government permits can also play a part here too...eg. One non signed permit means the event is off. There obviously more to the story here.”

We hope the rest of the story comes out and that the 2026 event really does go ahead.

If you want to read more about the event and its course, you can find all that information on the CycleHub page on the Dirty Warrny.