photo courtesy The Northern Echo.

Winners at this year’s UCI Cross Country World Cup in Dalby Forest, UK will be taking home hand-crafted wood trophies instead of the traditional medals. Master woodworker Philip Greenwood was commissioned to create the unique trophies and he used three different woods (Beech, Ash, and Oak) to represent gold, silver, and bronze.

Mountain biking is all about the great outdoors and it’s cool to see the symbolism in these awards. In fact, all of the wood has been sourced locally which means winners will be taking a bit of North Yorkshire home with them.

Even the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame induction awards have gone arty and we’re especially fond of the unique, steampunk-esque trophy style used (above). Art and mountain biking seem to go together nicely and our members have put together a collection of some other cool MTB art photos here. Also check out the archives (one & two) for more stories about unique mountain bike art.

Rider Sam Hill photo courtesy fortwilliamworldchamps.co.uk.

This weekend more than 20,000 spectators turned out to watch the MTB World Cup competition at Fort William, Scotland which, I’m told, was voted the best mountain bike event in the world 3 years in a row.

Greg Minaar won the men’s downhill event for the second year in a row and Sabrina Jonnier from France won the women’s title. Gee Atherton, who along with Greg Minaar, recently competed in the World Indoor MTB Championship , took fourth in the real-world downhill competition.

In 4-cross, Australian Jared Graves took first for the men while American Jill Kintner won the women’s race.