While Perth sleeps, Australia’s top pros line up for what might just be the hardest group ride on the planet.
Zac Williams
It’s 6:29 am on Boxing Day morning. Most of Perth is still sleeping off the indulgence of the previous 24 hours. The streets are empty, the air is fresh, and the morning light beams down on the best two hours of the cycling year. Boxing Day Papas is about to start.
A tradition that’s been around for decades, Old Papas is a group ride that starts from Gino’s Cafe in the heart of Fremantle’s Cappuccino Strip. Three days a week, it’s a dependable rip around the Swan River for anyone who wants to give it a crack, and it waits for no one. While the weekly editions of the ride are comparable to fast group rides in cycling hotbeds the world over, on Boxing Day morning, nothing else comes close.
Boxing Day Papas is an annual ritual: a no-numbers, no-prizes, full-gas test that draws everyone from first-year A-graders to WorldTour winners, all showing up to answer the same question: how good are you, really?
6:30 am ticks by, and 200+ riders are rolling out from the front of Gino’s. Most of the bunch are gathered to get a glimpse of hometown WorldTour heroes and will be dispatched out the back in the first 10km. The rest are there to prove themselves across the breathless 75km to come.
Starting in Freo, the route hugs the Swan River in the traditional Perth “river loop” format, with a fast and flowing section through Shelley before looping through the city. That’s where Boxing Day gets interesting. A brutal pace is turned even higher as the ride climbs through Kings Park, often the site of broken dreams for those simply trying to get around in the bunch. Every year, the KOM on Cardiac Hill falls, as hundreds bear witness from the side of the road. From here, they cut across to the roads used by the National Time Trial course, a final kicker up over Oceanic Drive, before making their way back down the coastline towards Port Beach and the sprint finish.
This isn’t a race. That’s never been the point of Boxing Day. In the inimitable words of Perth’s Jai Hindley, Boxing Day Papas can be summed up in one phrase: “Chop till you drop.” It’s a group ride with the ferocity of the last two hours of a Grand Tour sprint day, oftentimes with even bigger crowds.
It’s provided countless current-day pros with a yearly yardstick to measure themselves against as they grow and develop through the ranks. Boxing Day has a roll call through the years that would give an Australian selector a headache at any given World Championships: Luke Durbridge, Jai Hindley, Ben O’Connor, Sam Welsford, Brady Gilmore, Cameron and Travis Meyer, Jack Bobridge, Harry Sweeny, Graeme Brown, Robert Power. All of whom have raced, or continue to race, at the highest level of the sport.
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