Last year’s King, Ian Parker, returned for a fourth win at the 16th annual Royalty of the Canyon cross-country (XC) mountain bike race held on Saturday.

14-year-old Alexander LaBarge emerged as the Prince, besting a field of his undoubtedly older and questionably wiser competitors.

The 2022 event – in the past organized solely by Contagious Mountain Bike Club – was instead co-hosted with Cycling Association of Yukon (CAY) to create the annual Yukon XC Mountain Bike Championships.

The Royalty of the Canyon format typically features a short and long course, and in years prior has taken place on either Grey Mountain or Mt. Mac in Whitehorse.

This year, the event came back to Mt. Mac where Cycling Association of Yukon will host a major national race in September 2023 – the Canadian Cross-Country Marathon (XCM) Mountain Bike Championships.

For 2022, Parker won the long course event which was two laps of a 30 km course, resulting in a 60 km distance. The short course race, won by LaBarge was a single 30 km lap of the same design.

On each lap, mountain bikers rode classic XC trails such as 24 Hours of Light, Rebirth and Bouncing Bunny as well as newer black and double black diamond trails on El Guapo and Rock Lobster. Course designers also got a little mean and threw in the steep walls of Pierre Harvey near the end to really test competitors’ stamina and fortitude.

CAY will use this event experience to help influence the course design of the upcoming Canadian XCM Mountain Bike Championships. This weekend’s race was a great test of the course, and as such will now include a number of changes to better suit a larger crowd.

CAY is expecting a sizeable number of cyclists from across Canada to attend the 2023 race. The association desires to use this Canadian XCM MTB Championships to showcase the incredible variety of mountain bike trails that the Yukon has to offer.

Here are the results from the 2022 Royalty of the Canyon and Yukon XC MTB Championships:

Short course (30 km) Finish

Alexander LaBarge 2:00:26
Ross Phillips 2:08:47
Paul Gowdie 2:40:26
Kai Gibson-Tyler DNS

Long course (60 km)

            Lap 1       Lap 2       Finish

Ian Parker 1:50:09 - 1:59:56 - 3:50:05
Jesse Weyman 1:58:07 - 2:16:38 - 4:14:45
Rob McConnell 2:01:34 - 2:17:18 - 4:18:52
Aaron Foos 1:49:21 - DNF
Jonah Clark 1:53:40 - DNF
Scott Herron DNS
Hudson Lucier DNS

Submitted by Geof Harries