quote:
Knoxville’s Appalachian Mountain Bike Club is the winner of a nationwide online voting competition that will give the club $100,000 to build a world-class downhill mountain bike park.

The Knoxville club beat the other two finalists — a mountain bike club in California and a club in Minnesota — by a wide margin in the final round of the voting that ended Friday.

Matthew Kellogg, president of the Appalachian Mountain Bike Club, said the club’s proposal to build a system of expert-level mountain biking trails in Knoxville’s Urban Wilderness received online support from as far off as Denmark, New Zealand and Slovenia.

“This was a project that took on a life of its own,” Kellogg said. “We were getting hits from around the globe.”

Bell Helmets is funding the $100,000 construction grant. The Appalachian Mountain Bike Club will use the money to build a spectator-friendly downhill course suitable for competition and more challenging than the current 40 miles of trails in South Knoxville’s Urban Wilderness.

As the first facility of its kind in the Southeast, the new downhill park is expected to put Knoxville on the national map as a mountain biking destination.

Knoxville’s proposal received a whopping 26,619 votes — more than the other two finalists’ combined.

“The bike club has 250 members, so there were people who voted who have never been on a mountain bike,” said Carol Evans, executive director of the Legacy Parks Foundation. “This is a validation of Knoxville’s outdoor initiative. The final vote was much bigger than mountain biking.”

quote:
The advanced trail is just one attraction planned for the 100 acre property donated to Legacy Parks by the Wood family. Other grants will pay for new beginner-level and intermediate trails on the property while the $100,000 grant from Bell Helmets will construct the 1.25 mile advanced gravity trail with a difficulty level of double black diamond

-Pieces from a few local news sites.

Huge addition to the outdoor scene and the first of it's kind in the South east

This post was edited on 6/6/15 at 12:07 am

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Posted by Robert Goulet

Member since Jan 2013

9999 posts

Posted on 6/6/15 at 10:50 am to TRUERockyTop

frick yeah. This is huge even though I won't be riding a double black diamond anytime soon. This should get the ball rolling to invest in more multi use trails around knoxville. I'm about to go ride dirty south here in a little bit, they've done such a good job with that trail system.

Tennessee folks sure are good at these Internet polls.

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Posted by TRUERockyTop

Appalachia

Member since Sep 2011

15812 posts

Posted on 6/7/15 at 4:07 pm to Robert Goulet

Man, I haven't rode consistently in years. Me and a friend rode the loop at Cades Cove a few months back but haven't been on a bike since.

I'm looking forward to checking it out though and will be out there on the intermediate stuff in the mean time. Love what this brings to Knoxville and the outdoor scene though definitely.

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Posted by madmaxvol