Cycling Eventures (CE), established in 2009 by Brendon Morrison and directed by Brendon, Rebecca Cotton and Stephen Gallagher, is Western Australia’s most successful cycling events company. Over the last thirteen years, we have grown our reputation for delivering some of Australia’s largest and most iconic cycling events, including the Tour of Margaret River Pro AM, and the SEVEN Gravel Race – UCI Gravel World Series, which is currently recognised as Australia’s premier gravel race. Our dedicated team works with diligence and passion to make sure our events are safe, well organised, beautifully presented, inclusive and unforgettable. Whether on-road or off-road, for competition or leisure, we aims to show all cycling enthusiasts the most stunning locations, the most exhilarating routes, the highest quality big-event-experiences, and the most welcoming cycling communities.
CE has a proven track record of meeting and exceeding the expectations of Tourism bodies and major sponsors alike. We are also highly experienced at managing thousands of participants in single and multi-day events. We have strong connections to professional riders across the world, and have been successful in bringing some of the world’s best riders to our events in Western Australia.
The CE design team of Brendon Morrison, Stephen Gallagher and Rebecca Cotton is known for its expertise in course curation…designing the highest quality riding experiences from the start line to the finish line. For every event, we spend many hours ‘on country’ on our bikes, riding the full network of routes in a region until we are fully satisfied that we have discovered the very best ‘flow’ for a course. For us, every route has a story to tell its riders.
Brendon Morrison
In 2009, Margaret River farmer and keen amateur cyclist, Brendon Morrison, decided to hold a little bike race, and he named it the Tour of Margaret River. Even though there were only 30 riders and five teams that first year, the format was a hit and word got around. Cycling Eventures was established and the Tour became an annual event that grew from strength to strength, and is now the largest amateur road race in Australia, and the only road race for teams.
Brendon is a cycling visionary and the creative force behind all Cycling Eventure’s initiatives. With a mind that never rests, Brendon is constantly inventing new ways to ‘make our bike world bigger’, dreaming up new racing formats and events. Past events such as Lighthouse to Lighthouse, the Delirium 24 Hour Race, DIRT and the Tour of WA, are great examples of Brendon’s love of ‘the game’. In recent years, we have begun to test his Grand Pursuit format, with the hope that it will encourage a resurgence in amateur road racing across the world.
Brendon has now taken Cycling Eventures into the international sphere, working closely with partners in Thailand and Vietnam, to bring some very special and unique cycling experiences to our cycling community.
Running cycling events is a complex endeavour, especially when it comes to managing all the people involved and balancing all their needs. Brendon is our harmoniser and peace-maker, finding the common ground that enables us to unite all the tribes of cycling and forge genuine partnerships and friendships within the communities and towns through which we ride our bikes.
Rebecca Cotton
Rebecca came to Cycling Eventures after a successful career in public health and organisational development. She brought across the skills she developed across twenty years as a consultant to state and local government, particularly in strategic development, project management and change management. Big bike events are the ultimate in project and change management, so Rebecca’s experience has come in pretty handy.
Since 2016, Rebecca has been diligently applying herself to the continued development of best possible practices in event and risk management. She jokingly refers to herself as the ‘Apparat-chik’ of Cycling Eventures, taking responsibility for the generation and integration of all official documentation, including event and risk management plans, workforce plans, stakeholder management plans, schedules and budgets.
In contrast to this ‘dancing with the devil in the details’, Rebecca is also our self-taught in-house cartographer and graphic artist, developing all our maps, route profiles, posters, flyers and race books. This artistic side of her work with Cycling Eventures is something she greatly enjoys as it gives her an outlet for her creative urges (that, and taking charge of the music playlists for each event).
Rebecca also leads the course design team for our SEVEN Gravel Race and absolutely loves the thrill of driving the ATV at the front of the race, with our videography team on board. Short cuts are her specialty!
Stephen Gallagher
Stephen is a former professional road cyclist who represented Ireland at World and European Championships and the Commonwealth Games. Stephen won and completed races across Europe, Asia, South America and Australia during his career. After his cycling career Stephen started a coaching company, Dig Deep Coaching, which has become a global leader in athlete performance, working with some of the world’s leading cyclists. Stephen has gone on to work with the largest organisations in the cycling industry to deliver athlete performance optimisation. This includes working with Zwift to deliver the worlds largest talent identification project: Zwift Academy, and working as a performance analyst for media organisation Velon. Stephen is also the head of performance for the CanyonSram Women’s World Tour team, directly coaching and developing one of the world’s largest cycling teams.
Since 2013, Stephen has been in the cycling events industry having worked as technical director for the Grande Partenza of the 2014 Giro d’Italia. Stephen worked closely with event owners, RCS, along with national and regional authorities to deliver what has been the biggest ever event in the history of Northern Ireland. Stephen was the Event Director for the Giro d’Italia Grand Fondo Northern Ireland between 2015-2017. This was the largest mass participant event in Northern Ireland which had over 6000 entrants and was considered one of the UK and Ireland’s largest cycling events during this time. Stephen has also worked as an event consultant for the West Australian Tourist Board to deliver the World Gran Fondo Championships in 2016 in Perth, Western Australia. Stephen has worked the Race Director for Cycling Eventures (CE) in some of Australia’s largest cycling events in both gravel and road. Since March 2022, Stephen has been working exclusively with CE to develop and deliver world class events.