The Cycling Media Awards, or CMA (not to be confused with the Country Music Awards) is an annual London jolly organised by the same people who produce BikeBiz, one of the cycling industry trade publications.
Categories have varied from year to year and this year our very own Chipps and Sanny (AKA David Gould) were nominated in two categories. Singletrack Magazine was also nominated in the best magazine category but we’d written that one off when we saw the number of excellent road mags we were up against. In fact there was lots of competition seeing as each category had no less than 8 finalists. Here are the categories that were up for grabs this year. We’ve marked the winners in bold for you.
Magazine of the Year
- Rouleur
- Cyclist
- Singletrack
- MBUK
- Bikes ETC
- InCycle
- Velorution
- Cycling Plus
Website of the Year
- Road.cc
- Cycling News
- Bike Radar
- Road Cycling UK
- Cyclist
- sportive.com
- Total Women’s Cycling
- Factory Jackson
Specialist Writer
- Jessica Strange – VeloMe
- David Gould – Singletrack
- Aoife Glass – BikeRadar
- Andrew Dodd – Factory Jackson
- Peter Walker – The Guardian
- James Spender – Cyclist
- David Arthur – road.cc
- Oisin Sands – sportive.com
Best coverage by a Mainstream – Print
- Times
- Telegraph
- Vice
- The Guardian
- Women’s Fitness Coach
Best coverage by a Mainstream – Online
- Sky Sports
- BBC Sport Online
- The Observer
- The Times
- Guardian
Best Broadcast Coverage
- BBC Sport
- The Bike Channel
- The Voxwomen Show
- ITV
- Eurosport
- Red Bull TV
Best Cycling Podcast
- The Cycling Podcast
- Cycling News Podcast
- The Velocast.cc
- Prowomenscycling
- The Rouleur Podcast
Blogger of the Year
- Matt Willey and Victoria Bowskill – Vamper
- Mark Treasure
- Chipps Chippendale
- Beth Bryn-Hodge
- VoxWomen
Photographer of the Year
- Balint Hamvas – cyclephotos.co.uk
- Marshal Kappel – Rouleur
- Simon Wilkinson – SWpix.com
- Saskia Dugon – Saskia Dugon Photography
- Bryn Lennon – Getti Images
- Chris Keller Jackson – Freelance
So, lets talk about this. Firstly we have been proud recipients of awards from the CMA’s and the BikeBiz awards as it was known previous to that for over a decade and there is no doubting that this is a prestigious list of finalists. We’ve got glassware proclaiming our status as best magazine to best website on our official trophy windowsill in the kitchen. Look.
We keep them next to the office Kahlua and Glenfidich. We are particularly proud of the 3rd place Go Kart trophy in there. We’ve won awards for being great at being Northern and even for being ‘Media Pioneers’. Last year Chipps won a CMA award for just being the industry legend that he is. Unfortunately, no one from the CMA’s told him he had been nominated, let alone won, so he didn’t attend and Mark picked up the glassware on his behalf. Still an honour, obviously.
Tym Manley – Cycling Media Legend 2016
This year the legend Award went to the founder of MBUK, Tym Manley, who was present and gave an impressive 20 minute speech.
Tym, who was inducted into the UK MTB Hall of Fame in 2013, gave our publisher, Mark, his first freelance writing gig on MBUK almost 20 years ago and Chipps has been a long time friend of Tym’s as well as a work colleague for many years before Singletrack was born in 2001. In fact, Tym was part of a very early and exclusive collective of ‘advisors’ we took authoritative sounds from in the planning stages of our 2001 launch.
Tym also features in our Singletrack co produced documentary, MTB: The Untold British Story. Available to pre-order on DVD now.
Tym IS a legend and he is both directly and indirectly responsible for the shape of the British cycling media today. From all of us here at Singletrack Tym, congratulations on a worthy award.
We Won Again!
This year we won two awards. Firstly, Sanny won Best Specialist Writer, which considering the reach that many of his unique online features have gained is pretty well deserved. We’ve made a ‘Best Of’ collection for you at the end of this article. Last year, our late deputy editor, Jenn Hill, was the posthumous winner of the same award.
What Is A Blog?
Then the surprise of the evening happened. Chipps won Blogger Of The Year.
Why such a surprise? Well, he doesn’t actually have a blog. But this got us talking this morning about what actually is a blog? We don’t consider that Singletrackworld.com is a blog although it’s built on a WordPress platform, which is a staple platform of bloggers the world over. So when does a blog become a website? Can a blog be more than a single author/owner? We wondered if using social media a lot counted as blogging. Incidentally, the CMA’s used to include a category of ‘Best Use Of Social Media’, but that was dropped this year, which, at a time when it’s possible to get by without a website at all and just have a Facebook page, is a little ironic.
Frankly, we are a bit confused, and once we looked at the other finalists in that category and explored their blogs, also a little embarrassed to tell the truth.
Here are those cycling bloggers who were nominated alongside Chipps.
Matt Willey & Victoria Bowskill – Vamper
Their website.. er.. blog.. er.. (See how confusing this is?) says, “Vamper.cc as a cycling blog is dedicated to seeking out style and performance on two wheels. We share everything that we find seductive about cycling, from the most stylish kit design to our reviews of cycle clothing, bikes and accessories.”
The site is gorgeous, the images are great and the reviews in-depth. Both of the authors (Blogging is not a solo occupation obviously) describe themselves as amateurs and the subject matter is predominantly roadie. It’s a lovely blog/site and you should check it out.
Mark Treasure
Mark runs the cycling advocacy blog, As Easy As Riding A Bike, a WordPress hosted blog in the traditional sense, if there is such a thing anymore. He also contributes to the website Cycling Embassy of Great Britain. If you commute by bike then both sites are well worth a read and even a bookmark.
Beth Bryn-Hodge
Beth’s cycling blog is easy to navigate to as the url is her name http://bethbrynhodge.com, although not exactly, as she explains on her ‘About’ page..
‘Bryn’ meaning ‘hill’ in Welsh is where I would like to think my nickname came from. Sadly it is far less romantic, I’m actually named after Uncle Bryn from Gavin and Stacey, after first living in France many years ago, and well, it stuck. I don’t dress like him, for the avoidance of doubt…
More than just a blogger, Beth has been widely published in such places as Total Women’s Cycling, The Cyclocross Handbook and even by our sister publication, grit.cx
VoxWomen
The Voxwomen.com blog/wesbite claims to be the ‘Home of Women’s Cycling’ and even has a collection of regular video shows that you can purchase from Vimeo. It’s a slick website with regular news items as well as an actual ‘blog’ section. It also has a long list of esteemed sponsors from Endura to Trek. It’s a road cycling website (It’s a website.. there, we made a distinction. More than that, with slick video production VoxWomen is a strong, professional media outlet).
Chipps
Now lets not do Chipps down. He does have a twitter account.
Here’s some of his Twitter highlights..
Er… I won the Blogger of the Year Award… at the @cyclemediaaward evening. How’d you like my @singletrackmag blog then? 🙂 pic.twitter.com/nZaJZIYaaH
— Chipps (@Chipps) November 10, 2016
And this recent classic bit of twittery
Specialist Writer
Sanny also won last night and in order to justify the Glasgow to London train fare plus night in an Islington Premier Inn, here’s a collection of his finest works that we encourage you to click on and read.
Specialist Writer Of The Year – Sanny
Forth Fat – One Woman’s Ride Back From Cancer
UK Adventure – The Four Seasons
An Introduction To Bikepacking
12 Survival Tips For An Unplanned Night On The Trail
9 Top Tips From The World Cup DH Circuit
And Sanny’s masterpiece of clickbait.. Ten Ways To Be A Dick In A Bikeshop
And from his Opinion/Column Selection..
But no, really… Congratulations to all the winners from all of us at Singletrack.
And here’s a short little video to show you how it all went down on the night. A slightly awkward acceptance speech?
