Great as the event was, it went downhill massively after the stabbing. The problem was it was such a big event, it was attracting lots of people who weren’t going for the cycling, but were going for many other reasons (including to steal bikes, and/or fight other people with or without weapons).
In its glory years, Mountain Mayhem brought a lot of that atmosphere back to Eastnor, but to a significantly more mature crowd (which was crucial as far as the organisers were concerned). The only problem is, if you’re organising an event where the Booze and the Party aren’t the main event, everything else comes and goes with fashion. 24hr racing is way less fashionable now than it was 10 years ago, and then of course you have the damage caused to the Eastnor site in the horrific conditions of 2012, meaning it hasn’t returned to said site.
I’d love to see something like the Malvern Classics again, many people have tried (including Singletrack themselves, with their own Lee Quarry Weekenders), but nobody has succeeded and events have come and gone rather quickly for the most part. The Classic worked cos with 40,000 people in a field, but only 10% of them riding bikes, there was a huge party atmosphere where the cycling was kinda incidental, but those actually racing felt like superheroes with so many people cheering them on all the way (even Fort Bill WC only gets something like 10,000 spectators).
Doubt we’ll see anything like it again sadly.