Bentonville Bike Fest 2022

Bentonville Bike Fest 2022 was an amazing bike trials event! The Bentonville Bike Fest is predominantly targeted at mountain biking; however, it’s founder and lead organizer is former bike trials world champion Kenny Belaey, so the festival does include trials biking. Kenny partnered with Mike Friddell to host the North American Trials Championship at the Bentonville Bike Fest starting in 2021. In addition to including the NA Trials Championship at the festival again in 2022, elite trials riders from Europe were invited to compete in a UCI trials competition.

I sustained a tendon injury in my arm in the November 2021 timeframe, which still hade me sidelined in June 2022. I knew I should not compete at the Bentonville Bike Fest, but I really wanted to vlog the event, meet the other riders, and see UCI elite level trials riders compete. I was on the fence for quite a while, since Northwest Arkansas is too far to drive from my home in Connecticut. I mean, I could drive out, but it would take a couple days each way. So I finally decided to fly out for the event, sharing an AirBnB with some other riders – some of whom I’d met only online; others I’d never met online or offline. It was an absolute blast! I’m so glad I went!

I managed to create several videos from the event (and probably a handful more than I haven’t gotten to yet at the time I’m writing this…). The playlist below contains a collection of videos from this year’s Bentonville Bike Fest from the bike trials perspective. In addition to our videos, there are some from other creators as well.