{"id":800440,"date":"2026-07-14T03:00:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T03:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/800440\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T03:00:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T03:00:14","slug":"dean-tennant-conquers-the-swamp-skinny-of-doom-at-island-ride-fest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/800440\/","title":{"rendered":"Dean Tennant conquers the Swamp Skinny of Doom at Island Ride Fest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Island Ride Fest at <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclingmagazine.ca\/mtb\/jordie-lunn-bike-park-expansion-opens-with-new-gravity-zone\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jordie Lunn Bike Park<\/a> looked less like a race weekend and more like the mountain bike festival every riding community wishes it had. Three days of racing, riding, camping, jump jams, demo bikes, kids\u2019 events, enduro racing and one gloriously ridiculous obstacle called the Swamp Skinny of Doom.<\/p>\n<p>Revenge of the Swamp Skinny<\/p>\n<p>Every festival needs a signature event. At Island Ride Fest, it\u2019s the Swamp Skinny of Doom. This year was the Revenge of the Swamp Skinny. The concept couldn\u2019t be much simpler. Ride a long elevated skinny across a swamp. Stay on the wood and you earn instant bragging rights. Miss your line and you\u2019re going swimming.<\/p>\n<p>Attempt after attempt ended the same way. With a splash. Then Dean Tennant rolled in. Tennant became the rider everyone had been waiting for, cleaning the infamous skinny and finally proving it could be done.\u00a0It might have been the loudest cheer of the weekend.<\/p>\n<p>Two others completed the obstacle.<\/p>\n<p>Three days of bikes<\/p>\n<p>Island Ride Fest packed just about everything imaginable into three days. Friday opened with a Klunker Race down Blue Trail, where riders raced old bikes for a share of the prize purse before heading over to a Dirt Jump Jam hosted by Mark Matthews and Ace Hayden.<\/p>\n<p>Saturday kept things rolling with guided rides and kids\u2019 coaching sessions from Nolan Riding before The Bike Shack Whip-Off sent riders sideways. Shimano, Devinci and Marin all brought demo bikes for riders to test throughout the day.<\/p>\n<p>Then everyone wandered over to the pond for Revenge of the Swamp Skinny.<\/p>\n<p>Sunday shifted toward racing with the fifth round of the <a href=\"https:\/\/islandcupseries.com\/enduro-racing\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Island Cup Enduro Series<\/a> at Jorduro 3.<\/p>\n<p>Already counting down to next year<\/p>\n<p>Mountain biking doesn\u2019t always need World Cup points . Sometimes all it needs is a great bike park, creative ideas, volunteers willing to put in the work and riders who are happy to spend an entire weekend laughing, riding and occasionally falling into a swamp.<\/p>\n<p>Judging by everything that came out of Jordie Lunn Bike Park this weekend, Island Ride Fest absolutely nailed that formula.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Island Ride Fest at Jordie Lunn Bike Park looked less like a race weekend and more like the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,1700,82],"class_list":["post-800440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-mtb-features","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}