What's In Store For Windrock Bike Park Now That Aaron Gwin Is At The Helm?

Aaron Gwin shocked the mountain bike world when he, seemingly out of the blue, purchased Windrock Bike Park in Oliver Springs, Tennessee. It's commonplace to see World Cup racers build a personal track to train on, but to buy an entire bike park was unheard of.

Gwin got his start racing in his home state of California but has been training primarily down in Tennessee for the last handful of seasons at Windrock, and when it came to the park either struggling to expand or him stepping in, Aaron happily took the reins.

Aaron didn't just buy this park as a training ground, he was interested in it more as a passion project stemming from his love for building trail. And on that note, his development plans for the park don't just include the sort of ultra-gnarly World Cup training lines you'd expect. Aaron wants to focus primarily on expanding the park's blue and green trail offerings, he said, "As much as I like riding gnarly stuff, If I'm not training serious or whatever, I still love to just go out and ride blue flow trails with my friends and family."

Aaron's overall goal in acquiring the park is to turn it from an almost exclusively expert hill into a place where everyone can come and enjoy riding. Don't worry, he is not going to be dumbing down anything that exists already and in addition to the more family-friendly offerings, there are still plenty of gnarly lines on the docket.

"I love that hill. The people and everything about that place is awesome, the terrain is so cool and there is so much potential to expand there and do other things."

One of the biggest details of this new purchase is that the park is going to be doubling in size from its current roughly 540 acres to 1100. This will allow the crew to access the back side of the hills that Windrock is situated on and open up "some of the best terrain on the hill."

The other portion of Windrock getting a facelift is their bike shop. It is currently run out of a shipping container and co-mingles with the area that is allotted for offroading around the park. The new shop will be located on a different part of the property and will be a 2,000 square foot, full service bike repair, rental, retail shop, parking, and event space.

"I want it to be the premier training grounds for World Cup riders in the U.S."

As for events, Gwin wants the park to host everything from NICA races to big downhill events. He wouldn't officially spill the beans, but he did hint at some very big World level sort of races beyond just downhill that he has been affiliated with that could be coming to the park in the future. In his own words, "Think too hard about that and you can probably put the pieces together."

All in all, Aaron taking over Windrock seems like a dream come true for building a truly by riders, for riders - cliche phrase, I know, but this whole thing embodies that about as perfectly as one can - mountain bike destination and we at BikeMag are beyond excited to see where this all goes.

"We want to kind of cater to everybody and make it something special."

Related: The 5 Bike Parks That Should Be On Your Radar

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