Malle Canyon 2024

RACE

MALLE CANYON 2024

Words by Jonny Cazzola / Photos by Manual Portugal

In October 2024, dedicated guests of the Malle Community travelled from all corners of the globe to meet in a beautifully picturesque canyon, just south of Lisbon, Portugal for a weekend jam packed full of wildly inappropriate racing, music, food, art and motorcycles!

The race weekend kicked off with the 100km Arrábida Rally, followed by the challenging deep sand, Canyon Carving, Dune Climbing races, intertwined with periodic scrambles through the wild mixed terrain tracks surrounding our first ever Malle Canyon!

No sprits were dampened by the occasional blinding thick fog, thunderstorms, vividly contrasting the glorious sunshine, all adding to the infectious energy of this brand new race weekend!

Learn more and see the full photo gallery below.

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For those that have joined a Malle rally or race, you will know that inappropriateness is at the core of what we endeavour to create. A non-serious approach to racing and adventure, an open space for all to come and play, with a series of fun races, scrambles and challenges, that we all ‘lose together’!

Malle Canyon was no different. Imagine a small slice of The Great Malle Rally, with a dollop of The Malle Mile Beach Race, with a side of The Malle Mile, all set in a beautifully picturesque Canyon, just 20 minutes south of Lisbon, Portugal. We welcomed guests from all pockets of the globe, with friends traveling in by plane, bus, van, motorcycle, jeep or scooter from as far as Australia, Russia, Malta, England, California, Scotland, Spain, France, Belgium, Germany and more all committed to joining our wildest race to date.

For the 100+ guests who arrived early on the Thursday afternoon, we hosted a beautiful bedouin-style Malle Canyon Feast, a delicious local inspired 3 course dinner cooked up by the talented team at Da Noi, a taster of their new menu from their second restaurant Skizzo, soon to open in Lisbon, while being serenaded by the talented Port du Soul duo. Guests were greeted with cocktails, including the mezcal based ‘Malle Madre’, a delicious selection of natural wine from the VIBEYARD team, hard kombucha from our friends at UMMI and tasty local brewed ales from MUSA. This was the perfect way to acquaint ourselves with friends new and old and calmly ease ourselves into The Malle Canyon weekend before the storm of rallies, races and scrambles ahead! Guests dined under the large canvas stretch tent in the heart of The Canyon Village surrounded by the first exhibits in The Art of Machine Exhibition, including four stunning Nortons, old and new, of which, on Friday when all machines returned from the rally, would transform into the full exhibition, where some of our favourite machines from all over Europe would be on show for the entire Malle Canyon weekend (when they were not racing!).

Friday kicked off with The Arrábida Rally, where road worthy bikes could locate themselves in this incredible country on a 100 km road rally around the stunning Arrábida National Park. The wide array of eclectic custom, classic and race machines navigate their way through 2 beautiful checkpoints, the first was Cabo Espichel – a historic monastery poised on the edge of the cliff over looking the wild and endless Atlantic Ocean, where the incredible array of machines formed a temporary exhibition in the monastery courtyard, where they were greeted with delicious empanadas from Empanar – over 100 motorcycles, surrounding the fleet of classic Portuguese UMM jeeps, kindly driven by the UMM owners Club. The second checkpoint was at Bataria de Costa, a decommissioned coastal defence base, with a warren of underground bunkers, military canons and what should have been an epic view over the Troia Peninsula, although a thick fog rolled in, making the checkpoint more surreal than usual – we’re saving the view for next year!

While plans for the race were hatching, we were connected with Norberto Liberato, the president of the UMM owners club. Norberto took to the Malle Canyon idea like a 4X4 to sand, rallying up over 15 stunning classic UMM jeeps to carry around 40 of our motorcycless friends along For The Arrábida Rally. What better way to join the adventure, than being escorted in one of these iconic Portuguese jeeps, known for supporting Portugals national services, military and competing at the Paris Dakar rallies! The UMM jeeps, were not only featured in the canyon exhibition, but we were honoured to be able to work with the UMM brand to custom build the ‘Malle Canyon Rescue’ vehicle! The bright yellow pick up truck supported the team for the entire build as well as rescuing broken down and stranded people and their machines throughout the race weekend! The UMM Clube also took guests on 4 wheeled off road experiences around the canyon, where guests could jump behind the wheel and experience driving one of the jeeps through a technical course in the surrounding canyon tracks!

The weather forecast for the weekend was questionable. All weather apps predicted a weekend full of rain and storms, but miraculously the motorcycle gods were on our side. We were met with a huge thunderstorm in the middle of the night on Friday, shaking and waking most of The Canyon Camp, as The Malle Expedition Tents lit up from the lightning and shook from the pounding rain, gale force winds and thunder. With promises of a glorious, sunny end of summer race in Portugal, this was concerning. How would this affect the terrain? Would the tracks all be filled back in with sand?? Is anyone going to turn up??? Come Saturday morning, as I anxiously unzipped my tent I was very pleased to be met with glorious sunshine which stayed for the whole weekend. No spirits were dampened, only the race tracks, which were now compacted down and de-dusted, creating the perfect surface for the 2 days of Canyon Carving, Dune Climbing and Scrambling racing ahead! Phew.

Saturday morning kicked off with our first of The Malle Scrambles. The 5km track that we had designed and spend hours the week before cutting out with the tractor, was now not only a mixture of hard winding trail, with small dips and climbs, with occasional deep sand sections, but now also small lake size puddles, adding an extra element to the already challenging course. Needless to say, riders ripped through their 3+ laps of the track, winding through cork forests and sandy canyon trails with no looking back.

The first race of the weekend was The Canyon Carve. There’s so much about this that shouldn’t work. The mixture of carefully restored and finely tuned classic machines, heavy customs with dirt tyres on, lightweight bikes with skinny tyres, rental mopeds and more, racing head to head in deep wet sand. This poetic mixture of people and machines define the ‘inappropriateness’ of our forgiving community proudly embody. It’s less about the bikes or winning and more about the spirit of the people and the fun you have trying and only because of this, it all worked out beautifully.

The second race was The Dune Climb – a short, steep, deep sand, hill climb challenge. We’d given it a few test runs that week, but only on more appropriate modern off road bikes, so we knew it was possible, but not for all. That’s the challenge. The track starts on the flat bottom of the canyon and quickly splits into two tight lanes, carving their way through ravines in the canyon cliffs, with one of the Malle Team stood precariously on a canyon peak in the middle of the two lanes signalling left of right to alert the race control at the start line who won. Filipe Lopez from Tramontana Motorcycles took The Dune Climb win on his custom Triumph Scrambler 400. Gille and XXX won the award for synchronised dancers and they simultaneously high sided, flipping their machines at exactly the same time. Bravo!

Amongst The Malle Canyon guests were MX legends Troy Lee, along with his son Max and 5 time AMA MX champion Jeff Ward. When Troy and I were brainstorming ideas on how to get more bums on bikes for some of our international guests, he mentioned that in the early days of motocross, when there were more friends then bikes, they would organise fun ‘Teams Races’. This is when The Malle Relay was born – 5 riders, 5 laps, 1 bike. Each team member would need to complete a lap each, the last team rider across the finish line wins. Simple.

Tiago from UNIK Motorcycles rolled into the canyon on a freshly finished custom flat track style Moto Guzzi V twin, with dirt tyres, tearing through the tracks, defying the law of gravity. Francisco Menzies gave it his all on nearly every one of his beautiful custom bikes he and the Holy Moly team were showcasing in The Canyon Village, with occasionally meetings with a tree or two! Two of our regular guests rolled up to the start line of the scramble on their 125 rented scooters, shoulder to shoulder with friends such as Dimitri Coste on his stunning Yamaha YZ, Sito Saldago from 5Special in his custom Baha Bug, Sam Barham on something way too modern and appropriate and many other wonderful humans on their built, bought or borrowed wonderful machines.

Throughout the races, all top ten riders are awarded the infamous Derby Final sticker, meaning you are entered into the final, no holes barred, all in, knock out final race, where riders compete head to head, winner stays on, until there is one winner, crowned King or Queen of The Canyon. For this final race we added the extra challenge of combining The Canyon Carve with The Dune Climb tracks. Starting with a multi turn slalom through the heart of the canyon, amalgamating with a head to head, high-speed (ish) sprint up The Dune Climb track to the canyon rim.

The final battle was between our Portuguese local Tomas Blades on his 1981 Honda CR80 and English rocket Kirk Catherick on his custom 1995 Yamaha XTZ660. It was almost neck and neck as they battled through the now very churned up sandy course, pushing themselves and their machines to the limit, until Tomas flipped his machine in the sand, giving Kirk the lead to go on to win the first ever King of The Canyon title!

Throughout the weekend guest were encouraged to mingle and explore the various exhibitions in The Canyon Village and in The Makers Market. We’ve been admiring Maria Riding Company’s beautiful custom machines and playfully stylish designs for a while so it was an honour to have their presence in the canyon, along with the dodge car they willingly parked on the sand! In The Makers Market was the Portuguese boot maker Forvel 1979, with his collection of stunning motorcycle boots, artist Joao Pedro from The Mousse Project, was live hand screen printing Malle Canyon collaborative custom scarves, artist Yoshiharu Miyakawa presented a collection of his stunning paintings of cars and bikes and Robert and Zayne from Gusto Motorcycles, were there talking about adventures and giving rides on their custom BMW sidecar outfits!

Congratulations to everyone that threw themselves and their machines into the first ever Malle Canyon. What a pleasure it was to play bikes with you all!

A special thanks to all the partners that supported this years race.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts to our dedicated marshals and team, who went above and beyond to help build and support this wild first Malle Canyon race in Portugal, your spirit an enthusiasm is contagious. Thank you to all the performers, chefs, exhibitors, riders, builders, journalists, photographers, film makers and partners that helped make this happen. Thanks to Julian Lemme for the incredible artwork.

We hope to see you in the Canyon next year!

Kindest regards,
Jonny, Robert and The Malle Team.