A New American Town - Bentonville, Arkansas

Inside Bentonville Bike Fest: Global Cycling Stars, Jaw-Dropping Stunts & Family Fun in the MTB Capital

• Visit Bentonville • Season 9 • Episode 12

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Join host Nat Ross, Mountain Bike Hall of Famer, as he welcomes 9x World Champion Kenny Belaey, founder of the Bentonville Bike Fest, for an inside look at one of the most exciting cycling events in North America. 🎉🚴‍♂️

Now in its fifth year, Bike Fest has grown from a grassroots event into a global celebration of all things biking, featuring:

✅ Action-packed stunt shows and jaw-dropping trial competitions
 ✅ World-class brands and interactive expo experiences
 ✅ Races for all ages and skill levels – from toddlers to e-bike pros
 ✅ Live music, food, swag, and nonstop entertainment
 ✅ Athletes from over 15 countries and over 6,500 attendees

Whether you're a die-hard cyclist, a weekend rider, or just curious about Bentonville’s biking culture, this episode will show you why Bentonville Bike Fest is the must-attend event of the year.

🎧 Tune in, get inspired, and get ready for the ride of your life this May!

🔗 Learn more & get your tickets: BentonvilleBikeFest.com


A New American Town is here to help you plan your trip to Bentonville, Arkansas. From guides, events, and restaurant highlights. Find all this and more at visitbentonville.com and subscribe to our newsletter. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and LinkedIn.

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Nat Ross:

Welcome to a new American town presented by Visit Bentonville. I'm your host, Nat Ross. We're talking cycling here, and I'm joined by Kenny Belay. He's the founder of Bentonville Bike Fest, an all-inclusive cycling event that celebrates everything you can find out in the mountain bike capital of the world. Our conversation is about the Bentonville Bike Fest and why you need to come check it out for yourself. We'll see you there. We are here with a very special guest of Bentonville. We're going on a big event coming up. So welcome, Kenny Belaey. I know you're currently in Belgium. You're joining us in spirit, but you will be here soon enough because this is the fifth year of Bentonville Bike Fest. Can you fill us in on what your original inspiration was for the Bike Fest and how it came to be, because this is a massive thing for our community.

Kenny Belaey:

Yeah. So first of all, thanks for having me on the podcast. Nice to see you, nat. Always a pleasure. Seeing you now Virtually is cool too. So yeah, bike Fest I mean it's five years in the making, six years that I've been planning it technically. But it all started with Women's Shred, which was a small event linked to the film festival. That's kind of sparked the idea of doing my first event overseas, in the US, and that worked pretty well. I think it was also one of the first international events in Bentonville, sure was.

Kenny Belaey:

Yeah, we immediately had a little bit of a network and sponsors were picking it up and the community were picking it up. I thought it was time to grow from a women's event. Right after I did it, I thought I had to grow to something that was more my DNA. Right after I did it, I thought I had to go to something that was more my DNA. So more like the trials and the BMX and all the action, but also the expo and the demo bike. So technically, the vision was to go big and see where we ended up. I was also one of the first ones, so I was just trying out what works, what doesn't, and a lot of things seemed to work and I kept them on the program and now the program is pretty yeah, massive we're going to visit kind of your palmares and kind of how you came into cycling and what you've done for the sport, because you're a massive contributor globally for the sport of cycling, but the festival in general.

Nat Ross:

Can you fill us in on the exact spirit of the festival? So if someone is just getting into cycling or getting in a mountain biker wants to watch, what would that entail for them when they roll into Bentonville and we'll pop the dates up we're going to send everybody to your website. They can register for all the events. We're going to fill them up with tons of information. But for those folks that want to check out Bike Fest, that are curious about what it is, in a nutshell, what is happening at Bentonville Bike Fest- yeah.

Kenny Belaey:

So you know, doing a bike event in Bentonville and hoping for bikers at your event, that's kind of easy to do because there's so many bikers biking and bike events. So we definitely have all the races for the bikers, from two-year-old racing on a strider kit, strider balance bike all the way to, uh people's inner 60s entering the e-enduro and the e-gravelicious gravel ride. So we, we cater to all these age groups and disciplines. But what makes bike fest special? If, let's say, you like to see cool stuff, then you go to bike fest because you'll see, for example, trials, which is what I, you know, this is my dna, my, my, my spirit, my soul. And and then you can see guys jumping uh three, four feet without any ramp up to boulders and you're like just some people who have never seen it. They're like mind blown. So you're like, wow, how the hell do these guys do that? And then it's always a competition. So it's always exciting. It's always going to be a winner or loser, somebody falling off his bike I mean without injuries, hopefully, but it's. It's always exciting.

Kenny Belaey:

And then you turn around and there you go, there you go, there's like people throwing away swag in the crowd. And then you turn around again and there's a band playing and there's a dj, and then there's a food court, and then you, you go on the other side of the field and all of a sudden there's a guy jumping over a 45 foot, uh, like a gap, doing a backflip or a double backflip or a front flip or a 360, or, and that's also something that you don't see every day, I assume. So people just like to go for the action and the atmosphere and and just to have a good time, because, um, I always try to also mimic like the festival vibe, really like at a musical music festival. So we, we invest heavily in like a great sound system, so the whole feel is covered. So, if you know, the weather is nice, it just feels like you're, you know, somewhere, exotic almost, and there's all people on bikes, everybody's having a good time, smiling bikers, non-bikers, everybody enjoys it.

Nat Ross:

Yeah, and one neat thing, like if someone were to go walk through the aisles and you have expo, just expo, land that continuously goes on. You have the bike brands, you have product brands, you have folks that are just displaying local products, the cutting edge product launches that the professionals are riding in the area. You've got top manufacturers that are bringing basically their best staff and showing, like inside the curtains In general for the expo, like what would you say folks can expect walking through the aisles to get to experience and see what would make Kenny happy to say this is a very successful bike fest year five, like the rest have been before.

Kenny Belaey:

Yeah, so a lot of big brands like Park Tool and YT and Specialized already signed up, and Giant and even WD-40 Muck Off. So all these big brands that come to bike fest to Bentonville to showcase the latest products, the new range of bikes, and you can actually test them and have a good time on the trails with them. So it's all part of the experience of how do you connect the industry with the bikers, but also the future bikers and the kids, and how do you put your brand out there and how do you connect with them, how do you create a synergy, how do you gain followers and people, how do you make them fall in love with your brand? And this is all things that that are happening and happening in this expo. So we try to cater and give everybody good time.

Kenny Belaey:

The brands come. They really spend a lot of time and energy and effort. Some people drive from all the way, from California, sit two, three days in the van just to come to this event and I'm we're really grateful for it. And, uh, I think that people just feel it that they can see things that usually they don't, they can only see on the internet. If you want to have, uh, you want to see a cool bike? Well, you don't have to go to. Uh, you know, find it, find it online. Just come to bike fest. I'm guaranteeing you it's there.

Nat Ross:

Yeah, and I think one thing since you're a professional athlete came from the action sports industry, you provide nonstop entertainment. So no matter what section of the venue someone's at at Bike Fest, there's something going on.

Kenny Belaey:

Yeah, so I've been. It's funny, actually, because for Red Bull I've been asked to do I don't know, I can't even put a number to it hundreds, if not a few thousand shows all over the world, yeah, in schools, universities, even in bars, people sitting in a restaurant, car shows, boring trade shows that have no entertainment. And this is actually the vision of Bike Fest. It's like, how do you engage with the non-bikers, how do you get them excited about biking? And this is what we do with the entertainment piece.

Nat Ross:

Well, give us some numbers of folks that participate even in events, to spectating and kind of, what the footprint looks like. When it's a pack on Saturday, what does that look like?

Kenny Belaey:

Yeah, so we got around eight races and that attracts around 1600 athletes from all over the world. So we have athletes from 15 countries, athletes from all over the world. So we have athletes from 15 countries. And then visitors-wise we have around. It varies, but at a max last year we had like 6,500 people on Saturday visiting the event. So that was new and that was awesome to see, to get that data. And I'm thinking that when I did women's shred 2019, we only maybe, maybe had 100 people and they were all bikers. So now it's like even the non-bikers visiting.

Nat Ross:

So it was pretty cool to see, yeah, and then top athletes from all across the world too. So it's like your discipline, but about 12 other disciplines worth of the best athletes in the world all combining here in Bentonville at the end of May.

Kenny Belaey:

Yeah, and it's always tricky to. In the beginning I was hoping for those athletes to come because you know you're a young festival, they have many options around the world to go to, and some decided to give it a go and came to Bike Fest I think also thanks to COVID, because they had time to actually travel and there weren't many events. So they came to Bike Fest and they all stayed and they keep coming back every year and we are adding new athletes to the roster every year.

Nat Ross:

It's amazing. So we got a couple minutes left here. If we want to send folks to the website, where do they go? If we want to send them on Instagram, if they're keen on social media and checking out sharing with the family and sharing the vibe, where do they go? What do they do?

Kenny Belaey:

Yeah, so go to BentonvilleBikeFestcom and in the top corner on the right you got Eventbrite link which is for a general festival pass, that general admission festival pass, and then you go to Bike Garage and the other button, you click on it, then you can register and the website has all the information, all the events, the schedule, the footprint, the layout, the brands that are coming. It's all there. So, yeah, I hope everybody's going to come to Bike Fest and have a good time, so can't wait to see you all.

Nat Ross:

Yeah well, Kenny, the community is really excited to have you back and then bring the sport that you brought kind of to Bentonville, put it on the map with the festival format. So we're going to celebrate the entire weekend Bentonville Bike Fest, year five. Kenny Belay, You're a nine-time world champion yourself, so it's great to be having your presence, come from overseas with your experience and plopping it down into Bentonville and sharing that with the community.

Kenny Belaey:

I couldn't think of a better place to do it. Honestly, it's to organize. It's just a paradise. Everybody talks and breeds bikes. I couldn't think of a better place.

Nat Ross:

Wow. Well, you're exciting. Can't wait to have you in town. Bentonville Bike Fest, here we come, kenny Belay, thanks for your time. Thank you, man. Thanks Nat. All right, we'll see you at Bentonville Bike Fest, that is in May. This was a new American town. I'm your bike host, nat Ross, mountain bike hall of famer. To learn more about Visit Bentonville and the activities we have, go to visitbentonvillecom. We'll see you at Bike Fest if you're into mountain bikes.