Australian Defence Cycling Club

The Australian Defence Cycling Club (ADCC) was established in 2004/5 to promote cycling within Defence. The club is affiliated with both Cycling Australia (road) and Mountain Bike Australia (MTBA). The club currently has around 280 members and ADCC members have competed in some of Australia's most important bike races in all disciplines.

Originally a discipline under the Australian Services Triathlon Association, cyclists felt under-represented and so sought independence from ASTA in 2004. Initially established only as a road cycling club, the ADFCC (as it was then) recognised the strength and common interests of the Defence MTB community (at that time, a community without a club) and sought in 2006 to affiliate with MTBA in order to better represent the fastest-growing segment of the cycling community.

Although the ADCC does not hold any regular races, it does conduct National championships annually in both road and MTB disciplines. At present the Club is developing a team to represent the ADF at Arafura Games in May. In 2007 the ADFCC team won the Arafura Games teams sportsmanship prize and strongly represented Defence cycling.

The club is still in a relative infancy and continues to pursue avenues of development. The club's approach is two-pronged:

- to develop 'grass-roots' cycling support within Defence and grow the membership base of the ADCC by supporting the majority of club members at events they want to participate in, and
- to represent Defence at the elite level by supporting high-performing cyclists in the best manner possible.

This approach is still being refined and the ultimate goals include producing Combined Services ADCC teams to compete at the National level in road, track and MTB racing.

For the majority of club members, however, the main goal is to have fun, be fit and keep in touch with friends in the cycling community, no matter where they are located. With ADCC members spread across all three Services and the Defence APS community and with a presence at virtually every major Defence facility in Australia, the ADCC continues to promote cycling as a healthy sporting and recreational pursuit and environmentally conscious pastime.