Shepparton’s Myles Higgins returns an impressive haul from GWM Mountain Bike National Championships

At the end of it all, though, he comes out smiling — and most importantly, in one piece.

The Shepparton native proved that adrenaline doesn’t come with an expiration date recently, pocketing two wins at the 2025 GWM Mountain Bike National Championships at Mt Buller on March 14-16.

Competing in the M10 category for those aged 75-plus, Higgins clinched two separate races and also took out the national series medal for his age grade.

“I won the short course on the Friday in beautiful weather and then on Sunday, in torrential downpour, I won the cross-country course,” he said.

“It was a great weekend, but of course, rain made it quite horrendous really.

“Once you get fully soaked it sort of doesn’t make much difference with all the grit and mud that comes off the track.

“(We were) in the freezing cold waiting around for our presentations in the rain ... and then we woke up in the morning up the top with snow on the car, so it was quite a nice weekend really.”

This would be an impressive feat for anyone, but for a man who will soon be blowing out 80 candles, it borders on the absurd.

But Higgins, unfazed, took it all in stride; rain, grit, bone-chilling cold and all.

This is a man who has seen the sport evolve from its early days — when riders ripped up trails with no suspension, their eyeballs bouncing like pinballs — to today’s precision-engineered machines.

“I started in the early years when we didn’t have suspension — you’d go bombing down trails with your eyes bouncing in your head, it was that rough,” he said.

“I’ve grown through it as you’ve got a little bit of suspension — 10ml or so with elastomers — and raced down fire trails.

“As the bikes got more evolved, we then went off into pushes and over jumps and into hollows.”

Over the years, Higgins has watched the sport evolve — suspension, bigger drops, more precarious descents.

He’s raced down fire trails, soared over jumps and taken on courses that, in his words, “are getting very technical” as he enters the latter stages of a long love affair with the sport.

Mountain biking, however, was a late-blooming romance.

As a junior, Higgins was set on a different path — road cycling, with dreams of reaching the Herald Sun Tour.

But when the Vietnam War put a spanner in the works, it took him some time to find his way back to the bike.

Aged 45, he started racing again when twilight racing took off at Waverly Park — named VFL Park at the time — and Higgins decided it was time to start pedalling again.

“One day my son said they’re racing down at VFL Park, so I started racing masters on the road bike,” he said.

“It was daylight saving racing on a Thursday evening and I went from F-grade and I won B-grade in the last race of the season.

“They put me into A-grade for road racing and, of course, I had no experience really in it.”

That was just the beginning.

A friend suggested mountain biking and Higgins was hooked.

Since then, he’s done it all: time trials, road races, cycle-cross and, of course, mountain biking, where he’s competed on the world stage.

“I’ve done a couple of World Cups. I went to Cairns in ’96 and got fourth in the cross-country, but I wanted a medal, so fourth was nowhere really,” he said.

“I got second in the downhill; it was probably the last year you could use a cross-country bike in downhill as the downhill bikes were getting so much suspension.”

Last year Higgins suited up on the world stage in Cairns and took third in Masters 10, but he’s not done yet.

In May, he’s heading back, looking for something shinier than bronze.

“There’s another World Cup this year and I’m going back hoping to do better than third,” he said.

When the time comes to blow out the candles next, Higgins will move up a category to 80-plus.

It might spell the end of his mountain biking caper, but as for Higgins’ seasoned and sensational career on two wheels?

Opposite to Higgins himself, that’s not going anywhere fast.

“It may be my last year in mountain biking, but the others I’ll keep racing,” he said.

“There’s a few time trials and cycle-cross races coming up soon, so I’ll switch my training to suit them.

“Although it’s all the same, you’ve just got to spend time on the bike.”