This year’s Hindmarsh Shire Community Event of the Year Award was announced as the Rainbow Enduro Rainbow Rises 240 at a ceremony in Rainbow this morning.

Hindmarsh Shire Mayor Ron Ismay congratulated the Rainbow Desert Enduro Group.

“On behalf of Council, I congratulate the Rainbow Desert Enduro Group as a very worthy recipient of the Community Event of the Year, and I look forward to seeing what this year holds for all future community and sporting events within Hindmarsh Shire.”

The article below describes the Rainbow Rises 240’s history.
While Victoria rightly calls itself the home of major sporting events in Australia, many of the major events are centered around Melbourne, with regional Victoria hosting only a handful of national level events.

With thanks to the efforts of a hardworking group of volunteers, Rainbow quickly established itself on the national events stage with the running of the final round of the Australian Off-Road Championship, the inaugural Rainbow Desert Enduro in 2017. This event showcases the wide-open spaces of the Shire, racing on a mix of gravel roads, farmland and desert country between Rainbow and the Big Desert with each lap completed covering around 80km.

Rainbow again hosted rounds of the national championship in 2018 and 2019 and with plenty of positive feedback from competitors, has established itself on the annual off-road racing calendar.

Unfortunately, the 2020 edition was a victim of the COVID pandemic but is set to return in late August 2021. This event is also a round of the Victorian Off Road Racing Series and brings in hundreds of competitors, support crew and race fans each year and brings a genuine buzz to the town.

Not content with delivering just one great event per year, the Rainbow Desert Enduro Working Group, in partnership with the Victorian Off Road Racing Association, introduced a new event in March 2019.

An additional round of the Victorian state championship, the Rainbow Rises 240 has also proven popular with state-level competitors and was again staged in 2020 (pre-COVID 19) and is set to appear again in March 2021. This event is run on a shorter, 8km course on the outskirts of Rainbow.

In exciting news for 2021, another new event is set to join the roster, with Rainbow set to host the first round of the Australian SXS Championship for off-road race buggies in mid-March.

The introduction of this event cements Rainbow as the centre of Off-Road Racing in Victoria and a major events player on the national off-road racing scene, attracting competitors and race fans from all over Australia.