TMFAST history & TMGAMES Summary
Somewhat of an oddity, the Australian TM2020 scene didn’t naturally emerge with the launch of the game
How did TMFAST start?
Somewhat of an oddity, the Australian TM2020 scene didn’t naturally emerge with the launch of the game itself. For five whole years, Australian players were instead disseminated across various sub-communities, with a few finding refuge in the Trackmania Australia (TMAUS) community, which is dedicated to the older games in the series, and now sadly fading away.
Finally, in January 2025, the first State Club appeared: Trackmania Tasmania, aka TMTAS, led by AdHoc and Hollist. After a few months of promising growth, community leaders in other states saw the potential and decided to launch their own club: Cambo & CRAZYBUSDRIVER in New South Wales, and Maitoo & Marsy in Victoria. A few months later, Queensland and Western Australia followed suit.
A few interstate events were created, and it was eventually decided we needed a place for state leaders to collaborate. This led to the creation of the TrackMania Federation of Australian States and Territories (TMFAST). Initially, the purpose of state admins coming together was to collaborate on events. Some ideas were thrown around, but this structure mostly sat dormant for a few months until the TM Games were announced.
It was decided that for such a big international event, we needed a combined space for the entire community. As such, a push was made to create a consolidated Discord server and bring the entire Australian community together, with the aim of supporting Australian athletes in the TM Games.
Each country needed a Coach and a Captain. We settled on a coaching and co-coaching structure, as it quickly became evident we would have to run qualifiers to select players. After some initial deliberation and volunteers putting themselves forward, we settled on:
- Mudda (Captain)
- Hollist (Coach)
- TurwaithionX (Co-coach)
- Runna (Co-Coach)
- CRAZYBUSDRIVER (Co-Coach)
TM Games 2026 - Full Event Recap
TM Games started off with three weeks of qualifiers run by the coaches. It was clear instantly that the move to creating a new hub for the community was the right one, with an incredible amount of interest. Across six qualifiers, we had 67 different people show up to attempt to qualify and represent their country, clearly showing that the appetite was there for competitive events within the Australian community.
The big workload for the event was partly due to the fact that it was run in an Olympics style event, with 6 different disciplines for the players to compete on.
- Fastlearn - Focusing on the ability to learn maps quickly, with the official event running as a relay on the maps, with the quickest team of 3 to finish being declared with winner.
- Fullspeed - Involving players driving without braking across maps full of loops and wallrides, with three players qualifying to play individually.
- Mixed - A style that involves all surfaces, creating the most technically difficult tracks. An event broken up into both team and solo events, with the teams operating as teams of two with one substitute each.
- Tech - The most classic style, comprised of very precise tracks involving only the road surface. With the event made up of one team event, with a team of five and a solo event with four representatives.
- Ice - A very technical style, and one that Australia was expected to do well on. This involves a lot of low grip slides where good players will drive right on the limit of losing control. The event was broken down into two teams of two for this event.
- RPG - As the name suggests, this involves maps that have very unique visual styles and requires players to navigate blocks that don't always represent real roads. This event was run as three individuals.
After the six qualifiers, we ended up with the following line-up:
Once the qualifiers were over and the team was put together, it was time to get started with the event.
Weekend 1
The first day of competition was comprised of the Mixed Solo, Tech team, and Ice Duo events. It was clear from the start that this competition was going to be incredibly stacked. Every country had come with their strongest players to represent them and, as a result, placing well was going to be extremely difficult. In Mixed Solo, CarelessCobra finished 116th, Blackfeather 84th, with Mudda and Cambo both tied for 64th.
Our Tech team fought through the lower bracket to finish T-16th, and our second Ice team of Firefox and ShadyJames just missed the cut at 37th.
The headline, though, was our main Ice team going on a run all the way to qualify for the finals in the second weekend.
Weekend 2
Weekend 2 was a massive weekend across every discipline, with every single discipline taking part in what was a jam packed event:
- Mixed Duos - nOvA, Blackfeather and Cobra beat Ukraine in the lower bracket before falling to Poland, finishing T-46th. Mudda and Cambo put together an amazing lower-bracket run, with wins over Turkey and the Czech Republic, before finally falling in a heartbreaker against Russia to finish tied for 24th.
- Fastlearn - The trio of Smithy, Cambo and Simply Nick topped their seeding lobby, beat Brazil, then lost close matches to Norway and Italy (T-24th).
- Fullspeed - MrMrDUCK (45th) and Swamihameha (63rd) put in strong performances, while Mudda (despite limited training) qualified through to the finals the next weekend.
- Tech Solo - Simply Nick (106th) and nOvA (94th) outperformed bigger names but fell in seeding. JS pushed to the round of 64 and Hollist followed shortly after in the round of 48.
- RPG - Smithy barely survived the cut by 0.064 before breezing through eliminations to lock in finals in the final weekend.
- Ice - Jastastic and Ramune were the standouts of the weekend, going through a 4-way winners final and finishing 2nd overall, our first medal of the event.
Final Weekend
The final weekend was less intense than the previous one, but that didn't reduce the stakes with Mudda and Smithy competing in the Fullspeed and RPG finals respectively. It also meant the mapping team got to show off their hard work over the past few weeks.
- Mudda capped off a huge run in Fullspeed, finishing top 8 overall despite limited preparation.
- The mapping team landed 9th in the public vote but a tough jury score dropped them to 20th overall. Still a huge result for the work put in.
- Smithy made the Top 16 in RPG before bowing out.
The Big Picture
After two months of work from the Australian staff, coaches and entire community, Australia finished 13th overall. A little shy of the Top 10 dream, but a genuinely proud result against far more established nations.
Points Table
| Event | Placement | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Ice - Australia 1 | top 2 | View Event |
| Fullspeed - AR_Mudda | top 7-8 | View Event |
| Tech Team | top 13-16 | View Event |
| RPG - SmithyTM | top 16 | View Event |
| Mixed Team - Australia 1 | top 17-24 | View Event |
| Fastlearn | top 17-24 | View Event |
| Mapping - TurwaithionX | top 20 | View Event |
| Trial - LinkMaxTm | top 32 | View Event |
| Mixed Team - Australia 2 | top 33-48 | View Event |
| Ice - Australia 2 | top 33-48 | View Event |
| Tech Solo - hollist. | top 33-48 | View Event |
| Fullspeed - MrMrDUCK | top 33-48 | View Event |
| Tech Solo - js___ | top 49-64 | View Event |
| Fullspeed - Swamihameha | top 49-64 | View Event |
| Mixed Solo - Cambo._ | top 49-64 | View Event |
| Mixed Solo - AR_Mudda | top 49-64 | View Event |
| RPG - AR_Mudda | top 60 | View Event |
| RPG - CarelessCobra | top 66 | View Event |
| Tech Solo - nOvATM_ | top 65-96 | View Event |
| Mixed Solo - Blackfeather. | top 65-96 | View Event |
| Mixed Solo - CarelessCobra | top 97-128 | View Event |
| Tech Solo - SIMPLYNICK | top 97-128 | View Event |
Overall Standings
Thanks
The event was a success mostly thanks to:
- The coaching staff for their day-to-day work
- Every player who represented the country on the international stage
- The community for showing up in qualifiers, chats, and streams
The unsung heroes who made the spectacle even more enthralling were Archie and Maitoo, who cast the entire event at the early hours of the morning and overnight in some cases, to make sure these performances didn't go unrecorded.
It's was an honour to coach this event, and I'd jump at the chance to do it again. TM Games was finished, but it was just the first of many events that came to follow within TMFAST and the greater Australian community.
-Hollist