Whistler - Crank Worx

My time in Whistler has come to an end again for another year, after almost two weeks here ive spent too much money so its time to leave.
Apart from going over the bars on a jump the first day I was here ive had a pretty good time, I decided to only do the Garbanzo DH race this year and thats to the crash I mentioned before Garbanzo sucked. I only got one practice run down the whole course the morning of the race so I was pretty much racing blind and then after crashing about 1 minute into my run it just kept getting worse with about another 3 crashes over the following 14 mins of the race!
The rest of the time here has been good, I decided to make a holiday of it so I was riding every second day and on the off days going fishing, hanging out at the lake and just generally not doing too much. Its been a pretty full on season with only 1 weekend off racing up untill this point so it was good to relax for once.

It was cool watching the rest of the racing and slopestyle stuff aswell, Sam Hill owned the Canadian Open track and won by 2 seconds which was good to see and Andreu Lacondeguy is rediculous, thats about all I can say after watching his winning run at the slopestyle competition.

From here im going to Seattle to race the Fluidride Cup this weekend and then I fly out on Monday to Australia for the World Cup round in Canberra to finish out the season.
Im looking forward to getting home again, but im not even going to get a chance to take time off and relax because 3 weeks after I get home im racing the 6 hour motocross enduro in Nelson so I will be back into training for that.

Looking for a ride for 2009

I know its blatant self promotion but I'm hoping someone might see this and be able to help out!
First up I just want to clear up that I haven't signed with the ODI/Southridge team, basically the owner of the team just wanted to help me out how ever he could in exchange for me wearing the team jersey at the remaining US national rounds in 2008 so I have nothing set up with them for 2009 at this stage.

2008 has been a pretty huge season for me, after almost not racing the international season due to lack of funding I managed to get enough of a budget through working full time to barely scrape by and race 5 of the 7 DH world cup rounds and also 3 of the 5 USA national series rounds.
Even with the late decision to race this season I still managed to achieve all of my racing goals that I had set myself at the end of last season and now the only one left to fulfill is to be picked up by a race team.

2008 Results:
Oceania Downhill Champion
13th World Downhill Championships
Currently Ranked 22nd in UCI DH Points (top privateer)
1st USA NORBA Round 3
6th USA NORBA Round 4
1st USA NORBA round 5
Currently 2nd Overall in NORBA Points
50th Downhill World Cup - Ft William
34th Downhill World Cup - Mt Saint Anne
33rd Downhill World Cup - Bromont
Currently Ranked 61st Overall in the DH World Cup
1st 2008 Skyline DH Invitational

2008 Media:
NZ Mountainbiker magazine March issue - 3 photos
NZ Mountainbiker magazine August issue - 1 photo
Decline Magazine - photos
Pinnedmtb.com - photos/press release
Dean Optics - Photo used on promotional material
Bike NZ magazine
Blog posts upload directly to Vorb.org.nz home page


Contact me at kieranbennett@hotmail.com

Bromont DH World Cup Race Day Report

I've never been so relieved to get a race over and done with than this weekend, for some reason I just couldn't get comfortable riding the track here in Bromont. When I walked the course on Wednesday I thought I was really going to enjoy the track but once I got on course on my bike I couldn't find any flow and just found it really difficult to get any speed up, every time I would try opening it up a bit I would end up on the ground and that is exactly how both days of practice ended up for me.

I was a little bit worried I wasn't going to have the speed to qualify in the top 80 but I just tried to push that out of my head and get a clean qualifying run out of the way so I could focus on the finals. I made a couple of mistakes during my qualifier but still managed to run a 3.04 which put me in around 55Th place so I made it through to the finals pretty easily.

Just before the girls started race runs it started raining again which I think most people were dreading including me, luckily it didn't last too long but I was still cautious through a few sections during my race run because I wasn't sure how slippery they would be. I had a fairly clean run with only one big mistake that would of lost me a little over a second but I still managed to run a 3.01 so I was quicker in my race run but still not under the 3min mark where I wanted to be. Still I managed to place 1 spot better than last weekend with a 33rd so it wasn't too bad.

Now were just getting ready to pack up the van again for another cross country trip this time to Whistler, BC for Crank Worx which starts on the 17th. 

Bromont World Cup DH Report #2

It finally stopped raining last night around 9pm which was a bonus, I was looking forward to riding untill I got to the track and saw that it was still saturated and sloppy so I was pretty bummed, I was hoping it had dried up but I think it actually got slipperier and there was even more standing water on the track than yesterday.

I only managed 3 runs today because once again I managed to send myself into the ground and my bike hurtling about 30 meters before it finally came to a stop, luckily I only broke my shifter and got a couple of grazes but I was pretty over it after that.

Unfortunately Bryn Atkinson had a huge crash and it sounds like hes out with possible broken ribs and maybe a broken wrist which sucks, hes an awesome guy and is fast as hell.

Race day tomorrow so look out for an update in the afternoon sometime