11 years and counting...

The opening round of the NZ National Downhill series on the 8th of January marked my 11th year of racing the series and it still only feels like iv'e been riding for a few years! 2002 was my first year racing the series and iv'e been there every year since, i think in 2002 I finished top 3 in the U17 class and I was hooked!

Believe it or not, that is me after my first National Series, looking absolutely stoked!

Queenstown took the honors of the opening round for this years series and it was a round that got everyone talking as it was expected to be held on the Skyline Gondola but after some complications it ended up being held off the bottom of the Remarkables Ski Area access round on basically a grass paddock. Don't get me wrong the track was a lot of fun but it seriously lacked anything technical so it was really just a matter of not making mistakes and staying of the brakes.

Sliding in the Queenstown dust

After a bit of a slide out in qualifying I came through the line in 13th knowing I had room to improve and after thinking about the run a few times I had a good idea of where to make up some time and hopefully put a better race run together.

Straight out of the gate I rode the first chute the best I had all weekend which put me a good frame of mind going into the rest of the run so I tried to put it all together the rest of the way and sprint where I could. I managed to ride a pretty clean run with only a minimal mistake losing me a little bit of time but still made up 6 places from qualifying and ended up placing 7th on the day only a second off a podium finish!

Thanks to all of my awesome sponsors for getting me to the series this year, Zerode Bicycles, Fenwicks, Fox Clothing, Scott Goggles, Shimano, Maxxis, Pro, Results Athletic Centre, Fox Racing Shox and Interislander

NZ National Series Round 2

Hey everyone,

Round two of the New Zealand national downhill series was held over the weekend in the hot and dry Napier. Thursday night was spent in Rotorua building up my new Zerode downhill bike, finally getting it all ready at about 10.30 it was off to bed with a 5.30am wake up to get us to Napier in time.

It was great to get back to the national series races and catch up with a lot of old friends before jumping on my bike for the first time with only a day to get used to it before racing!

With only about a weeks riding under my belt since I had my finger breaking crash in October I was actually feeling pretty good on the track and felt like I was riding at a good pace. I proved this on Saturday morning during qualifying by coming in 6^th with a fairly decent run against a field of guys who have been training hard to get ready for the World Cup season thats coming up.

With my good qualifying run under my belt I had a bit of confidence going into my race run but still had the nerves going since I hadn’t ridden or raced in a few months! As soon as I was out of the gate and into my race run they were all gone and I was just focused and sprinting and getting to the bottom without any issues. My run went awesome and it wasn’t until about 10 seconds from the finish I had a mechanical and my chain jammed up which stopped me from being able to sprint the last flat part of the course and had to roll around the last jump. Even with that I still managed to equal my qualifying time and finished 6^th for the day only .2 of a second off the podium!

It’s great to know I’m back up to pace so quickly and haven’t lost any speed with my injuries especially with such a long time off the bike. This coming weekend we have the 3^rd round coming up in Rotorua so I’m spending the week there to do some more training and riding to hopefully get even quicker and on the podium this time!