Custom!

Just thought id post a couple of pics up of the awesome 661 evolution helmet that Jeremiah from Dylan Dean Designs painted for me for the season. Ive known Jeremiah since I started racing in the US in 2006 and hes been a good friend ever since and has an amazing eye when it comes to helmet painting. I gave him some colours and a basic idea for my helmet and he worked his magic on it and turned it into something sick, check it out.



Unfortunately on the 2nd day of wearing it I managed to land on my head and write it off which was pretty gutting, I think I felt worse for Jeremiah after all the effort he had put into it for me! Luckily though version #2 is in the process and should be on my head sometime soon!
check out www.dylandeandesigns.com for more of his work!

2009 is going live

Ive been in the US now for about 3 weeks and now im 2 days out from heading for the first round of the Downhill World Cup in South Africa with my new team mate American Ryan Condroshoff.
Everything is very new for me this season, after the last 3 years privateering ive got the full back up of the team which is awesome, right now my mechanic Mike D is stripping down my bike completely and rebuilding it so its like and then boxing it up ready for the flight. I dont know what to do with all my free time!
Im on a new bike for the first time in 2 years and it is awesome, we are racing protoype Intense M6evo frames which are unreal, the frames were handbuilt and so far is the best riding bike ive ever had. super light too with mine at 37.9 pounds at the moment.Im pretty excited about South Africa, the track looks good from some photos ive seen and its somewhere new ive never been so it should be a good trip, ive heard theres some awesome beaches around where we are heading too so that could fill in a bit of spare time if we have any.

Its official, im on team X-Fusion/Intense for 2009!

After about 3 months of holding my tounge(sort of) about this deal its now offically out for everyone to see.
Its gonna be a huge change for me this season being able to focus on my racing and training and not having to worry about how im going to afford to get to the next race! Im excited to start racing over seas and im working hard to be fit and ready for it.

Check out the official press release:

PRESS RELEASE

X-Fusion Shox Announces 2009 X-Fusion/Intense Factory Race Program And Roster.

Here at X-Fusion we love racing and the lifestyle that goes along with it. After two successful race and media campaigns in North America X-Fusion has decided to take it to another level. We are going International!

We will have a four rider team in 2009 with two riders putting in a full worldcup effort and the other two making a positive impact on the North American race scene. We have joined force with Intense Cycles to make sure our riders are on the best bikes possible when attacking a race course or shralping for Theo Dilworth's camera lens. We are very excited to be working with one of the most prestigious and influential companies in the industry.

Our worldcup team will be made up of the X-Fusion veteran Ryan Condrashoff and the newly signed rider out of New Zealand, Kieran Bennett. Ryan placed 5th last year at US National Champs in DH and made a very strong statement at the two Canadian worldcups proving he can ride at the level needed to be competitive. Ryan states, "For me being on X-Fusion/Intense is a dream come true. I love working with everyone at X-Fusion. They're an awesome company to be involved with and now to be on Intense Cycles, I know I couldn't be on a better bike!"

Kieran Bennett had an amazing season last year with almost zero support. He was the 2008 Oceana DH Champion, Had two NMBS victories and was the highest ranked privateer at worlds last year at 13th. We are excited to see what he will be able to do with the full support of a race team in 2009. He also is excited as he commented, "I'm stoked to be joining the X-Fusion/ Intense team for 2009!"

The North American team will consist of new up and comer in the pro ranks Tyler Wilson, and myself, John Hauer. Tyler Wilson has been getting coached by the DH legend Chris Kovarik and has tons of motivation and drive that will help him continue his success. As far as myself goes, I am absolutely pumped to be in the position to help out X-Fusion and these riders grow together and have tons of fun doing it. I will be focusing on the events that I feel are the most fun and that challenge me personally.

This season is going to be eventful and exciting and I really feel we have a great group of guys. I'm also excited to have our Mechanic Mike D with us for another season as well as our video mastermind Theo Dilworth. Our plan for 2009 is to create a ton of media so people can enjoy our riding, our trips and our lifestyles with us all season long.

Lastly, I would like to thank all the sponsors that came together to help make this possible. Huge Thanks too…

X-Fusion
Intense Cycles
Six Six One
Royal
Sunline
Formula Brakes
Gamut USA
Intense Tire Systems
Crankbrothers
WTB
Dean Optics

The off season

Im pretty well into the off season now which is mint, its good to have some time at home instead of constant travel and never being in one place for more than a week like usual.

Ive been back working full time to pay off the last couple of seasons debt from racing and im almost all squared up even with the purchase of an 08 RMZ250 to keep me entertained while im at home!
As some of you may know ive signed a deal to race the full world cup series next year, its a dream come true to finally be getting paid and not have to deal with anything except training and racing. For those of you who don't know about it there will be an official press release out in December with all the details so youll have to wait untill then.
With everything set for next season already im really motivated and ive been training harder than ever so hopefully it all comes together for me. Its such a huge weight off my shoulders not having to deal with anything like previous years and has really let me focus on my training for once.
Ive been riding a bit of downhill back here but unfortunately im going to be having a few weeks off the bike, not by choice but for a couple of reasons. Ive been asked to send my Ironhorse Sunday back early so I wont have a bike untill my new team sends me out a bike early next year and also because yesterday we had the 2nd round of the Top of the south DH series on the Kaka Hill track here in Nelson, after a bit of rain I decided to take it easy for my first race run which didnt work out to well as you can see in the photos...
After 3 and 1/2 hours at the Hospital I left with 5 internal stitches and 12 holding it together on the outside! The cut was aparently to the bone in spot so now I can't really use my left arm for much for a couple of weeks. Luckily nothing is broken which is a bonus so once the stitches are out ill be back into action again.

Because of my bike situation it doesn't look like ill be making it to any of the North Island DH rounds so my first race back will most likely be the Dunedin round of the Nationals. This also means ill get to spend a bit more time at home this summer which will be good to get in some spear fishing and wake boarding.

The end of another season...

Once again another season is done and in the books, although it was shorter than last year for me this one has been busy! ive had 2 weekends break the whole season and in those two weekends I was riding so I havent really stopped in the last 4 1/2 months.
Its been a break out year for me though and im really happy with how it has all played out.
I have achieved all the goals set out for myself at the start of the year, even some that I thought may have been a little unrealistic like a top 20 at the World Championships and I placed 13th so that was awesome.
There has been a lot of travelling this year aswell with about 150 hours spent in a van driving in the US alone and about 90 hours spent in planes over the whole season.

Im taking a bit of a break now to try and let a couple of small injuries heal up and let my body recover! Im not sure how long it will last though because I can't wait to get back on a moto.
Keep an eye out though because this isnt the end of my blog updates yet, ill be posting up any interesting news or anything exciting that happens during the off season.

Above: Mt Saint Anne

Below: Bromont

Photos curtesy of Sven Martin.
www.svenmartinphotography.com
Thanks Sven!

Canberra World Cup DH

After 4 1/2 months of chasing races around the world Canberra, Australia was my last stop for the 2008 season.
Canberra is hosting the World Championships in 2009 so I was really looking forward to this race so I could get an early look at the track and see what I will be up against for next year.
After hearing everyones views on the track over the season who had already ridden it I had fairly low expectations of seeing a quality track when I got to Mt Stromlo on Thursday morning for practice. The first thing I noticed was that who ever named it Mt Stromlo should of called it Stromlo Hill because its definately the smallest mountain/hill ive raced on. But once I made it onto the track I was pretty blown away by what they had laid out up there, the track was really good with a couple of decent rock gardens, plenty of jumps and some interesting little things like a whoop/roller/rythm section that was difficult to get through cleanly and also claimed Matti Lehikoinen braking both of his wrists after going over the bars. He should of had surgery by now back in Finland so hopefully he heals up quickly and is back on a bike soon.

Being so close to home we had a heap of New Zealanders come out which was good to see with Scolsy making his return to racing after breaking his ankle at the Oceania Champs in March. I think we had 15 men racing all up which was awesome.

The first 3 days of practice were perfect weather, although a little chilly it was nice and sunny so everyone was enjoying it and getting in plenty of runs then of course like nearly every race this season the rain showed up especially for race day! The first rain in 4 months according to a local.
The track is really hard packed and sandy so the rain didnt really affect it apart from the last 30 seconds of sprinting which turned into a bog! It was definately a huge fitness tester of who could push through the pain and keep sprinting the whole way, Minnaar showed everyone just how strong he was and pulled a 4.7 second winning margin!
My race run went pretty well, I hit all of my lines and had a good run except for bending a pedal in the whoops section which made it really awkward sprinting at the end but im still stoked with 30th place considering that.
The main thing about this race is that I found out exactly where I need to work on my fitness to be a contender for next years world champs.

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