A near-record field of 275 riders will descend on Rotorua – the spiritual home of off-road cycling in New Zealand – for the 2019 Altherm Mountain Bike National Championships this weekend.
The Craigs Investment Partners cross-country titles will be decided in the Whakarewarewa Forest on a testing course based at the Waipa Mountain Bike Village on Saturday and the downhill competition at the nearby New Zealand Downhill course near Eight Mile Rd on Sunday.
The 2018 world sixth-ranked Anton Cooper will be chasing his third straight elite title before the Trek Factory professional embarks on the UCI World Cup series starting in May.
His main competition is likely to come in the form of fellow North Canterbury and Subway MTB Performance Hub rider Ben Oliver, who had five top-10 finishes in the under-23 world cup last year. Commonwealth Games gold medallist Sam Gaze will not be taking part as he currently in South Africa for the Cape Epic event.
Oceania and New Zealand champion Samara Sheppard is favourite to defend her title in the elite women, coming off her record-breaking performance in winning the Karapoti Classic.
World number eight ranked rider Brook Macdonald heads a powerful line-up of 22 starters in the elite men’s downhill with the MS Mondraker Team professional one of four former champions competing. He is joined by 2010 winner Wyn Masters (New Plymouth), his GT Factory Racing pro teammate and 2014 champion George Brannigan (Hawkes Bay) and 2017 winner and hometown favourite Keegan Wright (Unior Devinci Factory Pro).
The battle in the elite women will be between Tauranga’s Shania Rawson, 21st at her first elite world championships after being runner-up in the junior ranks in 2017, Kaukapakapa’s Virginia Armstrong, 26th at the worlds, and last year’s winner Kate Weatherly (Auckland).
There are some exciting riders in the junior ranks led by riders from Cycling New Zealand’s Subway National Performance MTB Hub, supported by Toi-Ohomai Institute of Technology.
They include last year’s cross country under-19 winner and Youth Olympian Sammie Maxwell (Taupo) and former under-19 winner Jessica Manchester (Rotorua), who has returned to the sport after a year off. The downhill charge will be led by 2018 under 19 winner Tuhoto-Ariki Pene (Rotorua), Queenstown’s Alex Barke and Cambridge’s Blake Ross.
Subway National Performance Hub coach Sam Thompson said he expects some of the most closely fought contests ever seen at Nationals across the grades.
“Naturally Anton is the class of the elite men’s field but Ben Oliver is an outstanding young prospect and Samara Sheppard is in very strong form again this summer,” said Thompson.
“There’s some real growth in the age groups particularly in downhill and I expect some strong competition for our Subway Hub riders.
“The numbers competing this year is encouraging but is always the case when the championships return to these fantastic tracks here in the Whakarewarewa Forest.
“For us it is the start of our competition for the Hub riders before the cross-country riders head to Europe next month and the downhill group in July.”
There are also national titles up for grabs in the well supported age group categories from Under 15 through to Masters 50 plus across both cross-country and downhill.
The event is supported by the Rotorua Mountain Bike Club for the cross-country event and Descend Rotorua the downhill racing.
The cross-country racing begins at 10am on Saturday at the Waipa Mountain Bike Village with the elite racing from 1.30pm. The downhill competition on Sunday has seeding runs from 11am and racing from 1pm.
For more details see www.mtbnationals.nz
CAPTION: George Brannigan, one of four national downhill champions competing in the Altherm Mountain Bike National Championships this weekend, in action when the championships were last in Rotorua in 2015. (Photo credit: Mead Norton Photography).