BIG CALL: Charlie Makea is taking a giant leap in realising his dream in downhill mountainbiking. PHOTO/PAUL TAYLOR
HE's only 16 but Charlie Makea has already made up his mind he's going to spend the best part of his life behind bars ... screech ... steady on, handlebars that is, of a mountainbike.
The graduating Lindisfarne College pupil, who is on track to turning professional, rattles off a list of injuries that is enough to make anyone cringe, if not shudder.
"I've broken a few bones before but I got back into it because the feeling's unreal. It's cool, it's real awesome."
Makea has broken his wrist, cracked a collarbone and weathered a few concussions for good measure in a relatively infant phase.
"The list goes on but I just feel like riding after those injuries.
"When I'm injured I just feel like getting back out there and doing the sections I've crashed on so that I can conquer them."
No doubt he's seen and heard of mountainbikers who have got seriously injured but that hasn't fazed Makea.
"I wouldn't trade it for anything, really. I'd still be riding even if I got injured.
"I just feel like if I wasn't out there doing it then I wouldn't have anything else to get that kind of buzz."
It's that sort of passion and resilience that has earned Makea a berth among the budding elite at the national high-performance mountainbiking squad in Rotorua.
When the Napier rider first started the focus was on crosscountry mountainbiking.
"I didn't really like to ride uphill tracks because I got a little bit bored."
Conversely the downhill dashes tickled his fancy.
"You know, downhill it's fun and you have some real big drops and it's an adrenaline rush."
Watching the older guys and girls tame the terrain, Makea made up his mind then and there what his speciality was in the code.
He is helping build mountainbike tracks at Te Mata Peak for a Rotorua company called Southstar. "It'll be another great way to travel around North Island and build tracks and so you get to ride them afterwards so that'll be pretty cool."
His high-performance status will open doors for him to broaden his horizon.
"It's huge, like free accommodation and overseas travel all paid for."
It's also good to have calibre coaches such as Sam Thompson and Craig Pattle, both of Rotorua, honing his skills.
Former professional rider Aari Barrett, of Havelock North, who is now a personal trainer, has helped groom him among other elite athletes.
"He's mentored me since I was about 5 years old," he says of Barrett, a former Scott 11 downhill rider.
School is out all together for Makea at Lindisfarne College. He'll channel all his energy into becoming a professional rider.
Makea got his first mountainbike when he was 8 and gravitated towards Eskdale Mountainbike Park on the outskirts of Napier.
He loved it so much, two years later he embraced downhill riding.
"Mountainbiking is all about fun so that's why I do it but I love racing competitively as well."
It helped that he had friends in Eskdale.
"I saw them doing it [downhill] at the races and thought that looks pretty cool so I was pretty keen to give it a go myself."
His parents, Jules and Tui Makea, of Westshore, have been instrumental financially and emotionally.
"They have been following me to races and cheering me on so it's been really great."
His parents have always been aware of his need to ride and have given him their blessings to pursue a career.
"If you don't sort of put your full focus to mountainbiking at this age, I don't think you can turn pro and go overseas now to do your first year in the juniors in the world cup.
"It's all like now or never because you need to do two years in the junior glass and then move on to elite class, which is a lot harder so you might as well put your time into the juniors and give it the best shot in the world cups and world champs."
Makea was about 12, when as an Eskdale School pupil, he saw Brook MacDonald, of Napier, competing at the nationals.
"He had just started making money by riding professionally so I used to look up to him to see how he was making a living out of it.
"He was doing well for himself so I thought, 'Hey, I can do that one day'," says Makea.
MacDonald, 26, a Trek World Racing team member, started competing in 2006. He turned professional in 2009 before going on to become the Junior World Champion the same year as well as clinch the World Cup title.
Teenager Makea has only been overseas once, to Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands, when he was 5.
"I haven't really been properly overseas so I'd love to go to Europe and Australia because they look really cool."