World champion mountain bike racer Sam Shaw. Photo / Cameron Jones
World champion mountain bike racer and ecologist Sam Shaw
"Both my parents are ecologists. Dad is really into birds, and Mum is mad about plants and is a very good botanist. We grew up travelling around New Zealand for our holidays, going to beautiful places and learning about plants and birds. They also tried to get us into biking but that didn't work for me till I was old enough to make the decision for myself.
"To begin with, I actually wanted to be a motocross racer. When Dad took me to try my first motorbike, I'd only been on a couple beforehand, and I jumped on but no one showed me where the brake was. I was used to it being on the handlebars, but on a motorbike it's on the pedals. I got a fright when I took off but instead of taking my hand off the accelerator, I did what's called a whiskey pull and accelerated instead of braking. I sped up and drove straight into a fence and went over the handlebars. Luckily I landed in long grass, but I never said another word about motorbikes ever again.
"Living in Rotorua, my passion for mountain biking took off in my early teens because it was so easy to go into the forest and have a bunch of fun with mates after school. My friends all went for the downhill version of the sport, where you catch a shuttle up, then race downhill, but I got bored of waiting for the shuttle so I veered off and took on cross-country. I'd happily ride up and down all day.
"Back then after a training session, I'd eat a whole big bag of Skippy Cornflakes with a whole bottle of full cream milk. My eating habits have changed since then and I'm lucky to be supported now by Harraways, so I'm really into oats - pancakes, porridge, apple crumble - anything you can make with oats.
"When I was at school, I was mad keen to go to the Olympics for cross-country mountain biking, and straight out of school I went to work at McDonald's. At the same time, I competed in my first pro-elite mountain bike race which I won. After working at McDonald's for three more months, I'd saved enough money to go to Europe to race the world cup cross-country circuit. I was just 18 and didn't really know what to do, so thankfully Carl Jones and Katie O'Neill, two older cross-country riders, took me on and let me mooch off them as we chased two world cups and three national series. In that first nationals I broke my shoe, so I couldn't clip onto my pedal. I also got a flat tyre but it was also the best I'd ever raced in my life. But I couldn't look after myself either. I did things like eat ice creams every day. After that it went downhill which was partly me being young, so that trip was a massive learning curve.
"I love everything about cross-country racing. The mass start, the intense music they play to psych everyone up, the tactics, how and where to pass. There's always a bit of a tussle with 100 to 200 riders racing at 50km/h. Enduro Downhill is quite different because you're racing the clock. There's no mass start, you drop in 30 seconds apart then have the whole track to yourself and you're only timed on the downhill. You pedal to the top of the hill in your own time, get to the gate with a crew of people, line up, clock in, race the downhill trail, then clock out, before pedalling up to the next hill untimed.
"Cross-country is more like Formula One - you have a crew with wheels and spare bits - but for Enduro you're fully self-sufficient with all your snackies and spare parts. Enduro is like the DIY of mountain biking but I prefer cross country, for the mass start and racing against other people.
"I've had some spectacular crashes. I've broken a few bones, ribs, wrists, but nothing too bad. I've come off on my head a few times. Concussion is the worst but usually I'm up and back into it quite quickly. The worst injury was when I had concussion and a broken scaphoid. I had to step back from biking for six months to properly heal but, during that time, I took up running, marathons and trail runs. I even came second in one half-marathon.
"After my third year racing in Europe, in 2012, I came home and got straight into full-time tree planting and training. I headed back to Europe in 2013 for another round of the cross-country world cup circuit where I finally broke through into the top 30 in the U23s. Then I headed into the French Alps with Jamie Nicoll to race the Enduro World Series, Crankworx and the Mega Avalanche. We rented the smallest car possible, squeezed ourselves and three bikes into it and tied things on to the roof. I bought a pop-up tent, an XL sleeping bag and a $5 sleeping mat - my accommodation for the next five weeks -but during the first week I became sick. I thought it was racing and living at altitude. I still cracked into the top 30 in the Pro Elite and that got me hyped but, at the end of five weeks, I was so unwell, instead of going back to the world cup circuit I returned to New Zealand to rest.
"Back home, I was selected to represent New Zealand at the cross-country world champs in South Africa. Even though I was still really unwell, I trained and worked, then headed back overseas. I raced while blowing out snot rockets and coughing up mucus, and I still got my best result. I then got an offer to race in China, all expenses paid. Sign me up, I said. I went over but, when I got there, I was sick as a dog. I tried to race but I couldn't even finish.
"Back home I realised I'd really mucked up my body. I couldn't breathe through my nose, I could barely stay awake and I felt like a bag of bones. For about a month I slept for over 16 hours a day. I remember sitting in a chair in the living room for eight hours because standing up seemed too hard. After about eight trips to the doctor, many rounds of antibiotics that didn't do anything, it turned out I had chronic fatigue and I retired from mountain biking.
"I was never a scholarly person and never intended to go to university, but I knew I had to delve into another hobby. I enrolled at Massey University to study ecology with the goal of working with birds. Luckily university is a great place to sleep as much as you like so I spent the next three years studying and sleeping - it took me three years to recover and by the time I graduated, I was ready to get back into racing.
"When I'm not racing, training or planting trees, I'm an ecologist and I conduct bird surveys all around the country doing what we call five-minute bird counts, to get population estimates of various birds in a region. Bird watching is really calming. They're cool animals with interesting behaviour and New Zealand birds have such unique calls. I love to come home from overseas and hear tui and bellbirds. I would love it if we achieved the goal of a pest-free New Zealand.
"I always really wanted long hair but I don't like hair falling in my eyes so I decided to get a mullet. It literally grew on me and people really liked it. But I was doing some wilding pine control over the winter just gone and the mullet became incredibly inconvenient. I was working in bush lawyer-infested native secondary forest full of pines and trying to brush the dreads out was just too hard, so I cut it off. Good-bye mullet.
"I'm 28 now and I'll keep on biking and bird watching for as long as I can. It's not what I imagined I'd be doing when I was a child but I wouldn't change a thing. Of course everyone has tricky times, but it depends how you face them. Do you let them get you down or carry on? With biking, if I break my wrist, I don't mind being a runner for a bit. I see other people with way worse injuries than me, and they carry on. It's important too, not to have just one thing that gives you happiness. When people ask me how I'm so happy, or ask for tips, I tell them it's all about finding what you really like doing, then chasing it and making it your thing."
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