Mountainbiking: Sammie Maxwell leads elites; Kate Hastings’ podium breakthrough

Sammie Maxwell is in her first season riding as an elite. Photo / Cycling NZ

Rotorua teenager Kate Hastings has earned a breakthrough podium in the latest round of the UCI MTB World Series Downhill in Italy.

The 17-year-old claimed third in the junior women’s final at the fourth round of the world cup on the infamous Black Snake downhill track at Val di Sole on Sunday, a Cycling NZ update said.

Hastings, who won a European Downhill Cup race last weekend in Austria, is the younger sister of former junior downhill world champion and current Pivot Factory elite, Jenna Hastings.

Qualifying second-fastest, Hastings was strong on the top half of the course before powering home on the bottom half to finish just 2.780 seconds behind winner and series leader, Rosa Zierl from Austria.

It marked another outstanding display for Kiwi downhill junior women with four riders in the top eight in the final, Cycling NZ’s press release said.

Rotorua’s Bellah Birchall from Team High Country was fifth, in-form Tauranga rider Eliana Hulsebosch (Santa Cruz Syndicate) seventh and Queenstown’s Indy Deavoll eighth.

Hulsebosch is second in the overall standings behind Zierl, with Birchall fifth, Hastings now seventh and Indy Deavoll 10th.

There is a two-week break for downhill riders before the fifth round of the world cup in the Alps at La Thuile Valle D’Aosta.

Meanwhile, Taupō’s Sammie Maxwell produced an outstanding performance to finish runner-up in the latest round of the UCI MTB Cross-country World Series at Val di Sole, Cycling NZ reported.

The Decathlon Ford team professional, in her first season as an elite, retained her lead in the overall world series standings after the fifth of nine rounds.

After a win in the opening round, the 2023 under-23 world champion finished second in the next four rounds. She has ridden to her own pace, rather than getting caught up going with every attack.

That proved the case at Val di Sole when Maxwell dropped nearly 40 seconds in the opening lap from an uncharacteristic start and the attacks by eventual winner, Dutch star Puck Pieterse.

Maxwell ate into that advantage, and by the penultimate lap had caught the chasers and moved into second behind Pieterse, closing on the Dutch rider on the final climb.

Maxwell leads the overall standings by 341 on Nicole Koller of Switzerland and 433 on Pieterse.

“I just had a bad start again. I told myself to be composed. I felt good on the climbs. I knew where to burn matches and where not to,” said Maxwell, Cycling NZ reported.

“If someone has 40 seconds on you on the start lap and you are racing for an hour and a half, you chip off 10 seconds a lap and you are going to be up there.

“On the last climb I saw her [Puck] and that I was closing her, so I emptied the tank. I knew I had to go long and that closed the gap, and I got super-excited but I was pretty cooked by then.

“Strategically I was not impressed because I had a really bad start, which probably took me out of contention for the win, but I could still fight for the podium.”