New Zealand performances at the recent Cross Country Mountain Bike World Cups held in Mont Sainte Anne, Canada and Windham, USA, where Waiariki's Red Stag Mountain Bike Squad members have been to the fore, have reinforced Rotorua as the Mecca for mountain biking. Samara Sheppard working closely with our Academyof Sport achieved her first world cup win at U23 level, the John Lee coached Amber Johnston achieved two podium finishes in the U19 division in her first two starts on the world stage, with Nigel McDowell (also coached directly by the academy) finishing in the top ten at U19 level at both events.
A strong combination of a world class training environment (Rotorua's Redwood Forest), collaborative coaching, and quality training programmes that are closely monitored has seen local mountain bike results make steady and consistent improvement. Given these recent successes and the respective ages of our current crop of athletes, it is exciting to think what could be possible come Rio in 2016.
New Zealand's only mountain bike representative at this year's London Olympic Games - Whakatane rider Karen Hanlen is also receiving support from the academy. Our recently revamped performance centre has enabled Karen and coach Evan McCrae to ride a virtual London Olympic Course and her day-to-day training has been supported with the use of our recently acquired SRM power cranks which are the gold standard for performance monitoring. This data will not only be invaluable in preparation for Karen's Olympic campaign, it will also provide us with benchmarks for those up-and-comers who aspire to perform at this level.
Our commitment to mountain biking in Rotorua and the Bay Plenty will extend to a secondary schools challenge race series to be run in late August and into September. This promises to be a fun and exciting event where we look forward to identifying our next group of potential Olympians. Details will be available after the 23rd of July.
Wayne Maher is the Waiariki Academy of Sport Manager.
