"On the bike course, Billy T is the one that the less skilled mountain bikers go 'oh man' and are happy they survived it," he said.
"For a local it is a must-do trail when people come to visit. The fact the organisers have kept this in the course means it is a bit of a stand out."
He said the Tikitapu (Blue Lake) setting made the race iconic in its own right.
Leishman, who has raced in Xterra Rotorua for the past eight years, said perhaps the hardest feature on the course was the flight of stairs located half way through the 11km run.
"There is a set of stairs which leads up to the Blue Lake lookout, about half way through the run," Leishman said.
"You are running on flat ground, alongside the lake, then they chuck a wall in front of you."
He said the flight of stairs rose about 50m in the space of only 100m of track.
Leishman said he was looking forward to his ninth event and decided to enter an age-group competition this year, after finishing fourth last year.
"I haven't been training so hard this time so I didn't enter in with the professionals. I guess it is a bit of a mental thing more than anything else," he said with a laugh.
"It just means that if I do really well I don't get the prize money."
The Xterra Rotorua Festival features a number of events today including the feature individual and team event - a 1km swim, 26km mountainbike and 11km run - as well as trail walks, trail runs and mountain bike events.
Last year's defending champions Ben Allen (Australia) and his girlfriend Jacqui Slack (England) will be looking to defend their titles today.
Meanwhile, Rotorua professional triathlete Oliver Shaw, 21, will be the pick of the locals to win the men's event.
This is the 11th year Xterra has been held in Rotorua and includes athletes from seven different countries.
The Xterra global tour stops at 16 national championship races around the world on its way to the Xterra World Championship in Maui, Hawaii, each October.
Some of the biggest names in New Zealand multisport have won the men's division, including Richard Ussher, Hamish Carter and Terenzo Bozzone.
