The future of Downhill!

During the recent Queenstown Bike Festival we were lucky enough to help out a local young man by the name of Sam Robbie, who at 11 years old was the youngest competitor in the Dirtmasters DH race. We have seen young Sam thrashing around the trails on his trusty hardtail and when we heard he was racing we thought we have to lend him a DH bike for the occasion.

So we hooked Sam up with a 2012 Giant Glory 1 (in a small obviously) and let him go and terrorize the hill for the weekend of the race with all his mates. The grin on his face getting to ride one of these bikes was great for us to see and made all the better by the fact that after the race weekend he is off to hospital for knee surgery, so it was an extra special little treat for him.

Sam was shredding the race track to bits during practice, putting to shame people twice his age. He was loving riding a proper DH bike and it showed with his awesome 2nd place result in the 12-15 Junior Men category with a time of 4.22 (this placed him 68th overall in the field).

Sam is one a number of young groms that are starting to appear and be nurtured along by the very healthy mountain bike scene we have here in Queenstown. Another one to look out for is young Boaz Hebblethwaite who was also in Sam's category and seen to be ripping the track up over the weekend with his extremely stylish and smooth riding style, unfortunately Boaz took a tumble in his race run, otherwise he would have been right up there! These two are ones to watch out for in the future!