The Race That Kick-Started Mountain Biking

Think back to the summer of 1986; do you remember what you were doing? Somewhere out there are 48 mountain bike enthusiast who will never forget. They came from all around New Zealand and even Canada for the very first Karapoti Classic. On March 7th 2015, around 1000 riders from up to a dozen countries will converge in Upper Hutt for the 30th anniversary of New Zealand’s longest standing mountain bike race.


Based in Wellington's rugged Akatarawa Ranges, 10k north of Upper Hutt City, the Karapoti Classic was the race that kick-started mountain biking Down Under and is believed to be the longest running mountain bike event in the Southern Hemisphere.

Karapoti was just the third mountain bike race held on New Zealand shores. The first had been a mid-winter brake burner between five mates down the Stock Route on Christchurch’s Port Hills on 1985. A few months later six people turned out for a similar event in Queenstown, then in February 1986 came Karapoti.

Thirty years later Paul Kennett and his brothers Simon and Jonathan remember that 1986 day well. Alister Rhodes, Peter Schmitz, Tom Clarkson and Keith McLeod do too, and all six of them are lining up three decades later for the 2015 event.

Life has changed in the 30 years since, and mountain biking even more so. More than a 1000 riders regularly line up at Karapoti today. In 1986, just 45 men and three women took on what was dubbed “The New Zealand Off Road Bicycle Race”.

The event was the brainchild of Paul Kennett and his brothers Simon and Jonathan went along for the ride. The first winners were Tim Galloway and Anne Butler. Paul Kennett remembers Butler rode a 10-speed touring bike. Simon Kennett was second, just two seconds behind Galloway, and recalls racing in a bush shirt and being offered an apple from Galloway’s backpack on the last hill, a 5k long climb up a trail dubbed “Pram Track” because many had to push their bikes up.


The oldest in that 1986 race was 43 year old Upper Hutt Doctor, Alister Rhodes. Rhodes was 71 when he completed his 25th Karapoti in 2013, but he was no longer the eldest. That year Palmerston North’s 73 year old Denis Turnball became the oldest ever Karapoti finisher.

Francis Hoen, who finished his 25th consecutive Karapoti in 2014, thinks he has probably ridden a dozen different bikes over the years. Maybe more. Starting on steel with rigid forks he progressed through aluminium, titanium and carbon fibre. Not to mention front suspension and full suspension, which he admits is much kinder to his advancing years. He won his age group a few times along the way and while a few mates remain, a lot of the faces he races against have changed too.

The one thing that remains unchanged, however, is the event itself. Karapoti is the only event where every mountain biker can compare themselves against the riders who came before them.

Very much an old-school adventure ride, the challenge revolves around an uncompromising, some might say cruel, 50km of 4WD trails, single track, wheel sucking sludge, river crossings and wall to wall wilderness. Iconic elements of the course are named to tease and entice. The first and steepest climb is cruelly called “The Warm Up.” The second climb is dubbed “Deadwood” because that’s what your legs feel like at the top. "The Rock Garden," "Devil's Staircase," and "Big Ring Boulevard," are spoken in hushed tones of nervous anticipation and misty sometimes bloody memories that have created a very real Karapoti culture.

The Kennett’s themselves took line honours in the early years, with Paul winning in 1987 and Simon breaking Karapoti’s magical three-hour barrier for the first time in 1988. All Paul remembers from 1987 is that a guy on a road bike led for a long time and there was no way he could let a roadie win his mountain bike race.

By 1989 more than 100 riders were turning out. But between 1991 and 1994 the event doubled in size almost every year from 250 to 500 to 1000 starters. Mountain biking was no longer a fringe social sport somewhere between cycle touring, BMX and multisport. It was now a phenomenon and by 1996 it was at the Olympics and the cycle industry reckoned there was a mountain bike in every New Zealand family. Today the sport has half a dozen disciplines and event’s almost every weekend.

Some things, however, never change. Karapoti has remained the sport’s cultural gathering; the race on every mountain biker’s wishlist, with the 1000 rider limit often selling out. The Kennett’s remain among the movers-and-shakers of the sport as prolific book publishers, trail builders and cycling advocates, with their latest projects including the incredible New Zealand Cycle Trail. And for New Zealand’s best mountain bikers, Karapoti is still the race they most want to win.

Indeed, the Karapoti “Hall of Fame” reads like a who-was-who of mountain bike history with Karapoti often launching international careers. Kathy Lynch (Nelson) and Susan DeMattei (USA) were ranked among the top five in the world when they won the women’s titles. Lynch, who won the women’s race eight times between 1990 and 1997, was our first Olympic mountain biker and very much paved the way for riders such as Auckland’s Susy Pryde and Wellington’s Rosara Joseph who both won Karapoti (Pryde in 2002, 2003 & Joseph 2005) as well as Commonwealth Games silver medals.

Dunedin’s Kashi Leuchs (1998 & 2002) and Sweden’s Kim Eriksson (1999) were also among the top-10 in the world when they won. Australian Lisa Matheson and Switzerland’s Nathalie Schneitter were reigning world junior champions when they won Karapoti in 2004 and 2006. Nelson-based Finn, Elina Ussher, was a world adventure racing champion when she surprised mountain bike specialists to win the 2011 race.
With Lynch, Ussher, Tim Vincent and Brenda Clapp, Nelsonians feature prominently in Karapoti history. Vincent won Karapoti three times (2001, 03, 05) before winning the world 24 Hour title. Similarly, in 2013 Upper Hutt’s Kim Hurst became the first local winner, then won again in 2014 with a women’s race record 2hrs 45min 29secs and later that year took the world 24 Hour title.

Indeed, 2014 proved to be Karapoti’s smoothest vintage with race records across many categories including the fastest ever winner. In 2011 Cantabrian Anton Cooper (below) had become Karapoti’s youngest ever winner at age 16 and went on to win the world junior title. In 2014 he returned to set a race record (2hrs 07min 57secs) before winning Commonwealth Games gold.

First and foremost, however, Karapoti is a people's race catering for all age and ability. And that is possibly the key. There are tougher races and longer races. And there are easier races. There are other races with river crossings, and other races with mud. There are more scenic races, more remote races, and races with more single track and technical riding. But there are few races that combine it all into one event. Karapoti does.

Catering for everyone from elite to also-rans to mountain biking’s off-beat fads, the Karapoti culture is such that the slowest riders are celebrated every bit as much as the few who manage to break the magical three-hour mark. As well as the feature 50k, there’s a 20k introductory race and a 5k kids’ event. And along with the pro-elite categories racing for cash, there are age grades and special categories for corporate teams, family teams, tandems, uni-cycles, single speeds, cyclo-cross, the best costume, rider with the worst luck and this year even something for mountain biking’s latest fad – fat bikes!

All this and more gives Karapoti some sort of magnetic mountain biking pull. Every year riders of all ability and experience finish battered, bruised and muddied, swearing they will never return. But most of them do.

Eight hardy souls - Alistair Rhodes, Peter Schmitz, Francis Hoen and fellow Wellngtonians Mark Renall, Trevor Woodward, Jason McCarty, Jonny Waghorn and Lindsay Horton – have ridden more than 20 times and are now Karapoti Life Members.

They’re all hoping to be on the line again for the 30th anniversary, as are 1986 originals such as the Kennett brothers, who are also Life Members, and Christchurch mountain bike legend Keith McLeod, who organised New Zealand’s first race in 1985 and is thought to have been the first Kiwi to own a mountain bike when he returned home from the USA in 1983.

The irony to all this history, however, is that when the 30th anniversary event gets underway at least twenty five percent of starters wouldn’t have been born when Paul Kennett kicked off that inaugural 1986 race.

One such will be 10 year old Wellingtonian Ben Mitchell. Born into a mountain bike mad family, Ben rode the Kids race for a couple of years, then stepped up to the 20k and last year became the youngest ever finisher of the feature 50k event.

This generational aspect is another feature of the Karapoti Classic. In the last few years the event’s creator, Paul Kennett, has ridden the 20k race with his young son on a bike trailer. Alistair Rhodes also encouraged his son Fergus into the sport as a teenager and many families have seen Mum, Dad and the kids wearing Karapoti’s sought after finisher medals.

On Saturday March 7th another 1000 mountain bikers from all ends of New Zealand and up to a dozen countries will be handed a finish medal of their own.

http://karapoti.co.nz/