Experience and youth shine in MTB Eliminator at Whaka 100 in Rotorua

National Champions Joshua Cavanagh and Rae Morrison in the 2024 MTB Eliminator National Championships, staged as part of the Whaka 100 event in Rotorua. (Credit: Selena Wright)

​Experienced mountain bike professional Rae Morrison and promising schoolboy Josh Cavanagh took out the respective elite honours in the MTB Eliminator National Championships, staged as part of the Whaka 100 event in Rotorua.

National jerseys were up for grabs for the third time, with Cycling New Zealand partnering with the most popular MTB event in the country, which has attracted more than 3000 competitors over the weekend.

Sunday’s Shimano Whaka 100 Marathon will also carry official national championship status.

Today’s Eliminator titles were staged over a series of super-sprints around a twisting short circuit incorporating the pump track at the Waipa MTB facility.

The four-strong elite men’s final began in spectacular fashion with defending champion Lochie Brown, the Whaka 100 defending champion Ben Oliver and Wellington’s Jesse Cseh colliding on the tight first corner.

That allowed Cavanagh to skip clear as he held off all challengers to claim the national title, with defending champion Brown finishing runner-up despite snapping his seat post in the crash, while Cseh also recovered to claim third.

It proved a remarkable win for Cavanagh, who is still high school, and moved to the elite ranks after enjoying his debut in the Eliminator Open class last year.

Cavanagh has enjoyed success at the shortest and longest forms of cycling this year, as New Zealand’s best performed junior at the recent UCI Road Cycling World Championships in Switzerland.

“I really enjoyed that last year and wanted to move up and try the elite race. I didn’t really expect to win with the likes of Lochie and Ben in the race but I got to the first corner in the lead and didn’t quite realise what had happened behind me,” said Cavanagh.

“This is such a well-run event and really enjoyable. I am here with a bunch of my teammates and to compete against them is special. It is pretty cool to keep up with the likes of Lochie and Ben.

That was a sore kind of fun. Short and sharp and I gave it everything.

“I did a lot of BMX racing when I was younger which is where a lot of my power has come from and this was BMX racing on a mountain biker.”

Now he switches to Sunday 100km event and not sure how that will go – “whether we race it for fun or we go hard.”

The elite women’s race was more clear-cut with enduro national champion Morrison getting the best possible start, and managing to hold off defending champion and Olympian, Sammie Maxwell.

“That was a sore kind of fun. Short and sharp and I gave it everything. I am used to racing enduro which takes several hours in the mountains and this was completely opposite. It was my first one,” said Morrison, who recently finished her fulltime commitment to professional Enduro World Cup racing as she moves to a new role as coach for the LIV XCO MTB team.

“Now I am no longer racing fulltime on the Enduro World Cup season in Europe, I can now do these types of fun events and give them a go. And I get another national champion’s jersey.”

Saturday sees a series of MTB races from Kids 5km to 50km in the famed Whakarewarewa Forest for all levels of the sport, with the Shimano 100km event, one of the toughest tests in the sport with total climbing of 3,231m, getting underway from 7.40am on Sunday.

Results, MTB Eliminator National Championships:

• Elite men final: Josh Cavanagh (Hamilton) 1, Lochie Brown (Cambridge) 2, Jeese Cseh (Wellington) 3.
• Elite women final: Rae Morrison (Nelson) 1, Sammie Maxwell (Taupo) 2, Mia Cameron (Taupo) 3.​