Last weekend the annual Santa Cruz Bicycles NZ Enduro took place in the Marlborough Sounds, consisting of three days of racing some amazing, very rugged trails in the region.
This was my first time at the event and it didn’t disappoint, Sven and Anka Martin know how to put on an extremely physically demanding and fun race! Having spent most of my life living less than 2 hours from all of these trails it was actually my first time riding most of them, this definitely upped the challenge of not knowing what lay ahead!

Day one, Whites Bay – 9th
The race kicked off with a solid 1.5hr of pedalling and hiking from the beach at Whites Bay up to 700m above sea level with 10+ minutes of slippery, rooty descending and some tough climbs awaiting us. Racing this blind was a battle of not knowing what was awaiting me and where to put effort in. Stage two was a short stages on a downhill track which was a lot of fun and after one good crash over the bars I managed to finish the day up with two stages inside the top 10 for 9th overall.

Day two, Nydia Bay – 7th
Nydia Bay for day two was our biggest day by far with 35km of riding awaiting us and four races stages. I luckily had ridden this once before about three years ago so at least had a little bit of an idea what to expect although I again had trouble on the abundant slippery roots which is not normally an issue!
I was happy to have another four stages inside the top 10 with a highlight of 5th on stage three and finishing the day in 7th overall.

Day three, Wakamarina – 14th
This was the day everyone was anticipating and when the helicopters (yes helicopters!) arrived to start shuttling us to the top of the hill the air was electric, I don’t think anyone could of been in a bad mood no matter how bad their weekend had gone at this point! The flight to the top of the hill was an awesome way to start the day and had me far too excited before starting stage 1!
I put together a nice solid stage one with no major mistakes and managed to climb the lung busting infamous switch back climb which I was happy with. Unfortunately I got a little bit too excited on the very raw native single track at the start of stage two and with minimal taping I accidentally made a right hand turn off the track and descended for 15-20 seconds off the ridge before realising my mistake and realising I had no idea where the track was! After some calling out I saw another rider on the ridge and made my way back up to the trail unfortunately getting passed by two riders who had started behind me and losing a lot of time. Lesson learnt though, pay more attention to the track markers next time!
Overall I lost a lot of time with my stage two mistake and finished the day up in 14th overall, it seems that day three may have claimed a number of victims though as I still managed to hold on to 7th overall for the weekend.
I am already planning my return to the NZ Enduro in 2019 with redemption on my mind! If you ever get a chance this is an event not to miss!

Crankworx Rotorua up next
Next up for me on the calendar is Crankworx Rotorua to put a bookend on another awesome summer of racing. I will be back on the DH bike for this, the track there is one of my favourites and one I have done well on in the past so I am excited to get back up there and do some racing!

Written by: Kieran Bennett – Torpedo7 Athlete
Follow Kieran on Instagram