Mountain biking - Crankworx Rotorua: Jenna Hastings and the rush of the downhill

Multimedia journalist·Rotorua Daily Post·

6 Mar, 2025 01:22 AM6 mins to read

Jenna Hastings on the Crankworx Rotorua AirDH. Photo / Clint Trahan

When you’re riding a mountain bike downhill at speed and you enter a “flow state”, Jenna Hastings says, “it’s a whole other kind of adrenaline rush, feeling like, honestly, you’re a god and nothing can stop you.”

Hastings would know. As Crankworx Rotorua 2025 got under way this week, Rotorua’s top women’s elite mountain biker won gold, setting the best women’s time of 2.06.654 on the Air Downhill Mr Black track.

On Saturday, the 20-year-old will race the Crankworx RockShox Kārearea Downhill race. She said she was excited to ride the upgraded track – the race event has recently returned from Whakarewarewa Forest Park in time for the Crankworx World Tour 2025.

Hastings told the Rotorua Daily Post the “flow state” of mountain biking was “like you’re riding perfectly and it’s such a hard thing to come across when you hit a line or a big jump that you either weren’t sure about or just really nervous about”.

“When you get it it’s so good, but it’s so hard to get there.

Hastings set the best women’s time on Wednesday morning.

“You know if you can do something or not, and when you hit something that you are scared of, but you’re pushing yourself, that’s a whole other kind of adrenaline rush,” she told the Rotorua Daily Post.

Jenna Hastings on the Crankworx Rotorua Air DH on Wednesday. Photo / Clint Trahan

Wind was an issue on the Air Downhill track on day one, causing organisers to postpone the popular, stunt-heavy Whip Off event an extra day due to wind.

According to MetService, wind speeds in Rotorua were set to reach gusts as high as 45km/h on Thursday, but they were expected to ease to about 30-35km/h on Saturday and Sunday.

Hastings said the Air Downhill race was “insanely windy, when you came out the last corner, along that last straight, it was just like hitting a wall, so lots of pedalling required, but no, it was good fun”.

Completing her walkthrough of the Kārearea Downhill track on Wednesday afternoon, she had some concerns about the wind during the elite finals on Saturday.

Jenna Hastings at Crankworx 2022. Photo / Mead Norton

“The wind at the bottom could affect those jumps quite a bit, it will be interesting to see how the wind goes the rest of the week.”

Heading into the 2025 season, Hastings planned to focus on health after injuring herself at the start of the 2024 season.

She will head to Poland for the 2025 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup beginning in May.

“I said to Mum I would rather get third and be healthy this time than hurt myself because I was trying to go too hard to win, ya know?”

This meant weighing up “risk versus reward”, she said.

Year 6 students from Otonga Primary School came out to support the first main event of the week, the Crankworx Air Downhill at the beloved mountain biking event.

“It’s about trying to balance the reward factor and how much you’re going to push, but not push too much that you end up having a huge crash and hurting yourself.

“You’re trying to avoid crashing all the time, but these start-of-the-season races that aren’t quite World Cups, it’s really about trying to be careful with it,” she said.

Rotorua's Tuhoto Ariki Pene, 23, after finishing 5th in the Crankworx Men's Elite Air Downhill competition on Wednesday morning. Photo / Aleyna Martinez

Tuhoto-Ariki Pene of Rotorua set a time of 1:55.557 on the Air DH track in the men’s elite division, placing him fifth on their leaderboard for the downhill races.

“I got heaps of mates racing today and I just look forward to the downhill,” the Rotorua local said.

His personal riding goal for 2025 was to ”slay it up on the downhill and just enjoy Crankworx”.

He wasn’t certain about joining the next leg of the tour in Cairns and then Whistler in Canada, but he was focused on the World Cup in Poland.

“Chur to the crew for putting on a mean event, seeing all the schoolkids out here, seeing something different, is pretty cool as well as seeing some young familiar faces.

“Mountain biking in Rotorua, it’s dominated by tāwāhi [overseas] people and to see some Māori faces here, it’s mean,” he said.

Ratu, Gusta, Sio, Paula and Casiga of Rotorua Boys High School visited the first Crankworx World Cup event as part of a school assignment on the event. Photo / Aleyna Martinez

Students from Rotorua Boys' High School visited the event as part of a school assignment and Year 6 Otonga Primary school students were also there to support.

Event director Ariki Tibble said despite a challenging 2024, he was excited about this weekend.

“All the hard thinking and planning has been done and now we’re just in execution mode,” he said.

He said Friday was the last day locals could attend for free.

“With tickets clicking up over 7,400 as of Thursday, the weekend looks like it’s stacking up to be a vibe.”

He was proud of the dedication and effort put in by Rotorua’s mountain bike community to make it happen.

“At the heart of the event are a bunch of Rotorua locals, and we are a resilient bunch well suited to the adaptability required to pull something like this off.”

The recently returned RockShox Kārearea Downhill track designed by Elite Dirt was a highlight for Tibble.

“It’s pretty spectacular and one people are really going to want to get up and see.

Crankworx AirDH Podium at Skyline in Rotorua, New Zealand. 1st: Jenna Hastings, Ryan Gilchrist, 2nd: Martha Gill, Richie Rude, 3rd: Tyler Waite, Camille Balanche. Photo / Clint Trahan

“There’s the Maxxis Motorway which links the Ngāti Whakaue tribal lands block with the Skyline property, and then the track drops in to a trail called BYO, which is like a super technical little area.”

In terms of the weather, Tibble said, “we’ll just bend and flow with the wind”.

He said there were still opportunities for volunteers to get involved in the festival - and perks on offer.

Anyone interested in volunteering should email rotoruavolunteer@gmail.com. Spectator tickets were available through the Crankworx website.

Aleyna Martinez is a multimedia journalist based in the Bay of Plenty. She moved to the region in 2024 and has previously reported in Wairarapa and at Pacific Media Network.