2012 Queenstown Bike Festival - the Super D course

Interview and photos by Patrick Fallon


I caught up with my good mate Jarna MacKenzie today on the Skyline Gondola and had a bit of a chat with him about the 2012 Super D. (Jarna is the track designer and builder and will also be racing the event).

Here’s what Jarna had to say about this year’s Super D…

Tell us a little bit about your background with bikes.

I raced downhill for…ages. About ten years. I’ve trail ridden always so always on little bikes. And obviously I fix bikes a lot (Jarna’s a bike mechanic at Outside Sports and The Ride Centre at the bottom of the gondola here in Queenstown).
I’ve built a lot of tracks in Dunedin, helped out on Coronet Peak, built Treble Cone, Rocket Bungy Nationals, all that sort of stuff. So lots of track building everywhere.

How did you get involved in building the Super D course for the Queenstown BikeFestival?

Our shop, Outside Sports, sponsors the event. So last year part of thesponsorship deal was to help build the track. Basically I just volunteered to do it. I just wanted to make sure the track was as good as it could be. And also I got second last year, so I figured if I could build a track and make it better for me I might win this year.


For people who haven’t ridden the Super D before, what’s the Super D all about?

The Super D is an endurance downhill, six hours, 10 o’clock in the morning to 4pm and however many laps you can do on the gondy. Obviously the hills only a certain amount of vert so you need to be doing a
bit of pedaling. I tried to make the pedaling as un-obtrusive as possible to keep it flowy.

You raced the Super D last year – from a competitor’s point of view what’s it like to race?

It’s quite difficult cause it is over six hours. You potentially, depending upon how fit you are and how good your concentration is, can’t hit it full speed all day. You may need to just peg it back a little bit because you are riding a little bike and I’ve put a lot of the big downhill stuff in it this year. You’ll get shaken round a bit so finding a good smooth line that may be fractionally slower where you can hold on may help. Just finding good smooth consistent lines is the ticket.


Any big differences from last year’s course?

No road climbs this year, it’s all 100% single-track. It seems silly to come to a bike park in Queenstown and have to climb up a gravel road. It does make good passing and stuff but I’d prefer a technical climb that’s still a challenge rather than just slogging up a road. There’s less climbing this year – a lot more bus-stops and deviations and links taking up 30 seconds here and there rather than two big climbs. We’ve got one medium, 4 minute climb and then lots of little deviations and links to take up time. We’re just trying to get as much down with as little up as possible cause I’m not very good at pedaling.

What’s going to be the winning time and who’s going to win it?

Ideally around the 22 to 25 minute lap. I did about a 24-ish, I’m imagining people will be able to take a bit of time out of me.
Who’s going to win it? There’s a couple of solid two men teams, like Matt Scoles, who’s on one team. He’s racing with James Pollard. Craig Paddle and his buddy just turned up. Kashi Leuchs and Marcus Roy just turned up. Blair (Christmas) and Pang (Paul Angus, both local riders) will be hard to beat.

Sounds good – thanks for your time mate!

No worries.