Photo Epic: Downhill - Crankworx Rotorua 2023

While we may have a long wait until we see the return of World Cup racing in June the Crankworx World Tour kicked off the international race season with the RockShox Taniwha Downhill. Rotorua's Whakarewarewa Forest played host to some incredible racing as some of the world's best racers were tested with tricky conditions, rooty chutes and challenging ruts that were made more difficult after some wet weather.

In the Women's racing, it was the freshly crowned New Zealand national champion Jess Blewitt who came out on top besting last year's Junior World Champion Jenna Hastings by a significant 6.442 seconds. Jess' win marks her first Cranworx World Tour gold medal in Elites with her previous win being from the Junior category in 2020. Following the race, Jess said: "My run went to plan. My plan being to keep it rubber side down and that worked. I had got a little bit loose in a few spots, but overall pretty happy. Rotorua is a hard track in that you don't know how much you can really push, but I think it was a smart race run."

It was back-to-back top results for Loic Bruni as he made it a perfect weekend taking the fastest time in seeding and finals. While Bruni managed to put a few seconds into everyone during seeding finals were a lot tighter as FMD Racing's newest recruit Oliver Zwar ended the day just 0.344 seconds behind the five-time world champion. Completing the top three was Neko Mulally who piloted his custom Frameworks bike with a new carbon rear triangle to third just under a second off Loic's winning time.

On his run, Loic said: "My run was pretty late in the day, so it was tough to stay in the headspace especially with it getting darker in the woods. I did pretty good on the top sections, but I couldn't really adapt to the track. I did a few small mistakes, but I was feeling fast by the time I reached the bottom. Feeling like I am starting the season in the best way, so I am feeling stoked."

While the downhill racing may be over the Crankworx action is set to continue for the rest of the week with the Official New Zealand Whip-Off Championships on Wednesday.

Check out all the action from the RockShox Taniwha Downhill below and you can find the full results here.