Aotearoa Crossfest/New Zealand National CX Championships 2022: Course Preview
This weekend Kart Sport Canterbury will host the year’s biggest weekend of racing in the Land of the Long White Cloud - Aotearoa Crossfest and New Zealand National Cyclocross Championships. Entries are coming in thick and fast, and the organising team from local club SouthernCross CX are pumped to welcome racers from all over the country to the suburbs of Christchurch.
This weekend will mark the third running of the Aotearoa Crossfest (ACXF) - returning to Christchurch in 2022 after being held in Upper Hutt last year.
Although the UCI-sanctioned National Cyclocross Championships on Sunday will be the main draw of the weekend, there’s a reason for referring to the whole weekend as Aotearoa Crossfest, as Hüttcross president Kim Hurst explained to us in an interview last year.
“[ACXF was] a little thing that I dreamt up in 2017 while I was racing in the [United] States. To call it just CX Nationals was probably going to be a mistake...having a festival weekend of cyclocross including some full-noise Elite racing was a way better way to go. That way the racing snakes can race fast, and everyone else can race hard - just at different paces.”
The Course
To get the inside line on what the course for this weekend will look like, we had a chat with SouthernCross CX president Ryan Cooney.
‘We were looking for something a bit different, a bit interesting - we host a lot of our events at local parks where there aren’t a lot of facilities. What really struck us about [Kart Sport Canterbury] is the opportunity to have a mix of pavement, gravel and grass, as well as some man-made features as part of the course.’
While most cross races will have start straights on gravel or grass, this weekend’s action will take start on the track’s home straight.
‘The asphalted go-kart track [at the start of the lap] is a part of the course we’re expecting to be really fast - it’s got some nice tight corners in it, which will be pretty exciting for folks to watch.’
‘After that we have grass sections with various mounds, humps and hollows in it - which is lucky, because Christchurch is pretty flat!’
‘In terms of man-made features, we’ll have a stair set with a ramp, as well as a good old set of hurdles, and we’re currently debating the possibility of adding another feature…but the stairs and the hurdles will be the primary man-made features.’
It seems as though there’ll be plenty of grass and asphalt to go around, but what about in between the features?
‘There’ll be a gravel surface in some of the up-and-back sections where you’ll be able to check how your competitors are going and what sort of lead you have on them.’
After completing negotiating the last few turns on the gravel and grass, riders will head back onto the track to complete their lap at the kart track finish line.
Check out the teaser video that was released when the venue was first announced - it gives you an idea of just how tight some of those paved corners are!
The Weather
Although Christchurch has experienced quite a wet winter, the current forecast for this weekend’s action is for cool and sunny conditions, with temperatures reaching a top of around 13ºC.
‘It’s been exceptionally wet here this winter’ explained Cooney. ‘We had 50% more rain in July than we’ve ever recorded before. The course certainly has a couple of mud bogs in it, but it’s not going to be super muddy -a couple of patches of soft soil, but enough for a mixture along with the gravel and asphalt.’
But the all important question remains - what tyres should folks be using? I suggest that intermediate tyres might be the most popular choice.
‘Absolutely. I guess that’s where we’re hoping that the sealed section will make that choice even trickier!’
The Racing Schedule
A quick look at the schedule for the ACXF weekend shows no shortage of racing options on offer. Saturday’s racing is the final round of the SouthernCross CX club series for 2022, with some extra races such as the Beer Race and the Tandem Race thrown in for fun.
The focus on all of Saturday’s races will be on having fun, so costumes and weird/unusual bikes are strongly encouraged - the number of tandems that normally enter SCCX’s club races indicates there’ll be a bit of competition in the tandem event!
Sunday’s riding will be for National Championships, meaning medals for age group riders and - for the Junior, U23 and Elite Men and Women - national championship jerseys. We’ll cover the Silver Fern jersey contenders in a separate article later this week - with around 120 riders signed up to race for jerseys on Sunday there’s sure to be plenty of competition!
Photo: @southerncrosscx
Photo: @cyclingnewzealand