For James Officer, winning a national title is just the beginning.
Three weeks ago the Taupō-nui-a-Tia College Year 13 student took out the national mountain biking cross country title for the under-19 age group.
Second-place getter Max Preece from the Rotorua Mountain Biking Club was 32 seconds behind on the gun time, with Maui Morrison from Te Miro Mountain Biking Club in third place.
Next week, James is flying to Brisbane to take on the fastest cross country mountain bikers in Australasia.
"Not sure how I will go. It's been a while since I raced the Australians. I hope to be in the top few," the 17-year-old says.
In April he's joining the New Zealand mountain biking team, Team Talley's Kiwi MTB Collective, and heading to Europe for four months. Led by the other under-19 competitor Ethan Woods' father Scott Woods, the 10or so strong team across all age groups will follow all the world cups and race in the general world series.
James joined the Taupō Mountain Biking Club's junior development squad around seven years ago, and raced competitively for about four years but says he didn't really think he had a serious chance of taking the sport further.
"I kinda realised I'm not too bad at this. I thought 'I'll probably do better if I had a coach'."
His sister Caitlin Officer is into competitive horse riding and James says three years ago his parents got in touch with mountain biking coach Cabin (Mark) Leishman from Rotorua "and he started telling me what to do".
James says his parents are not mountain bike riders "and they were never too pushy about it".
Selection for the New Zealand team was off the back of "doing well at the Nationals and a whole bunch of other races in 2021", James says.
In Europe, he expects to race in Mercedes-Benz UCI Mountain Bike World Cup races in Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Andorra, and Italy. He aims to be selected for the penultimate race of the trip, the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in Les Gets, France.
Talley's pays for many expenses and James says he and his family have been selling firewood to fundraise, with Jarrod from Got Wood Taupō being particularly generous.
James is unfazed about missing school for four months while he is away in Europe, and says he won't be studying while he's away and will be doing his NCEA level three exams at the end of this year.
Once he's left school, his career plan is to jump on the world mountain biking circuit as part of the New Zealand team.
He's not too worried about the Covid-19 pandemic, as he and his teammates are all vaccinated.
He says he never would have gotten where he is without his parents, Karen and Michael Officer, his coach Mark Leishman, and also Scott Woods who put the team together.
Other riders from Taupō Mountain Bike Club also had success at the New Zealand MTB National Championships.
Elite U23 Female: 1st place went to Sammie Maxwell, and siblings Louie and Mia Cameron were second in their respective categories of Junior U15 Male and Junior Female U19.
Credit: NZHerald.co.nz
