Seven year old Lachlan Stevens-McNabb is the toast of the New Zealand BMX team after grabbing a second successive title at the UCI BMX World Championships at Copenhagen.

The Rotorua rider, who won the six years world title in South Africa last year, led from go-to-whoa to claim his second world crown in the Challenge age group racing.

Despite forecasts for rain – the city has been hit with wet weather of late – today was superb with clear, sunny and hot conditions.

Twenty-one New Zealand riders took part today for riders from five to 14 years, with 17 making it through the three-race qualifying phase. Lachlan led the way for the junior ages in a team that grabbed five podium placings from nine finals.

The young Rotorua rider has continued the success of kiwi riders in the youngest grades, following on from North Harbour’s Rico Bearman who won the six and seven years world titles in 2009 and last year.

Today Lachlan was unbeatable, winning all three qualifying motos, his quarterfinal, semifinal and final but the seven year old reckons it was a tough ask.

“It was harder than last year,” Lachlan said. “There was a lot more riders and all of them had trained really hard and got a lot better. I’m really happy to win though.”

The other medals for the New Zealanders were a silver to Rangiora’s Tahlia Hansen (14 years girls), and bronze medals to Rotorua’s Ngahina Pene (eight years girls), Bearman (eight years boys) and Hamilton’s Kaly Harcourt (10 years girls). Read the rest of this entry »

Mountainbike NZ and BikeNZ have just announced the NZ MTB Team for the UCI World Mountainbike Championships being held in Champery, Switzerland between August 30 and September 4th.

The 30 strong team covers the three UCI categories of Under 19, Under 23 and Elite in Cross Country, Downhill and Four Cross disciplines. The Cross Country contingent is led by Beijing Olympian Rosara Joseph and contains a number of athletes on the rise on the world stage. The Downhill part of the team is led by a quartet of elite athletes who have been regular World Cup podium and top ten performers this year – Brook MacDonald, Sam Blenkinsop, Cam Cole and Justin Leov, who will be backed by an exciting group of Junior athletes.

The full team assembles in Italy to lead into the World Champs through the final World Cup series event – taking place in Val di Sole, Italy on the weekend of August 20/21. Read the rest of this entry »

Footage of Chad Reed’s spectacular crash on the opening lap of the second 450 Class moto at the Lucas Oil Motocross Championship’s Spring Creek National in Millville, MN, on July 16.

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We’ve just got to give James “Bubba” Stewart the big thumbs up after finally finding his winning form at St Louis this weekend past. After an absolute shocker of a season (and a court appearance thanks to pretending to be a cop trying to a arrest two dudes… who happened to be off duty police officers…) Bubba absolutely smashed it in the St Louis round of the AMA Supercross season. The win moves him up to fourth place overall, behind Chad Reed, Ryan Dungey and Ryan Villapoto

This bike doesn’t, it’s going to finish the race itself