Forest riders at odds over wet event | Rotorua News | Local News in Rotorua

Mountainbikers are butting heads over whether events like last weekend's N-Duro Winter mountainbiking series should go ahead in heavy rain despite likely damage to the trails.

Rotorua's Fred Christensen, who built many of the original mountainbike tracks in the forest, said he wondered why the event went ahead when the weather forecast warned of extremely heavy rains over the weekend.

"You would have to be a blind man not to realise the Redwoods was about to get hammered," he said. "Why wasn't there a cancellation plan?

"This might only happen once a year but once a year is too much. It takes months to repair. There will be pieces from the weekend that will never recover."

Event organiser Marcus Diprose said he would only consider cancelling an event if competitor safety was at risk and the conditions on Sunday did not risk competitor safety.

"There was no risk of fire, no gale force winds. Competitor safety was never going to be compromised."

Mr Christensen said he had organised events in the past which had been held in rainy conditions, like the Moon Ride, and had seen the damage done to the trails when they were ridden by lots of competitors in heavy rain.

"It's more the heartbreak for the locals," he said. "It's a tough one, but let's have a new plan. Let's have a trail closure plan. There would be no loss of faith, we're looking after our pride and joy."

Mr Diprose said he had started work to repair the tracks where necessary.

"It's not going to take months to repair the tracks.

"I've seen more damage to trails on a holiday weekend when it's been raining than on this weekend," he said.

He said even if the event had been cancelled people who had travelled to Rotorua from out of town would probably still have ridden the tracks and caused damage because they had already travelled all the way here.

"If there is track damage we will go in and repair it, as required under the event agreement with the RDC, at our cost, which we are doing."

"I did make some course changes on Sunday to do with competitor safety. There were time cut-offs instituted at two spots on the long course and if a competitor hadn't reached those points within the required time, they were put on to the short course because we were concerned they would run out of food and fluid. We didn't want people being out there for six or seven hours."

Mr Diprose said all major repairs would be sorted out by the end of next week.

He said 350 overseas competitors had entered the upcoming Singlespeed World Champs here.

"We're highlighting Rotorua as an international riding destination. If you go down the path of cancelling events then Rotorua as a mountainbiking destination will suffer because there will be no guarantee events will actually happen. I'm sure they [competitors] won't want an event cancelled just because it's raining."

Rotorua Mountain Bike club committee member Dave Donaldson said the wet weather deterred him from taking part in the N-Duro.

"I know the effort put in to building the trails and maintaining them is substantial. I avoid riding the trails in the wet.

"I made a personal choice because the wet weather would cause damage to the tracks.

"But as an organiser of mountainbike club events in the past I understand the predicament the organisers are in. I understand other people from outside Rotorua expect when they enter an event they expect [it to go ahead]."

The Redwoods/Whakarewarewa Forest manager Julianne Wilkinson posted a message on Facebook on Monday which said the organisers were working on repairing the tracks.

"The agreement that is entered into, on approval for events to be held, is that we will undertake repairs to tracks that are considered normal maintenance. Over and above that the repairs are either undertaken by the event organiser or we contract someone to do it and charge it back to the organiser. In this case we are working together with N-Duro to see the repairs are done and the tracks are made safe again. Planning for this started this morning and Marcus will be starting [on Tuesday]."