Co-organiser Emmerson Wilken says in ’24 they decided to run the 10-day fest every two years, so last year they only held the still full-on three-day McGazza Fest.
That’s in memory of local mountain biking icon Kelly ‘McGazza’ McGarry who died, poignantly, 10 years ago next month, aged 33, after suffering a cardiac arrest while riding Queenstown’s Fernhill Loop.
"Only because McGazza Fest is so popular, and it’s a memorial thing for every year, it still works," Wilken says.
"It costs a bit lower than trying to have a whole 10-day thing and the worry was, if you do it every year, it kind of loses that specialness."
He admits funding this year’s been "super-tough, but we’ve had quite a few of our long-standing sponsors step up, and a lot are actually Kelly’s previous sponsors, so that’s pretty cool to see".
Though many of the bike fest’s highlights are during McGazza Fest — from next Friday till Sunday — the first seven days are also jam-packed.
Tomorrow features the fun log race, from 4pm, and spectacular lake jump, from 6.45pm — both beside Queenstown Bay’s Steamer Wharf.
Saturday includes Coro1200.
"That’s a full top to bottom of Coronet, down to the valley floor, like, 1200 metres of vert," Wilken says.
"I’ve actually not done it before — I don’t know if I could."
Highlights over the following days include Sunday’s gravel group social ride and the slopestyle at Fernhill’s Wynyard Jump Park, Monday’s dress-up dual slalom on Frankton Beach’s grass front, Tuesday’s pump track at Kerry Dr, Wednesday’s whip-off at Skyline and Thick Thursday — a downhill race down Coronet’s Rude Rock.
Wilken says their aim’s to cover costs, with any surplus going to the Queenstown Mountain Bike Club.
The main costs, he explains, are on medics and a media team that films all the action.
"People love to see the sort of stuff that happens during events — we get like hundreds of thousands of views on all our videos."
● The bike fest programme’s at queenstownbikefestival.co.nz; more on McGazza Fest in next week’s Mountain Scene.
