Mountain Bike Maxwell1 v2 Australian Sam Fox mixed work with competition to become the first Australian in 10 years to win the men’s elite cross-country title at the UCI Oceania MTB Championships in Queenstown.
The honours were shared in the elite racing with New Zealand’s Paris Olympian, Sammie Maxwell dominating the women’s race to defend her title.
Fox became only the second person in 10 years to win the elite men’s title, with Anton Cooper (New Zealand) winning every edition since 2016.
The duo was closely matched early with Cooper pushing out to a 30-second lead after three of seven laps before a flat tyre proved costly. After limping back to service, the Lapierre Racing Unity professional found himself well down on the Australian and was unable recover the time.
Fox finished just shy of a minute clear to add the elite crown to his Australian national honours last week with Cooper finishing second for his 12th consecutive Oceania Championship medal since 2013. Rotorua’s Sam Shaw finished third.
It continues a rewarding time for Fox, who has recently finished as a fulltime professional and is mixing work with racing.
"It has been a busy couple of weeks, I finished up our national titles in some pretty torrential conditions and back to work with Cycleways in Christchurch, so I didn’t get to touch the bike until course recon yesterday," said the Australian."The fun-is-fast adage is really paying off. I had a lot of momentum from the last year of training professionally and kind of carrying that […]
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