Kylie Dorr Photo: RNZ/Sally Round
In just 18 months, Kylie Dorr has turned her hobby - racing dirt bikes - into prepping for the world's premier off-road motororcycle competition.
And to get there, she and her teammates are offering courses to farm workers on how to ride their farm bikes safely..
Dorr is heading to Spain in October to represent New Zealand at the International Six Days of Enduro, the world's largest annual off-road motorcycle competition, established in 1913.
It has been a struggle for the four-person team to get sponsorship for the event so the champion riders are hoping people will sign up for their courses, being run in conjunction with Agricademy.
Seventy percent of the money raised will go to the riders and the aim is to run the courses longer-term to help other riders race internationally.
It will cost each rider $30,000 to $40,000 to get to the Spanish event, Dorr said.
"It's a huge cost, being so far away from the rest of the world, to get riders overseas and we have such an amazing talent pool of young riders.
"Per capita New Zealand has one of the highest levels of world championship level riders ... and I think a lot of that's attributed to our rural background and the fact that we have a lot of kids growing up on farms, learning how to ride bikes at a young age, and so we want to encourage that every way we can and help get these riders overseas and on the world stage."
Dorr owns an artificial insemination and pregnancy scanning business working in Otago, Southland and Canterbury.
Aside from that, she runs a busy household and has to fit in training sessions before and after the school run and work day.
The enduro event in October involves six days of racing, eight hours a day, across farmland, forests and hill country. The riders have to do all their own bike maintenance en route.
"I thought with my farming, agriculture background and the skills that myself and my teammates have as enduro riders, that we could use those to help farmers out and to give back in some way while fundraising at the same time."
Four top riders, sprinkled around the country, will be taking the courses and are prepared to head to a farmer's property to help farmworkers on two-wheelers negotiate hazards like creek crossings or irrigation drains.
"This is not about speed and going fast. The reason that we can do that is because we have a really good foundation and understanding of our body position on the bike and movements and how the bike handles.
"That foundation can be used by farmers to navigate obstacles, when they're mustering sheep and cattle on high country hill land or bringing dairy cows in through flat paddocks. It's the same base skill set.
"One thing I've noticed over the last 10 years is we've got a lot of new people coming into the industry that haven't grown up on a farm, so they haven't grown up riding bikes and so that skill set's not there and it's not being taught."
Dorr is the 2023 and 2024 national enduro women's champion and the New Zealand number two in women's cross-country racing. Also taking the courses are Rachel Archer, billed number one in the United States and a multi-time winner of the NZ Enduro, Cross Country, and Women's MX Championships; Wil Yeoman, the Taupo national cross-country champion in 2023; and sheep and beef farmer James Scott who is a national champion across disciplines.
