Nikita Clarke - a Year 6 student from Room 15 will be representing New Zealand in BMX. Check out the exciting news that was shared with us recently...

Each year at Easter & in September, BMX riders who are 11 years of age trial to gain a place in the BMXNZ Mighty 11 BMX Test Team. The top four 11 year old boys & the top four 11 year old girls make up the teams that challenge the same age group from Australia. Positions in this team are sort after & it is the first experience for these riders at test team level. The Trans-Tasman Tests are raced in Australia in June and in New Zealand in October.

Nikita trialled at Tauranga on the 29th of September and qualified 4th for our Mighty 11 girls team. Qualification in the team comes with a stringent training programme which includes daily training along with intensive 3 to 4 hour training sessions with the team during several weekends. Our training weekends have been held in Tauranga 5th/6th October and last weekend 19th/20th October. We meet again tomorrow & have further training sessions Wednesday, Thursday & Friday. We also have team building activities including one with the Australian team.

The test team challenge is raced at our North Island Titles event this weekend, Labour Weekend. There is a special dinner on Thursday night where the team riders are introduced, acknowledged & where the team members receive their race uniform.

This year, the boys team members are from Whangarei, Wellington, Hamilton and Huntly. The girls are from Cambridge, Rotorua and two from Auckland. Nikita and the rest of the team have been training hard in preparation for this challenge. Normally BMX rider’s race for themselves as individuals, however for this event, these riders must ride together as a team. A new skill set is being learnt to maximise what is required by each rider to beat the Australians.

We look forward to the racing and hopefully win the prestigious trophies that are there for the taking!