From devastating injury to the hardest line: Kiwi mountain biker’s remarkable journey

Brook Macdonald’s remarkable return from injury reaches another milestone this weekend, as he competes in the Red Bull Hardline downhill mountain bike event in Tasmania.

Known as the toughest mountain bike race in the world, it’s the first time the Red Bull Hardline has been held outside Wales, its country of origin. It’s something that excites the 32-year-old Macdonald.

“We love it because we just get to take ourselves out of our comfort zone and push the limits of mountain biking and what we can do on bikes,” the former junior downhill world champion said.

The Red Bull Hardline is an invite-only event, due to the extreme nature of the course being deemed too dangerous for amateur riders. Even then, there is a testing week ahead of the official race that allows riders to familiarise themselves, and even decide if they will compete. In all, 38 riders will compete this weekend, each trying to get to the bottom of the downhill course in the fastest time.

Macdonald knows all about doing it tough, though. A serious accident in 2019 at the UCI MTB World Championships in Mont-Sainte-Anne, Canada, left Macdonald with serious fractures to his T12 and L1 vertebrae.

In layman’s terms, that’s a broken back, and it left Macdonald temporarily paralysed from the waist down. His recovery saw him back riding within a year and resume his quest to hurtle down the world’s toughest tracks.

These days based in Rotorua, Macdonald said the week in Tasmania has been tough, but good fun. The demanding nature of the course has meant that prep has been limited to a few practice runs a day.

“Yesterday afternoon we did two full runs and then today I’ve just done two full runs. Today is pretty full on. So, I feel like keeping that to four runs at a minimum is key. But I mean it’s also super fun at the same time.”

There is a women’s race, among those invited to compete is Harriet Burbridge-Smith. The 25-year-old former World BMX champion hails from Canberra but bases herself in Queenstown for up to three months a year.

“There’s some really fun sections that we’ve really enjoyed riding and the big key features are gnarly and super scary, but they work really well,” she said.

“So, it’s been really fun and especially for me, I’m not typically a downhill racer. Coming into this has been really fun to experience, great to watch the full-time downhill racers do what they do and have my own take on it.”

Burbridge-Smith said that the camaraderie among the riders was a unique aspect of the event.

“Everyone gets along really well. I think you need a good group around you so that you can ride well with and that push you, so I think that’s a really good thing to have. We have such a diverse group of riders.”

This Red Bull Hardline event is one of two scheduled for this year, with the second back at Dyfi Valley in Wales in June. The race’s reputation means that the new Tasmanian course is particularly demanding, Macdonald also refers to it as “gnarly”.

“It’s a track that is designed to be kind of not possible until you figure everything out. It’s pretty sick because it’s so different to what we are used to racing: like super high speed, big features, tick sections, bank jumps and just basically an all-round dream track for every rider that comes.”

“I guess just the fact of going fast and just seeing how fast I can go,” he said.

“I think that’s the biggest thing that brings the adrenaline on for me. I obviously jump in massive jumps too, it gets the heart pumping and I feel like there’s no other feeling like it. It’s something that I feel is super hard to explain to anyone else, because they’re never in your shoes, so they can’t really understand.

“It gets the heart racing and, you know, it’s just something that you just want to keep doing over and over again.”