Bike
MTB
Injury setbacks won't stop MTB ace Jess Blewitt from realising her dreams
Once a promising skier, New Zealand’s Jess Blewitt switched disciplines to dominate in MTB Downhill. Following a few nasty wipeouts, she’s ready to continue taking the mountain biking scene by storm.
Despite being just 21 years old, New Zealand’s Jess Blewitt has already packed a lot into her short career. Entering the downhill mountain bike scene in 2019, she's had her career put on hold due to a global pandemic and two nasty crashes, including one at Red Bull Hardline in 2022.
She’s also been able to capture the attention of judges everywhere from the Enduro World Series to the Crankworx World Tour, where she won her first gold medal in the downhill event in 2023.
Injury-free and back on top form, she’s determined to push the sport and her own limits as far as they’ll go. Here’s her story.
01
Starting out
Like most people who grow up to be athletic badasses, Blewitt – originally from Mount Manganui on New Zealand’s North Island – was super sporty from the get-go. “I tried every sport growing up and was really good at a few of them, although I never followed through with most of them,” she says.
Blewitt only started racing in 2015
© Graeme Murray/Red Bull Content Pool
Given that, it’s ironic that bikes weren’t a huge part of her childhood. Barring cycling to and from school, for much of her youth, she was focused on ski racing.
“I started skiing when I was two, between my parents’ legs,” she laughs. “I did my first race aged eight, in Canada. I don’t remember how it went, but after that, I started ski racing.”
Back home, Blewitt took an intro program with the Queenstown Alpine Ski Team at the nearby Coronet Peak. After spending the next few years excelling in giant slalom and Super G events, she says she “got to the point where I didn't really see myself going any further". Soon after, she decided to only ski for fun – today she misses it, but says she hasn’t skied since before 2020.
There was plenty to keep her busy: at various points, she was also into dancing – specialising in jazz and a bit of contemporary – as well as surf lifesaving at a club in Mount Maunganui. On the cycling front, her parents were road cyclists, but among the kids, Blewitt says, "It was considered on the dark side if you were a road cyclist." When a friend from school lent her his mountain biking gear she was hooked. "I loved it from the first ride," she says. "I was this crazy girl doing some crazy stuff."
02
Finding her calling
Having experimented with lots of different sports, Blewitt quickly realised mountain biking was the one for her. It was 2018, she was 15 and shortly after borrowing her friend’s bike she took part in a local race. From there, her career quickly gathered speed.
“I did one race, and everyone was like, 'You should do the nationals'," she recalls. In 2019, she did just that, signing up for her first New Zealand National series. She won every race she entered, only to come back down to earth after a crash at the National Championships.
A career on the bike only became a reality in 2020
© Graeme Murray/Red Bull Content Pool
"I could have gone to the Junior World Cups, but I was still so new to it that it didn't really cross my mind that I could actually do this," she says, despite the widespread support of friends and family.
Blewitt says mastering new skills like knowing when and how much to brake took some time to master, but her confidence and progression on the bike quickly mounted up, partly due to her skiing background.
“In my first year, I literally rode with boys the whole time, so I definitely crashed a lot, but I think I learnt a lot and it helped,” she laughs. “Of course, there is a lot you can take from ski racing into mountain biking: choosing a line, going fast and staying balanced. And I guess with the whole way you approach a ski race it's very similar in terms of mindset. My jumping skills definitely come from Super G, too."
However, it wasn't until the following year, 2020, that Blewitt began to realise this was something she was good at. She took first place in the under-19 category of Crankworx Rotorua and first place at Phoenix Enduro before winning New Zealand’s national championship title, which helped secure a place on the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup roster.
During a race week it's very competitive but then outside of that, we're all mates
When the pandemic hit, she was planning to race her last ever Juniors, but unfortunately with the world locked down, that wasn’t to be. Still, she had found her calling.
03
Team life
Riding flat out at the UCI Downhill World Cup
© Karolina Krasinska/Red Bull Content Pool
Once competitions returned, Blewitt hit the ground running, with an invitation to showcase her skills Stateside at Red Bull Formation 2021 in Virgin, Utah. She followed that up with a string of impressive Enduro World Series and World Cup displays, but a big crash at the final World Cup race of the year in Snowshoe, USA, resulted in multiple injuries to her leg, spine, wrist and ribs. A long period of rehab followed, but she returned to World Cup action in 2022, the highlights of which were fourth-place finishes in Arinsal, Mont-Saint-Anne and Val di Sole. But more on that later.
Throughout these first post-pandemic years, Blewitt says her team helped her through with words of encouragement. “During a race week, it's very competitive, but then outside of that, we're all mates,” she says. “That's how it should be. The mountain biking community is pretty cool. Normally, there's no competition between people outside of the competition. It's a good vibe.”
Her string of successes continued when she first went to Europe in 2022 as the first woman to appear at Red Bull Hardline in Machynlleth, Wales. “The first year when I went over, I was definitely a little bit homesick. But last year, I didn't want to leave. I really enjoy Europe and the UK, Canada and America.”
04
Getting in the zone
Despite being a team player, Blewitt remains fiercely individual. “I don't have a coach, but I have a team around me: my team with GT [Bicycles] and Red Bull, and then a physio and a personal trainer,” she explains. “But I don’t have a bike-specific coach. It has been me all by myself.”
Enjoying a third-place finish at the World Cup in Val di Sole in 2023
© Karolina Krasinska/Red Bull Content Pool
While she acts as her own coach, Blewitt isn’t whispering words of encouragement to herself while she rides. “I don't really speak to myself too much when I ride. I used to say ‘Chill out, Jess’ when I got a little bit too sketchy, but that’s it - I just go.”
Add to that a little bit of drum ’n’ bass and maybe something a bit more relaxed 10-20 minutes before a race, and she’s good.
05
Wiping out
Having broken her tibia and fibula skiing, Blewitt is used to injuries, but her Snowshoe crash in 2021 was undoubtedly her worst MTB wipeout.
“I knew I’d done my femur, and then when the adrenaline wore off a bit, I knew I’d done my collarbone as well as my wrist,” she says. “I didn't know I'd done all these other things as well. I was helicoptered to hospital where I didn’t walk for two weeks.”
For 14 days, she was unable to bend her knee past ten degrees. Flights to Los Angeles then back to New Zealand followed where she had to quarantine for four days, seeing her mom for an hour a day and her dad through glass. “I hated it,” she says. “But I wouldn't have been able to do anything unless my mom was there.”
Physio followed. Three months later, she got back on the bike, just for a flat ride. “It took a really long time for me to get a spin through, a rotation, because my knee was not bending properly,” she explains. “That was the biggest struggle. And it was like, 'Oh, when am I going to be able to ride because this is still happening?' But I knew I just had to be patient, even though I'm not a very patient person.”
06
Smashing boundaries
Mixed emotions at Red Bull Hardline 2022
© Samantha Saskia Dugon/Red Bull Content Pool
Obviously, I’d love to go back [to Red Bull Hardline]. I want to race and actually finish it
In the end, determination won out, and Blewitt was fit to ride Red Bull Hardline in Machynlleth, Wales, the following year – making her the first woman to appear in the event. “I wanted to go to Hardline to start pushing the women’s side of the sport there," she says.
“Hardline was the perfect alignment of two disciplines into one,” she adds. “I was scoping out how to get myself an invite or how I could go along. I did a track walk in May. The goal was to just go there and see how much I could ride. I didn't have to race it and I didn't actually have to hit any features. But I was really stoked when I got the thumbs up that it was going to happen.”
In the end, it wasn’t to be. Blewitt smashed her collarbone while riding the course, ruling her out of competition. “It was the same one I also broke at Snowshoe, so I already had a plate, and then I had to have an extra plate put on top to try and fix that,” she laughs.
Still, her efforts earned her the coveted Rider of the Week award. "These events obviously have a huge risk factor involved, but everyone was motivated to go ride this super-gnarly course. I was feeling pretty good on the bike, and I was eyeing up hitting The Renegade, but as soon as I hit the ground, I knew there was something wrong, and it wasn't really until the adrenaline wore off that I realised I'd done something to my shoulder, and then the realisation that I wouldn't be able to ride the rest of the week kicked in,” she explains.
Naming skier Mikaela Shiffrin and MTB’s Rachel Atherton as her sporting heroes, Blewitt says being a role model to young women is “totally new” for her, but “I've just started noticing it. Even young girls here at home - they ask for a picture. It is cool, but sometimes I still don't feel I'm at that level yet."
Excelling on the Crankworx World Tour in Rotorua
© Graeme Murray/Red Bull Content Pool
“Girls can do it as well, it just takes a little bit more,” she says after growing up in a male-dominated sport. “Now it's massive, there are so many girls. It has come a long way for girls and it's really cool to see.”
07
The future
The 2023 World Cup season saw Blewitt build on her fourth-place finishes the previous season. A third place at Val di Sole, her best-ever World Cup result to date, showed she was now in contention for a possible win.
But then another injury, this time sustained at a women's performance camp on the Red Bull Hardline site in 2023 ended her season prematurely. She was not one of the six women to compete at Red Bull Hardline Australia in February of this year, due to scheduling issues, but the fire is still there.
Blewitt is out to have fun in 2024
© Karolina Krasinska/Red Bull Content Pool
Blewitt claimed second place in the downhill event at Crankworx Rotorua
© Graeme Murray/Red Bull Content Pool
“Obviously, I’d love to go back. I want to race and actually finish it, but we'll have to see and see if my schedule is right,” she laughs. She did, however, manage to win her first Crankworx World Tour gold medal in the downhill event that same year.
Outside of that, as a lifelong athlete, Blewitt is always advancing and always practising something new. “I'm just working on a few little things that help lead up to a race run,” she says. “For example, getting a perfect warmup and improving a few technical skills. Everyone from the UK is really good at riding the whip. There's always something to work on.”
Most importantly, in 2024, Blewitt is focused on having fun. “If you have fun, normally the result follows,” she says. “That was how I approach it now, just to have fun and see what happens rather than putting this extreme amount of pressure on myself.”
