Taylor made for downhill | Hawkes Bay Sport | Surfing, Rugby, Soccer, Football, Cricket in Hawkes Bay

 

MADELINE Taylor sits in an empty classroom, scanning the horizon through an expansive window from her Napier Hill perch.

The Napier Girls' High School pupil is lost in the scenery, soaking up the Cape Kidnappers coastline, enchantingly conspicuous even on a miserably misty winter's day.

Her parents, Greg and Jan Taylor, of Eskview, are sitting around the table as passersby cast furtive glances with an air of inquisitiveness that almost suggests the 17-year-old is in a spot of bother.

Well, not just yet although one can be forgiven for thinking the sixth-former's an accident waiting to happen in a few heartbeats, considering she's had her share of self-inflicted "trouble".

Almost every day, for about 250 seconds, Madeline Taylor's adrenal glands kick into overdrive, sending adrenalin coursing through her veins. With that rush, she comes alive, finding an efficiency and degree of alertness that flick all her systems into overdrive.

"I'm an adrenaline junkie so I love going fast," a grinning Taylor says through the course of her interview with SportToday.

Perhaps she's a girl-racer, a skydiver or perhaps someone who gets a kick out of walking a tightrope?

No, wrong on every count. Taylor's a downhill mountainbike rider who craves excitement, feeling the urge to live on a knife's edge almost habitually. Until her heart races, blood vessels contract and air passages dilate in competitions to prompt a fight-or-flight response, there tends to be a vacuum in Taylor's life.

Her ability to conquer the fear-inducing thrills of saddle bumping downhill on two wheels at neck-breaking speed will be put to the test on a global scale later this week when she joins fellow Hawke's Bay mountainbiking pair George Brannigan and Brook MacDonald as part of the New Zealand team to compete in Canada.

The trio will compete in the UCI World Mountainbike Championship at the Mont Saint Anne, in Quebec.

The 29-strong team, most of whom are competing overseas, also include cross-country and four cross athletes.

Taylor and her father jetted off last Sunday via Montreal to the French-speaking ski resort area.

"It'll be an awesome run to be a junior world champion," she says, adding two other Kiwi riders are in the field.

Taylor went to the world champs in Canberra last September but was a mere spectator despite winning the New Zealand Cup for Open women (national title) after clinching the North and South Island cups.

"I was too young to compete so I went just to get the feel."

In January this year, she won the first round of the South Island Cup in Dunedin but missed outon the title after an accident before completing two more rounds.

"I was practising on the track and another guy got in my way with a jump," she said.

"I avoided him but lost control of the bike and went straight over the handlebar, hit the ramp and stopped straightaway."

The damage to the Avanti-Plus (Hastings)-sponsored bike aside, Taylor came off second best - lacerated liver and right kidney.

Four-time world champion Sabrina Jonnier, who was watching her jump, came to her rescue before Taylor found herself in a Dunedin Hospital bed.

"It was a life-threatening accident because I couldn't fly and had to stay in the hospital there for a week," she says, adding she got back home but was bedridden for six more weeks.

The doctors recommended a three-month lay-off from anything adventurous but, in two months, the Oceania event at the Dunedin track beckoned.

"Mum didn't want me to go but Dad thought I had it in me to do it."

Dad was on the button as Taylor clinched the women's title for the first time.

She believes she's not accident prone but the next incident gives an insight to her mindset.

Skiing at Mt Ruapehu last winter during the North Island Secondary Schools' freestyle event, Taylor tried to perform a backflip in her first jump and broke her back. Six weeks off this time.

A day after the GP gave her the green light, Taylor got back on the saddle of her bike to finish runner-up in the Rotorua segment of the Auckland Downhill Series.

With her father into motocross and the Eskdale Mountainbiking forest their backyard, the transition to mountainbiking was inevitable for Taylor and 15-year-old brother, Morgan, of Lindisfarne College.

It did help that GP Ian Taylor (no relation) advised Greg Taylor to strengthen his knees when motocross became too hard on his joints. Neighbour Don Bricknell suggested mountainbiking.

"I thought it was pointless taking them to motocross and now they're naturals at mountainbiking," says Greg, undergoing a switch in faith from throttles to pedals.

After the accident, Bike NZ offered Madeline Taylor an Outward Bound scholarship, which she attended in the last June/July school holidays, to rebuild her confidence.

"It taught me you can do anything in life and live in the moment every time."

Jan Taylor said: "That includes doing your homework."

Her mother says Madeline is a good pupil and mindful school always come before biking.

In fact, Taylor will return from the world champs after a 20-hour flight and and get straight into NGHS mock exams.

"With the medal around her neck, she can do anything," her mother says.

Appropriately the youngster wants to be an accident-and-emergency nurse, on account of the number of times she's been in and out of the hospital.

Her personal trainer, Linda Smith, works on her fitness at the City Fitness Gym, who are her sponsors as well as Smith's Eyewear, courtesy of Wayne Harrison, of Spex, in Hastings.

Road race is Bike NZ's flagship event, Greg says, so mountainbiking is down the order in its food chain, thus making parents the major sponsors.

Taylor's parents are used to people questioning the essence of such daring feats.

Jan says: "So what? You go downhill. You have to see hills ..."

Madeline adds: "... and get used to hitting trees."

The parents say mountainbiking offers an activity the whole family can enjoy, not something possible with all sports.

A high performance member of the New Zealand Academy of Sport, Madeline Taylor fleetingly fancies an Olympic stint but only cross-country riders are eligible.

She does cross-country training for downhill but, it seems, the former is not the best fix for adrenaline junkies.