Hi Everyone,

It’s happening. After many requests and ideas floated, NZ’s first freeride event is finally getting off the ground. The Auckland Jet Sport Association (AJSA) is proud to announce the inaugural New Zealand Festival of Freeride. We appreciate the opportunity to first announce this on the home of the freeride scene in NZ – DalusionFWX.

This “Rip’n Ride” style event will be held in late April next year at Sunset Beach, Port Waikato. Specifically, Friday April 19th and Saturday April 20th (with Sunday April 21st as backup day), and is aimed at bringing the freeride community together from around New Zealand for an action packed, and enjoyable, couple of days. Whilst still in the early stages, and the council applications are pending approval (something we don’t envisage any issue with), we invite you all to get this into your dairies early so you don’t miss a fantastic opportunity.

The format of the event is very simple. All riders entered are split into groups, or “sessions”, of smaller numbers. Throughout the day each group of riders is allocated a session time in the schedule for the day. The first group is sent out for their allocated time slot and, when signalled to finish, the following group goes out and so on and so forth. The schedule will repeat throughout the day giving each competitor sufficient riding time to express themselves in the freeride sense. Its a festival atmosphere with everyone enjoying each others riding.
Friday is aimed at being more of a warm up will feature continuos freeride sessions. During Saturdays schedule there will be specific breaks in the freeride sessions to hold the feature sections of the event. These feature classes are an elective option for competitors to enter and have specific requirements. Examples include “Biggest Air” – somewhat self-explanatory, “Sickest Trick” – best and most complicated trick, and the “Cherry-Popper” – first attempt at a back flip.

There is plenty more information to come on this and over the next few months we will release it as soon as it becomes available. Entry, when open, will be available to anyone and everyone. We encourage anyone participating, or interested, in freeride to come along and enjoy riding with others of all experience levels.

We hope this is something that you all will be interested in and keen to get behind. We can’t wait.

The AJSA