Matt Fairbrother on course during the 2024 NZ MTB Rally.
This is a feature story on Stuff's Sunday Star Times—words by Mike White.
Matt Fairbrother steadied himself at the top of the hill, and draped himself over the front of his mountain bike.
Somewhere down below was the finish - the finish of the run, the finish of the six-day NZ MTB Rally, and the end of a mission everyone said was too insane to be possible.
The 19-year-old was utterly shot, juiced on caffeine gels, but so sleep-deprived he’d found himself falling asleep while riding up the hill.
Somehow, he now had to get down, stay on his bike while the world around him turned to a speeding blur, stay focused enough to not lose time on his nearest rivals, and somehow stay at the top of the leaderboard.
He leant on his pedals, pushed hard, and disappeared over the edge.
For two years, Fairbrother had lived on the edge.
It began when he decided to quit school in Christchurch, fly to Europe, and compete in the enduro mountain biking world circuit.
The event is pretty simple: go as fast as you can downhill on a narrow trail, then do it again, five or six times in a day, and whoever has the quickest time overall is the winner.
It’s a mix of gravity, guts, and genius, skill and stamina, focus and fearlessness.
Fairbrother had it all.
What he didn’t have was money.
So when the first round of the 2022 enduro world circuit finished in Scotland, and he couldn’t find a ride to the next event in Slovenia, he figured he’d do the Kiwi thing, and just bike there.
He rode 1500km on his race bike through Europe, in time to line up at the next round the following week.
And he did the same for every subsequent round that year - cycling between events while all the other riders took cars or planes.
While they stayed in hotels, Fairbrother would camp by the roadside in his bivy bag.
While others had chefs and masseurs, Fairbrother lived on service station junk food, and turned up at events with his legs already trashed.
But he was still good enough to rank in the top tier of the under-21 category, including top-10 finishes.
Along the way he faced down a bear in Canada who was raiding his food while he camped.
He got chased into a swamp by an angry road crew painting the highway, when he inadvertently rode through new markings, and was then attacked by geese while escaping.
He got smacked in the face by another bird while cycling at night between events: Fairbrother thought it was just a sleep-deprived hallucination - until he woke up the next morning with blood all over his face.
Then, at the end of the year, he had one last ride to make, to the airport a few hundred kilometres away, so decided to cut the knobbly tread off his enduro tyres to make them faster on the road.
He was tired, he was clumsy, he was using a shitty kitchen knife.
He slipped, nicked a vein in his wrist, and passed out in a pile of blood.
But Fairbrother’s incredible self-supported efforts gained the attention of sponsors, and the kindness of countless strangers, who helped him along the way.
And in 2023, he was back on the enduro circuit, doing it the same solo way.
Unsurprisingly, it didn’t go to plan.
Cycling more than 300km between two events in Tasmania, Fairbrother snapped his chain in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere.
The nearest bike shop was 45km away.
It opened at 10am.
From the bike shop, it was a five-hour ride to the start of the next race - and he had to sign in by 4pm.
“So the only option I had was to jog to the shop, with my bike, in my bike shoes,” says Fairbrother.
Two weeks before he’d snapped a bone in his foot during a fall, and been in a moon boot. But he’d thrown that away at the previous race when event organisers wouldn’t let him compete in a cast.
So during his run to the bike shop, his damaged foot started to flare up again.
On top of that, his legs weren’t used to running of any kind, because he always cycled everywhere.
“There was a whole lot of pain involved there. I could barely walk.”
After more than six hours’ jogging, Fairbrother reached the bike shop before it opened, curled up on the doorstep, and went to sleep.
When the owner arrived to find him waiting, he quickly replaced the chain, and Fairbrother set off again, arriving just in time for the start of the next race.
The rest of the racing season didn’t go as Fairbrother had hoped, suffering mechanical problems, and nerve damage to his hands and feet, after being caught out in storms during an epic ride in Scotland.
And then earlier this year, he had a fall and damaged his shoulder, which ruled him out of the New Zealand enduro championships.
But there was another race the following week Fairbrother was determined not to miss; the inaugural NZ MTB Rally - six days of downhill stages across Nelson and Marlborough.
He took a look at it and thought it would be huge fun. But in his typical fashion, Fairbrother thought he could add even more fun.
And a whole lot more pain.
The NZ MTB Rally combined multiple downhill races over a week. Each stage was between five and 15 minutes of manic descent, and the person with the quickest time over all of them, won.
The 27 stages were in different locations, so to get to the start of each one, competitors took shuttles, 4WDs, helicopters and boats.
Fairbrother figured he didn’t need any of that.
Instead, he’d do it unassisted.
So, while others drove between stages, he biked.
While they took 10-minute chopper rides to the top of hills, he spent six hours hiking it with his bike on his back.
When they took a boat across Tasman Bay, Fairbrother kayaked.
While they slept in comfortable accommodation, he bivied for a few hours in the bush en route to the next day’s start line.
In total, Fairbrother cycled 500km between stages, and climbed more than 18,000 extra vertical metres.
But perhaps the most extreme effort was kayaking 35km from Kaiteriteri to Cable Bay through the night, to reach the start of the third day’s racing.
He’d planned to lash his bike to the kayak, but strong crosswinds meant it was too unstable to do this, so an accompanying boat carried it for him.
For nearly an hour in the dark, he was joined by a pod of 30 dolphins.
“It was insane. When they first popped up and I saw the fin, I thought, ‘shark’, and I got so scared. But soon enough I worked out they were just dolphins, and it was mindblowing.”
Midway through his voyage, the sea cut up badly, and Fairbrother, who’d only recently learnt to kayak, suddenly found himself far out of his comfort zone, fighting tide and waves.
“That was some of the hardest couple of hours of my life.
“But if I’d pulled out, I’d never be able to forgive myself, so I just had to suck it up.”
Fearing he was about to capsize, Fairbrother decided to pull off his sprayskirt, so he wouldn’t have to grapple with it if he tipped over.
“And there were all these waves coming over the kayak and splashing in, and I was getting soaked.
“And when I finally got to shore, and pulled the boat up, the kayak was making all these funny sounds, and I looked, and there’s all these fish splashing about in the kayak that had been washed in.
“So I chucked them back in the water - I didn’t feel like eating them.”
The kayak crossing had taken seven hours, and it was 2am by the time he dossed down to sleep.
A few hours later, he was up again, setting off to the start of the day’s racing.
But along the way, he heard rustling in the bushes and stopped to investigate.
“And I was just totally exhausted and my mind wasn’t working, and I bent down, and this animal just jumped up at me and latched on to my hand.”
There was blood. There was swearing. There was no positive identification, but it might have been a stoat.
“Whatever it was, it had sharp teeth.”
Travelling as light as possible meant Fairbrother only had a puffer jacket for warmth, and a bivy bag to sleep in.
“I spent most of the nights huddled up in a ball, with short moments of sleeping, and longer moments of just shaking with coldness.”
But despite his monumental efforts to get between stages under his own power, his speed down the hills during competition was spectacular, and by the final day, Fairbrother found himself first in a field of 120 top NZ and international riders.
By then, fatigue was flooding over him, and as he pushed off on that final run, and dropped into a full-tilt descent, he knew he just had to somehow hang on and get down in one piece.
When he crossed the final finish line, Fairbrother pulled up, sat beside his bike, and asked event organiser Ali Jamieson if he had anything sweet to drink.
Until then, Fairbrother had spurned all outside assistance. After each day’s racing, while other competitors relaxed, Fairbrother would immediately jump back on his bike, ride like crazy to get to the nearest shop before it closed, stock up on food, and then pedal into the night to reach the next day’s start point.
But after the rally was over, Fairbrother gratefully accepted four cans of soft drink.
Ten minutes later, he asked Jamieson if he had any more, and downed another four, his body craving sugar and sustenance.
“He was like a school teacher’s worst nightmare,” says Jamieson.
“In an age where everyone has to have isotonic this and sports nutrition that, here’s Matt completing a superhuman feat on soft drinks and children’s lollies.”
Later that night, Fairbrother upgraded the fizzy, and sprayed champagne from the top step of the podium, having nailed first place.
Jamieson says he was in disbelief that Fairbrother had completed the course, despite riding, hiking and kayaking between stages, when everyone else was chauffeured.
But to then win the event - well, that was just incomprehensible.
“What this guy has done literally transcends anything I can get my head around.
“It’s kind of like somebody completing a marathon, and then going directly into a 100m sprint against the fastest sprinters in the world, and beating them all.
“It’s literally impossible, but he’s done it.”
Jamieson says he was blown away by Fairbrother’s integrity and humility, and supported the risks he took.
“In life, everything has some level of risk - and, certainly, doing nothing has a lot of risk.”
Top world bikepack racer and former professional enduro rider, Kiwi Joe Nation, says in a sport where being fresh and focused is key, what Fairbrother is doing is phenomenal, and attracting attention worldwide.
“The world’s his oyster, especially being that young.”
For now, Fairbrother just wants to get back on his bike, and back on the world enduro circuit, beginning in May.
Impossible speed and impeccable lines are addictive, he says.
“I don’t even know how to tell anyone what that feels like.”
It’s all about perfection.
“I’m never going to be there, that’s just how the sport works, and how life also works.
“But I want to be the best I can be - so I’m always going to chase that.
“I want to see how far I can go.
“You think you’ve gone as far as you’ll go, but you get that done, and you’re like, ‘Well, what’s beyond that?’”