Jenna Hastings (born 10 May 2004) is a New Zealand mountain biker competing in
downhill
Downhill may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Downhill'' (1927 film), a British film by Alfred Hitchcock
* ''Downhill'' (2014 film), a British comedy directed by James Rouse
* ''Downhill'' (2016 film), a Chilean thriller directed by Patrici ...
and
enduro. She is the current junior women's downhill world champion.
Hastings is from Rotorua where she attended
John Paul College.
At the secondary school’s mountain bike championships in October 2020 in
Wellington
Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...
, she won in both the enduro and downhill.
Aged 15, she won the open-age 2019/2020 Giant 2W Gravity Enduro series with two wins and one second place. At the February 2021 DH National Championships held at the
Christchurch Adventure Park
Christchurch Adventure Park is an adventure park in the Port Hills of Christchurch, New Zealand. Built by the Canadian company Select Evolution, it had its opening function on 16 December 2016. The 1500 holders of special passes could ride from ...
, she secured the national title in the woman's junior (U19) category,
with a time beaten only by the open woman's champion.
In November 2021, she won the UCI-sanctioned and open-age
Crankworx Crankworx is a four-stop tour of mountain biking competitions and races, the premier event of which is held each summer at Whistler-Blackcomb in Whistler, British Columbia at Whistler Mountain Bike Park.
The Crankworx core competitive events are d ...
Rotorua downhill competition. As the overall woman's winner of the Crankworx New Zealand series (four races in
Alexandra
Alexandra () is the feminine form of the given name Alexander (, ). Etymologically, the name is a compound of the Greek verb (; meaning 'to defend') and (; GEN , ; meaning 'man'). Thus it may be roughly translated as "defender of man" or "prot ...
,
Queenstown,
Cardrona, and
Wānaka), she secured a contract with Pivot Factory Racing to race the
2022 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup
The 2022 Mercedes-Benz UCI Mountain Bike World Cup is a series of races in Olympic Cross-Country (XCO), Cross-Country Eliminator (XCE), and Downhill (DHI). Each discipline has an Elite Men and an Elite Women category. There are also under-23 ...
in the junior elite women's downhill category.
In the 2022 season, she rode her inaugural junior women's (under-23
) world cup race aged 17 in March in
Lourdes, France, and came sixth. Two months later at her second world cup race in the Scottish
Fort William, Hastings came fourth. Three weeks later at the next world cup race in the Austrian municipality
Leogang
Leogang is a municipality in the district of Zell am See (Pinzgau region), in the state of Salzburg in Austria. It is a famous winter sports and summer mountain hiking resort.
Population
Sights
:Mining and Gothic Museum
:tourist mine Schwarzle ...
, Hastings came in second place. A week later, she competed at Crankworx
Innsbruck
Innsbruck (; bar, Innschbruck, label=Bavarian language, Austro-Bavarian ) is the capital of Tyrol (state), Tyrol and the List of cities and towns in Austria, fifth-largest city in Austria. On the Inn (river), River Inn, at its junction with the ...
; she lost time through a fall and came in eleventh place riding in the elite women's category. In July at her fourth world cup race in
Lenzerheide, Switzerland, she came third. A week later at her fifth world cup race in
Vallnord, Andorra, she again came third.
The German mountain-bike online magazine ''MTB News'' commented after Vallnord that "Jenna Hastings has firmly established herself at the top of the junior field" (''Jenna Hastings hat sich an der Spitze des Juniorinnen-Feldes fest etabliert''). At the fifth world cup race on 30 July 2022 in
Snowshoe, West Virginia
Snowshoe is an unincorporated community in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, United States, centering on the Snowshoe Mountain ski resort. It is situated in the Allegheny Mountains at a bowl shaped convergence of two high mountain ridges — Ch ...
, USA, Hastings came fourth. At the
2022 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships
The 2022 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships were held in the French commune Les Gets from 24 to 28 August 2022.
Les Gets, located in the Haute-Savoie Departments of France, department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Regions of France, region of ...
, she took the world championship title in junior downhill.
Hastings suffered a broken ankle early in the 2024 season. In July she won the RockShox Canadian Open DH
in Whistler, Canada.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hastings, Jenna
2004 births
Living people
New Zealand female cyclists
New Zealand mountain bikers
People from Rotorua
People educated at John Paul College, Rotorua
21st-century New Zealand women