Tim is a fantastic athlete who is a nationally ranked XC racer and was a member of the NZ MTB Team at Worlds in 2006, where I was fortunate enough to work alongside him. Also he has won a tough road stage in the Tour of Tahiti and is the reigning XTerra Champion, so he comfortably straddles any discipline he cares to partake of - a rare thing indeed...
I have been proud to work alongside Tim since 2004 and my days in the ill-fated Rintoul Street shop. Tim immediately impressed both as a rider with a professional approach and as an all-round good dude, but also impressed the hell out of me with his work for the late-lamented Aunt Betty's MTB Team helping out on the Kid's Mountainbike Bike Jams. He wasn't yet 20 years old and he was already putting his energy into helping future generations of cyclists glean some valuable skills and enthusiasm; another rare thing!
Taupo-based Tim will be riding the National MTB Finals in Wellington on the 21st of February as part of his gearing up for defending his XTerra title in March, so I'm really looking forward to his company for a week or two. I am proud to be able to continue our association into the future, no matter which direction his prodigious talent takes him.
Thanks very much to Tim's coach Bryan Hall for dropping the frame off to me in a sly drug-deal style way in a McDonalds carpark, and thanks heaps to Santa Cruz/Ibis importer Mike Stylianou for hooking Tim up...
Cheers, Oli
