BUXTON
SECURES
GNCC
CROWN
WORDS: Andy McGechan
PHOTOS: Geoff Osborne, Andy McGechan
Helensville’s Tom Buxton
won the final round of
the New Zealand Grand
National Cross-country
Championships
uckland’s Tom Buxton made it
look far easier than it should have
been as he dominated the third
and final round of the popular New
Zealand Grand National Cross-country
Championships in the King Country on
December 10, 2018.
The 20-year-old from Helensville took his
2019-model KTM 350 EXC to win the two-
hour race at Waimiha on Saturday by nearly
four minutes from Cambridge’s Dylan
Yearbury and Titirangi’s Callan May.
Buxton had finished third overall at the
series opener at Matata in October, but
won round two in the Riverhead Forest,
west of Auckland, last month, and then his
impressive follow-up win at Waimiha on
Saturday confirmed his dominance and
ensured that the series’ main trophy would
go his way.
“I didn’t get the best jump off the start line...
I got pushed around a bit at the start,” said
Buxton, who works as a bull farmer.
“The first corner funnelled the riders in tight
and I got blocked out, but it caused a few
problems for lots of other riders too.
KIWI RIDER 21