Last year, Hawkes Bay's Brook MacDonald came sixth in the series and this year he wants to up his game.
"I definitely want to be in the top five this time round and to be consistent, really."
The 20-year-old only took on the sport five years ago, along with some friends, and soon realised he had found his niche when he won the national series at only 16 years old.
He followed that up by becoming the world junior champion the following year and now he rides with the big guns in the pro-elite category.
In bike rankings, pro-elite is as good as they come and New Zealand has performed well in terms of entries and statistics.
New Zealand riders comprise a quarter of the top 20 downhill riders in the world, with three of them in the top 10.
MacDonald said Queenstown was a playground for people like himself because it offered some of the best tracks in the country.
"Queenstown has the best downhill because of the gondola now."
Skyline's gondola-assisted mountain biking season at the Queenstown Bike Park resumed last month. The park is on steep pine-covered hillside, with a climb of 500m to the top of the gondola.
For riders like MacDonald it takes only around four minutes to get from the top to the bottom of Hammies Track, which is about 5km long.
In the five years he has been riding, the former Napier Boys' High School pupil has travelled the world extensively and said it was one of the perks of the sport at that level.
"That's the cool thing - you get to travel and see different parts of the world," MacDonald said.
"But it doesn't beat home."
The MS Mondraker rider begins his next journey on March 18 competing in Pietermaritzburg in South Africa and will go on to compete in Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Canada, the United States and Norway in the hunt for a medal.
