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She finished second in this year’s nationals, has been riding since she was six and goes out with one of New Zealand’s most promising new ATV’ers. It’s been a blistering career so far, yet Emma is only 17 years old and has her sights set on bigger and better things. Paul caught up with the young Tauranga student at an ATV MX just outside Te Puke, where unsurprisingly, she was running rings around almost everyone else…

Quad racing in NZ is a healthy sport, with four-wheeler race meetings almost as well frequented as their two-wheel counterparts. But for some reason, the sport and the athletes that compete in it seem to fly under the radar when it comes to mainstream publicity. We at DRD are trying our hardest to change that, and with Publisher Paul taking delivery of a Polaris Outlaw 525 to run for the year, a trip to check out a quad-only trail ride and MX near Te Puke was first on the agenda for the bosses new ride.

This is where the team met Emma Goldstone, although as it turns out after a bit of a chat, it wasn’t the first time that we’d been at the same event as the young quader, as Emma had already made it into the pages of DRD as the opening photo for the report on the King of the Hill North King Country MX Club hill climb. Emma put in a very respectable time of 3:19 placing her 20th overall. And as she says when we caught up with her in-between races at Pirini, she could have gone faster if she hadn’t suffered a mechanical late in the day. “I had an awesome time at the hill climb but in the second-to-last race my bike stopped, which meant I had to borrow my boyfriends bike. Luckily, my boyfriend is Jason Jepson (NZ No.2), so I got to ride his Banshee, which was awesome. I loved it so much I wanted to go again, but the organisers wouldn’t let me.”

As always seems to be the case when we meet talented young riders nowadays, they’ve usually been riding longer than most people double their age and the same is true with Emma who first threw a leg over a motorbike when she was six, riding a KTM 50cc before moving to a Suzuki DS80. “Dad used to ride trikes, but a friend used to race a quad, so I got into it from there,” Emma explains. With the move to four wheels taking place when she was ten, her first foray onto four wheels was aboard a Polaris 90cc before making the move to Yamaha and a Blaster 200cc, followed by her current bike, a Yamaha YFZ450.

Even though her racing career is still in its infancy, Emma has competed in most of the major ATV events with her first meeting on four wheels the South Waikato MCC Club Champs in 2002, where she got a stunning second place. She followed this up with a first at the Taupo Club Champs and high placings at the rest of the events she competed in for the rest of the year. 2003 saw Emma enter the NZ Mini MX Champs in Nelson for the first time, coming away as National Champion in the 80-100cc ATV class at her first attempt. And from there she was on a roll, with wins at virtually every other major event she attended that year. In 2006, Emma was awarded the Sportsperson award at the North Island Champs in Otorohanga after stopping mid-race to help a fallen rider while she was running third. Still, she managed to lend a hand and then get back into the race to cross the line in sixth.
It was three years ago when Emma made the move to the senior classes, and the podiums still kept coming, with a second and first place in her first two major club champs and a podium spot at pretty much every major event she’s attended since.

“My aim is to become New Zealand’s No.1 female quad rider, although I know I need to get my fitness up and spend more time on the bike.” And that’s where events like the Pirini ATV MX help, with Emma able to go out and get important saddle-time to help boost her fitness as well as practice technique, which with the help of Jason, is improving all the time. “Since I’ve spent time racing with Jason, as he’s No.2 in NZ, it’s really got me up to speed.” As there’s not really much in the way of coaching ATV racing like there is in MX, Emma is lucky to have access to this tuition and is making the most of it so she can wrestle the title of NZ No.1 from the current women’s champ, Liz Krawczyk.

So with her sights firmly set on becoming NZ’s leading lady rider at the tender age of 17, there must be plenty more that the Tauranga student is looking to achieve in her quad racing career. “I’d love to race overseas, with Australia probably having to be the first step. And if it went well there and I grew in confidence I’d then love to go to the US, although I know just how competitive and fast they are there. The top boys from NZ went over to America a while back and they were only in the A-class. That’s not even the Pro Class and even then they had a tough time of it. And the women are just as competitive!”

But for Emma to fulfill her dream of reaching the top, then continuing her career overseas like any rider, she’s going to need money and with ATV racing still struggling to gain momentum, attracting sponsorship is an uphill battle. Yamaha and their dealer Bay Ride help a bit with the bike, and Computastyle Signs are also onboard, but other than that, Emma’s efforts are all self-funded, or more realistically parent-funded, with mum and dad’s company Goldstone Treeworx listed at the top of the sponsors list.

Looking through Emma’s professionally presented CV (which is rare in itself from youngsters searching for funding nowadays) there are a number of letters from members of the industry including ATV legend Ian Ffitch, expressing how pleased and impressed they have been when dealing with Emma. Words like “bravery”, “determination” and “natural ability” are used, with Ian paying special mention to Emma stopping to help a fellow competitor in the second biggest event of the ATV calendar, which undoubtedly cost her a place on the podium. As far as Ian is concerned, it’s qualities like this that “build successful champions on and off the track.”

With the next Pirini Club day not scheduled until the ground is drier in September, there’s plenty of time for Emma to practice, which will undoubtedly mean she’ll be fitter and faster the next time we see her. She was already showing the rest of the field the way around the track, so chances are she’ll be in a league of her own come spring. One thing’s for sure, we at DRD are confident Emma will be at the pointy-end of the field for all the time she continues racing quads, which we hope will lead to a successful career that takes her overseas. With someone of Emma’s nature representing New Zealand, we can be sure that not only will she be trying her hardest to win and put NZ on the international quad racing map, but she’ll also be showing them how well you can represent your sponsors as well as your country even when you’re not on the race track. We wish her all the best.

From DRD issue #47