Dean Stewart and FEAR Youth primed for GODZone

New Zealand has a proud tradition in adventure racing. This country hosts some of the best adventure racing in the world and our top athletes have conquered the globe.

A Southland-based youth team is looking to forge a path for the next generation of world-leading New Zealand adventure racers. Nathan Burdon talked with one of its leaders, Dean Stewart.

After 150km of trekking, including some 12,000m of climbing, 19-year-old Dean Stewart reached out towards The Revenant’s ceremonial bottle of whisky sitting on the camp table and ‘tapped out’.

Participants who ‘fail’ to make it to the finish line have to tap the bottle. Finishers get to drink from it. Only four finishers have ever tasted success in the event’s four year history.

As the ‘last man standing’ in The Revenant, an almost unspeakably difficult endurance event held in the hills above Garston, the Southland teenager was the final withdrawal after missing the cut off by 30 minutes to attempt a fourth lap of the course.

The moment was ‘bitter-sweet’, Stewart says.

“A lot of people take a lot of joy in (tapping out), but it was just a real bitter-sweet moment missing that cut off. There were so many reasons I didn’t make it and so many reasons I could have made it. I look back on it and I’m really happy, even if my body language didn’t show it at the time.”

Scott Worthington, co-founder and race director for The Revenant, was watching and couldn’t help but be impressed with Stewart’s demeanour.

Worthington recalls Stewart’s mum checking in on her son. Participants race unsupported without the help of GPS or even watches. They have little idea how close, or far away, they are from the cut offs which determine whether they can keep going.

“His Mum said to him “how do you feel?” to which he replied, “I’m a bit tired. I think I’ll need a bit of a sleep,”,Worthington, who has competed in a swathe of endurance events himself, said.

“This personified the calm, measured, understated and humble approach he had during the race. Perhaps more importantly it showed a maturity well beyond his 19 years. I distinctly remember thinking to myself New Zealand adventure racing is in good hands when we have people like Dean.

“I certainly do not want to put pressure on Dean but I thought we have been so well served in the sport by people like Nathan Fa’avae and here we have the next generation. The sport is in good hands.”

“The thing with that was I needed to make sure I wasn’t an All Black who didn’t find out they were good enough to be an All Black.”

Navigation is a vital component of adventure racing. Call it a clumsy metaphor if you like, but despite his tender years, Stewart has never been afraid to chart his own path.

This is a youngster who biked across New Zealand at 16 with a mate because the idea sounded like fun. He went away to boarding school at St Peters, Cambridge, and looked set to become a triathlete, before opting to come home to Wyndham and homeschooling.

It was a move which put him onto the radar of a special group of young adventure racers (more on that later), but also meant he would eventually go onto a final year at Menzies College, as well as linking with the SBS Bank Academy Southland, a two-year programme designed to prepare the province’s best young athletes for future success, both in and out of sport.

Academy manager Jason McKenzie said Stewart was open to the opportunities provided by the programme.

“The biggest thing for us was his growth (in coming from a very individual sport and being very self sufficient) he was able to take on the support in all areas from nutrition to mental skills and use these to enhance his performance.”

At Menzies he even had a crack with the school’s first XV; not altogether successfully.

“The thing with that was I needed to make sure I wasn’t an All Black who didn’t find out they were good enough to be an All Black,” Stewart says.

“I found out very quickly that I’m not cut out to be an All Black. It seems I’m better at just running around in the hills and not sleeping.”

“If I knew what I knew now, that race could have turned out very different, but that’s the same with all races.”

Running around in the hills and not sleeping is pretty much what The Revenant is about.

Raced on 2000 hectares of Tom O’Brien’s Welcome Rock station in northern Southland, the full four-lap course takes in about 200km and 16,000m of climbing - roughly the equivalent of two ascents of Mt Everest.

Coming off a big programme of grassroots adventure racing in 2022, as well as plenty of solo hunting trips where he would walk a long way and ‘have no time to do any hunting’, Stewart felt his preparation was better than most in a 37-strong field which included two of the four previous finishers.

“With all the adventure racing I think I pulled about 12 all-nighters running through the bush. Even though I was younger than anyone else, no one else had probably prepared like I had.

“Once I started going deep, I knew I was the only guy left. That was quite a thrill. I knew I was under some pressure for the sake of the race to try and finish. I had a Japanese documentary crew following me around at just about every point of the race. I was feeling the pressure to finish for the documentary, so that was a bit of a shame. Sorry Japan, I didn’t get there.

“Once you are on your third day of running around, you just make those mistakes. Two of the guys who had finished The Revenant (in previous years) - it was just unlucky navigation that got them this year as well.

“I just did some things so right. I’d been on my feet for 150km and we climbed 12,000m. I wasn’t shot. I was sleepy but the body wasn’t broken at all.

“If I do that race again I’ve got a lot of new plans. If I knew what I knew now, that race could have turned out very different, but that’s the same with all races.”

If you would like an insight into how an adventure racer thinks, how about this quote:

“My whole mindset, the whole month leading into it, was to generate an obsession with it. To make it unhealthy - the first thing I thought about in the morning and the last thing I thought about when I went to bed,” he says.

“My friends and my coach told me that if I wanted to go far I’d have to hurt more than I’ve ever hurt. You’ve got to think about climbing and tussocks - it’s got to be on your mind, then it’s expected, at least. One of the guys that has finished said that you’ve got to see yourself drinking that whisky at the end. I was very keen to not have to tap that whisky bottle, I was quite adamant I’d give it my best go.”

“At the end of this year we are hoping to be quite a big deal on the adventure racing scene.”

The Revenant wasn’t the end for Stewart in 2023. It is just the beginning.

Later this month he’ll be part of a young crew taking on Chapter 11 of GODZone, arguably New Zealand’s pinnacle adventure race. The team of Stewart, Fynn Mitchell, Josiah Murphy and Molly Spark have come through the Fiordland Endurance and Adventure Racing Society (aka, the FEAR Society), which also includes the Pearson twins, Zac and Josh.

The team has also secured entries into adventure racing’s World Championships in South Africa in October and the inaugural GODZone Australia in December.

“At the end of this year we are hoping to be quite a big deal on the adventure racing scene. There’s a whole squad of us now and we are quite well known in the endurance community. There’s some big things coming up which are really exciting,” Stewart says.

Stewart was a relative unknown on the local endurance scene before producing the fastest finish in a FEAR Society rogaine in 2020 when he showed up out of the blue with his sister.

As his bio on the Society’s website says: “No one knew who he was, although in his own quiet way he was already doing big things (riding across NZ when he was 16 for example).”

Despite all being in their teens, the FEAR Youth team are hoping to make the most of home court advantage in the wilds of Fiordland, as much as such a thing exists in adventure racing.

“We’re expecting to do alright. With all these club races we do, which generally only the local crowd do - we’ve been to a lot of places in there. We know the bush and between the four of us who have been in the starting line up we’ve got a fair bit of just about everywhere ticked off.”

Te Anau’s Andy Magness, one of the founders of the FEAR Society and the mentor for the young racers, agrees that a sort of perfect storm has been created with a group of willing and able young competitors revelling in the racing opportunities created by society.

What was already a strong young male group got even better and faster when Stewart joined. When they were beaten by a co-ed team including Molly Sparks at a major schools race, they quickly enlisted the Christchurch racer.

From left, Josiah Murphy, Molly Spark and Fynn Mitchell.

While adventure racing enjoys a strong following at high school level, especially with the Hilary Challenge, a three-day race for Year 11-13 students, it’s a massive step up to peak events like GODZone.

Magness hopes FEAR Youth will be a test case for creating new pathways for budding adventure racers to be supported to race domestically and internationally.

“This is a new paradigm. Most people think that you have to be much older to be good at adventure racing - to have life experience and resilience and the time to develop navigational skills, but the biggest thing being older helps with is money.”

FEAR Society supports the youth team with specialist equipment like ultralight tents and sleeping bags and have paid for entry into this month’s GODZone. Entry for the world champs will cost somewhere between $6000 and $8000 and the total trip could cost about $25,000.

As for Stewart, Magness isn’t sure exactly what he’s capable of, but he knows it’s a lot.

“He’s really low key, he’s confident in his own abilities, but he’s super humble. He’s a good leader and he looks after people. I don’t think even he knows what his limits are.”

You are also in quite scary situations, whether that’s climbing a bluff or packrafting new water

Stewart doesn’t really think of adventure racing as a career. It’s his happy place, a hobby which has the ability to take him to some of the most beautiful places in New Zealand and - hopefully - around the world.

He’s adamant he won’t be racing at the same age as some of the veterans he lines up against now, but the idea of ticking off iconic events like GODZone, Coast to Coast (he won the two-day schools section on debut in 2021), Kepler Challenge and The Revenant drives him.

“Things have come a long way since I first got inducted into the Academy. Things just keep getting bigger and harder. It’s good because I just watch my body handle it all - the more I put it through the fitter and more capable it becomes.”

He’s also driven and comforted by his faith, an important aspect of his outlook.

“You are in a lot of positions where you are in a rough mindset, you’re hurting. You are also in quite scary situations, whether that’s climbing a bluff or packrafting new water. (Faith) gives you a sense of safety and you are never alone,” he says.

“You have a lot of gratitude for where you are. We go to some pretty cool places and you have to be grateful for that, being out in nature, seeing things like a big chamois out there - it’s just amazing.”

The nine-day GODZone Chapter 11 event will be held in Fiordland from February 23 to March 4.
This story was originally published in The Southland Tribune. Sign up for more great Southland stories.