Four-time women\u2019s motocross world champion Courtney Duncan<\/a> is still competing at the elite level. <\/p>\n![\"Otago-born]()
Otago-born rider Courtney Duncan has dominated motocross racing since winning the first of four world championship titles in 2019.<\/p>\n
She tells Darrow her mum would probably like her to walk away, but knows asking Duncan to give up the sport she loves would hurt more than anything could on the track.<\/p>\n
The most moving segment is with long-time bike mechanic Garth Mitchell, who owns Independent Motorcycles and is deeply rooted in the Wellington scene. He\u2019s been riding for 35 years and has lost several people close to him in crashes on the road. <\/p>\n
\u201cA friend was telling me about Garth and his friend, Dok Boswijk, who had tragically passed away while commuting, and it brought me to tears,\u201d says Darrow. <\/p>\n
\u201cAt Dok\u2019s memorial ride, hundreds of people showed up.<\/p>\n
\u201cAaron, Courtney and Garth have such differing stories, but they\u2019re all united by the love of this one thing. I think there\u2019s something so beautiful about that.\u201d <\/p>\n
![\"Long-time]()
Long-time mechanic and motorbike rider Garth Mitchell. \u201cEvery time I hop on a bike, my thought is always, am I going to make it home?\u201d<\/p>\n
Darrow grew up around bikes on the family\u2019s lifestyle block in Whitford, watching her two older brothers setting up motocross ramps in the paddock \u2013 and seeing them injured when a trick didn\u2019t land.<\/p>\n
Her father had promised to teach her to ride, too, but by the time she was old enough, they\u2019d sold up and moved on.<\/p>\n
For years, motorcycling was something she kept at a distance. <\/p>\n
Darrow doesn\u2019t go into the details, but during her time as a university student in Wellington, she faced some personal challenges and reached out to a friend for support. <\/p>\n
He took her for a ride on his motorbike in the Remutakas, and it\u2019s not an exaggeration to say that the experience transformed her.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was exactly what I needed because it was something new,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re so grounded in the reality of what\u2019s happening at that moment. And as we were flying around these wild corners, I can remember thinking, \u2018This is it. This is the change I need\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2024, Darrow bought her first bike, a Suzuki GSX 250 \u2013 breaking the news to her mother via a recorded video after passing her learner\u2019s test. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, \u2018Mum, you can\u2019t be mad because I\u2019ve already done it!\u2019.\u201d <\/p>\n
Later, she graduated to a Kawasaki Ninja and spent a week meticulously customising it in pink plastic wrap. That\u2019s the bike you see her riding in Faster Than Fear.<\/p>\n
![\"Darrow]()
Darrow on Pinky, a Kawasaki Ninja that she customised herself.<\/p>\n
She says the documentary was born out of curiosity to understand the psychology of motorcycling and gain some insight into herself at the same time.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing able to put my energy into something that has really paid me back in such a large way, especially to my mental health at the time, was absolutely massive.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd as a byproduct of that, I found this beautiful community that had been there the whole time.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her director\u2019s statement, Darrow makes it clear her intention was not to glorify speed or risk, nor to condemn it. Instead, the aim was to explore why people continue to ride despite the danger.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a reckoning that comes with surviving something you know could kill you, she says. \u201cUltimately, this film is about what it means to live alongside fear, without letting it define who you are.\u201d <\/p>\n
Faster Than Fear is dedicated to Dok Boswijk, who was 26 when he died. Garth Mitchell doesn\u2019t downplay the cost of their shared passion but can\u2019t imagine ever giving it up.<\/p>\n
To him, it\u2019s all about minimising risk. <\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time I hop on a bike, my thought is always, \u2018Am I riding back?\u2019,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
\u201cAm I going to make it home?\u201d<\/p>\n
Joanna Wane is a senior lifestyle writer with an interest in social issues and the arts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThere\u2019s a real duality that\u2019s inherent to motorcycling, and the liminality between grief and adrenaline can be pretty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[21531,8831,2546,5432,20861,234954,35142,859,16719,156,2881,63059,2893,31405,6204,4532,194,15220,134781,409,111,139,69,24689,101263,131,4741],"class_list":["post-463543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-adrenaline","tag-an","tag-awardwinning","tag-between","tag-brooke","tag-darrows","tag-debut","tag-documentary","tag-emotional","tag-entertainment","tag-explores","tag-faster","tag-fear","tag-filmmaker","tag-fine","tag-grief","tag-kiwi","tag-line","tag-motorcycling","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-packs","tag-punch","tag-than","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}