In late 2025, apprentice builder Sam Shaw broke Morton’s time for the quickest ride between Auckland and Wellington. This is the story of that ride.
Jay French / Freeride New Zealand
You might have heard about Lachlan Morton’s record-breaking ride from Auckland to Wellington in early 2025, setting the fastest-known time for the roughly 650 km between the two biggest cities on New Zealand’s North Island – just under 18 and a half hours. But you mightn’t have heard that Morton’s record has now been broken.
In the early hours of December 15, 2025, Kiwi rider Sam Shaw set off from central Auckland and headed south. A little over 17 hours later he arrived in the capital of Wellington having averaged 36.8 km/h for the 638 km journey, without getting off his bike once. In doing so he took more than an hour off Morton’s mark, and ensured the record was back in Kiwi hands.
While Shaw has enjoyed success as a MTBer over the years he’s certainly not the household name in cycling circles that Morton is. In fact, Shaw, now 33, ‘retired from trying to race’ a couple years back and is now an apprentice builder. Speaking from his adopted hometown of Wanaka, Shaw caught up with Escape this week to talk about the build-up to his record-breaking ride, how it all went down, and what might be next.
The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and fluency. The wonderful photos you see throughout this post and in the gallery below come courtesy of photographer Jay French who shoots under the name Freeride New Zealand.
Shaw before setting off from Auckland.
Matt de Neef: For people who aren’t familiar with you and your journey through the sport, can you tell us a bit about your cycling background?
Sam Shaw: I’ve got a mountain-biking background. I grew up doing family adventures, and then got onto downhill and dirt jumps – just like classic kid’s stuff. And then I couldn’t be arsed waiting around for downhill so cross-country kind of took over for a bit. And then back to Enduro World Series.
I did race cross-country World Cups for like three years in my teens, and then went to the Enduro World Series in that first year, and then kind of had a break after that first year, and then went back four years later and raced Enduro World Series for what, three years or something. And then cross-country World Cups again, and then Enduro, cross-country, then bam, now I’m here, retired from that and an apprentice builder.
MdN: And what about your background in these longer-distance rides? I see you’ve done Edition Zero Gravel, and stuff like that …
SS: I started doing longer rides as like a form of commuting. So I’d do rides to Christchurch from where I was living, starting about seven years ago. So that was from Rotorua to Christchurch [a ride of roughly 900 km – ed.] – I think I did that three or four times, just once a year, and then started doing it from Wanaka to Christchurch [about 450 km – ed.]
The first one was to go to a party, and then the other ones were just to catch up with mates, or catch up for a coffee or some stupid reason. So that’s kind of what started that. I’ve raced Edition Zero three times, but yeah, going for fast, really long distance times kind of just started at the start of 2025 when I started thinking about doing what I just did.
MdN: So what sparked the idea of trying to break the Auckland to Wellington record?
SS: It was Lachlan’s video on it. So he released that video, and I was like ‘Oh, that’s sick as.’ So it was basically while I was watching it I kind of decided I was going to give it a go.
I was like, ‘How do I get fast going for so long?’ Because his average speed for that was, at the time, pretty mindblowing for me. It was 18 hours at 35 km/h. So I did my last ride to Christchurch this last year, fast. I was like ‘I’ll see if I can do a fast average speed.’ It was a self-supported one, so no vehicle helping me, or anything, but that was 34 km/h on the dot.
[For context, because Shaw humbly glosses over the details: that Wanaka to Christchurch ride was a lazy 471 km in just under 14 hours – seemingly the fastest-known-time for that route as well. – ed].
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