Interbike 2014: Intense Cycles Welcomes (back) Shaun Palmer

At Interbike this year, Intense Cycles had its newest employee on hand. You may have heard of him, he’s called Shaun Palmer. Palmer famously rode for Intense, earning a silver medal at the 1996 World Downhill Championships, less than 0.2 seconds behind Vouilloz. That bike was on display at Interbike and Palmer himself was on hand too. After attempting to qualify for the snowboarding events at the Sochi Olympics (and coming close to being selected) Palmer was contacted by Intense to see if he wanted to come and work for the company, which he accepted.

Palmer’s role at Intense will be to bring on the next generation of downhill racers, showing them the ropes and teaching them some of his devil-may-care attitude that he famously brought to downhill mountain biking in the ’90s when it was full of lycra-clad racers on what we’d consider cross country bikes.

However, the world of downhill has moved on again since those days and gone are the Palmer/Peaty/Warner drunken days before the races. While Palmer still has the attitude, it’ll be interesting to see whether his advice and experience still has a place in the training-science world of modern downhill. However, with riders like Gee Atherton seeing motivation coaches, perhaps a bit of the old fiery spirit could make all the difference.

Palmer was officially ‘launched’ at an afternoon event on Wednesday at Interbike. After a speech from Jeff Steber and some words from Palmer, the party continued with enthusiasm. And when it comes to having a beer, it seems that Palmer still has the same enthusiasm as the Peaty/Warner/Palmer good old days.