mick hannah

Mick Hannah announces retirement from World Cup racing

by 5

Mick Hannah has announced that he plans to retire after the final race of the 2021 downhill World Cup calendar!

The time has come to announce that I’m retiring from World Cup racing. This is a moment that I’ve contemplated many times over the course of my life. So many thoughts and ideas have passed through my imagination in the long hours I’ve spent on any number of bikes. I’ve contemplated questions like “When is the right time?”, “am I going to be at the top of my game?”, “Am I going to have a career ending injury?”, “Does anyone aside from myself care?”, “Does it change my life if anyone cares or not?”. Mostly, these questions and many others are irrelevant. They’re fun to talk about and ponder with friends and mentors and they’re a great way to help us learn about ourselves, but they are not that important really. They go along well with one question I get a lot which is “How do you stay that motivated for 20 years?”. I don’t know the answer to that. I have just had a passion for going fast on a bike and set goals and worked hard to achieve them and now 20 years have passed. It has been more incredible than I could’ve imagined. It’s also been harder than I could’ve imagined. The highs and lows are huge.

Sometimes I’ve felt motivated by my own selfish desire to win. Sometimes I’ve struggled to drag myself out of bed due to my struggles with anxiety and lack of belief in my own value. Sometimes I’ve been motivated by the need to financially support my family. Sometimes I am in that sweet place of just being joyful in the moment. Mostly though I am motivated by my desire to fulfill my potential as a man created in the image of God.

 I have achieved some seemingly (to me) impossible things from the perspective of a 15 year old kid working on a banana farm. I’ll never forget getting the call while I was at work saying I was going to world championships in 2000. Just getting to be at that race was impossible for me to believe. How could I have imagined all I’ve been blessed with since then?

Mick Hannah Instagram
View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mick Hannah (@sickmick83)

Andi is a gadget guru and mountain biker who has lived and ridden bikes in China and Spain before settling down in the Peak District to become Singletrack's social media expert. He is definitely more big travel fun than XC sufferer but his bike collection does include some rare hardtails - He's a collector and curator as well as a rider. Theory and practice in perfect balance with his inner chi, or something. As well as living life based on what he last read in a fortune cookie Andi likes nothing better than riding big travel bikes.

More posts from Andi

Comments Closed