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Making Up The Numbers Podcast - Downhill MTB with Danny Hart and Dakotah Norton.
Jun 7, 2022
On this episode of the podcast, George, Jack and Emilie chat all things Fort William and Leogang. They’re joined by 2011 and 2016 World Champion Danny Hart, and 2021 US National Champion Dakotah Norton.
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0:01
[Music]
0:14
welcome to the making of the numbers
0:17
podcast
0:18
the making of the numbers podcast is
0:21
sponsored by hope technology jtech
0:24
suspension revolution bike park ride
0:27
southern spain
0:28
schwall on the world's finest
0:31
independent mountain bike magazine
0:34
single track
0:37
hello and welcome to episode four of
0:39
season four of the pod i'm george
0:41
thompson and after roaming the pits with
0:43
a mike in thought bill we're back to our
0:45
more traditional format for this episode
0:47
and joining me once again are jack
0:49
reading and emily siegen tala how are we
0:51
doing guys
0:52
good thanks mate how are you yeah all
0:54
right yeah and i can't complain emmy you
0:56
all right yeah perfect
0:59
still at home ready to go to logan soon
1:01
but yeah making making the days at home
1:04
count for sure
1:05
excellent well there was so much to chat
1:07
to loic about that we haven't really had
1:09
a chance to catch up since episode one
1:11
which was pre-lords
1:12
have you both been doing
1:17
yeah good thanks mate very busy
1:20
racing and stuff with the team and stuff
1:22
at home
1:24
but yeah i mean for me it's quite
1:25
exciting because we're just coming into
1:26
the bulk of the season now and i i'm
1:28
finally riding my bike
1:30
without feeling injured anymore which
1:32
after 12 months is uh
1:35
yeah refreshing it's really really nice
1:37
and uh
1:38
it's showing in my splits so i'm excited
1:41
cool emmy after promising to come back
1:43
to the pivot bus in five minutes at some
1:45
point on thursday in fort william
1:47
i was at least an hour and i don't think
1:49
i saw you again was it a good trip have
1:51
you been have you been good
1:53
yeah yeah
1:54
i mean it was a little bit hectic and
1:56
phony and i have to tell you
1:58
um
1:59
it was way more busy
2:01
than lords there was a lot to do
2:04
um
2:06
for conti and also like the track which
2:09
is so long makes it really hard to like
2:12
uh do my job and get content so
2:15
um the funicular was not slow this time
2:18
but yeah i had to go by for so it was
2:20
like
2:21
a little bit hard but yeah it was it was
2:22
a great week and despite the weather i
2:25
had a lot of fun yeah cool and bernard
2:27
must be happy with his performance
2:29
seeded fifth and finished 16th i think
2:32
well um
2:33
[Music]
2:34
i don't know if yeah you guys saw his
2:36
final run that he's you saw that from
2:38
probably the medal on he couldn't pedal
2:40
anymore or if he felt like um so he lost
2:44
his back guard
2:45
so his back actually completely rubbed
2:46
off so
2:48
um he was worried that like it was gonna
2:51
be jammed then he would like lose his
2:53
chain and it could
2:54
dangle in in the derailleur and stuff
2:56
and that happened before so
2:58
yeah he kind of
3:00
yeah make a choice there and try to like
3:02
get the chain back on and didn't pedal
3:04
anymore which
3:06
i mean after fifth in qualifying um you
3:09
expect i think he was expecting more and
3:11
i think he could have gone
3:13
better but um he had a lot of
3:17
so i think he was 16's
3:17
little bit frustrated with that but uh
3:19
speedy is there so hopefully he can make
3:21
it happen on the next one
3:23
cool jack we chatted a bit in fort
3:24
william before so you didn't tell tell
3:26
us about your cd run
3:29
yeah frustrating situation i mean uh
3:33
we had a little bit of a delay
3:35
beforehand which didn't really affect me
3:37
too much um
3:39
i was ready to go when when we got in
3:41
the gate and
3:43
the weather was was horrendous but it
3:44
was horrendous for everyone so that was
3:46
just what it was um the hardest part of
3:49
that was holding a line uh the wind was
3:52
blowing you all over the place and the
3:54
track was quite cut up by that point so
3:56
um
3:58
i was quite relieved actually because
3:59
after all the conversations we've had
4:01
about the top section and then we did
4:03
the
4:04
did the interview um
4:06
i managed to
4:07
hit me three breaking points and was 16
4:10
through the top split so i was quite
4:12
quite relieved to back that up after all
4:13
the things i'd said to you about it um
4:15
yeah so there's a video on single tracks
4:17
youtube for anybody who wants to go and
4:19
watch it which is 15 minutes of me and
4:21
jack walking down the track talking
4:23
about all the all the features and
4:25
jack's breaking first breaking point i
4:27
think it's probably about 300 yards in
4:29
or something like that so yes
4:31
um
4:32
good to follow that up mate after uh
4:34
after proclaiming that you'd not been
4:36
out of the
4:37
top how many was it
4:39
your top split is always pretty good
4:40
yeah there's not not been many years
4:42
since like 2016 where i've been out in
4:44
the top 20 of that top split so it would
4:46
have been quite embarrassing after we
4:47
talked about it so much publicly on the
4:49
part on that video if i had
4:53
so yeah um so yeah and then went into
4:56
the next sector and
4:58
rode okay but like i say the wind nudged
5:00
me around a little bit and a couple of
5:01
times i just ended up like
5:04
landing slightly rough shall we say and
5:07
hearing the bike like bang and obviously
5:10
like it's not just about charging as
5:12
hard as you can it's also about getting
5:13
that thing over the finish line um and
5:15
it i was fifth out of the gate and by
5:18
the time i got to the deergate i'd
5:19
already passed or just below the deer
5:21
get already passed three of them with
5:23
punctures or mechanicals so there's only
5:25
one of them left um
5:27
and it's funny it never even crossed my
5:29
mind that i would have a problem and
5:30
then i just literally the last rocky
5:32
section before the second split i'd
5:34
eased back a bit because of some of the
5:35
crashes and bangs i'd heard from the
5:37
bike but i was still 28th at that second
5:39
split but as i went through it i blew
5:41
the tire off the rim on the back um the
5:44
pro core kept me going
5:46
to just after the drop and then the tire
5:48
come off the wheel completely so yeah
5:50
frustrating but i certainly wasn't the
5:52
only one to have mechanical issues and
5:53
then there were a lot of riders who got
5:55
injured as well so i consider myself
5:56
quite lucky and i just i'm happy that
6:00
i'm my pace is back but i don't feel
6:02
like i'm trying overly hard to go that
6:04
fast whereas three months ago my pace
6:05
wasn't there and [ __ ] was i trying hard
6:10
you know like i was having to try so
6:12
hard to just be there or there about
6:15
whereas now i'm just enjoying my riding
6:17
doing my thing
6:18
helping my juniors running the team and
6:20
doing my runs and the splits are coming
6:22
so so yeah it's exciting it's there's
6:24
positives for sure the puncture can piss
6:26
off
6:27
nine foot in the national last week
6:29
ending like clangoklin yeah
6:32
i wasn't um i made a mistake in my run i
6:34
should be happy because in the company i
6:36
was in it was it was decent but i just
6:38
made one big whopping mistake and that
6:40
cost me the podium so i was annoyed but
6:42
i mean at this point really
6:43
i should give a massive shout out to my
6:45
junior rider ben um he's joined the team
6:47
this year and he's struggled up until
6:48
fort william just mentally really with a
6:50
step up to join the team but he
6:52
qualified for his first world cup in
6:54
junior at fort william and finished 15th
6:56
he's capable of so much more but now
6:58
he's ticked off that that mental block
7:00
he's been having um he's just gonna go
7:03
from strength to strength um and i'm
7:05
confident we can push towards a pudding
7:06
by the end of the season um and then he
7:09
he got another podium at langone again
7:12
he made a mistake and a bit of a messy
7:13
rudy he was capable of second but yeah
7:16
shout out to ben proud of him he's doing
7:17
really well and uh until dan and anna
7:19
are back it's me and him flying the team
7:21
flag so yeah excellent cool well for
7:24
william then let's start with the women
7:26
for a change
7:27
nina dominated the national and then
7:29
carried that form right through through
7:31
to the world cup and right through the
7:32
world cup it was pretty impressive
7:34
wasn't it
7:36
well
7:37
we we kind of knew this is going to come
7:39
because if you
7:41
looked at the past year she always done
7:42
the best there with my bar
7:45
so we're like oh she's on the syndicate
7:47
now she's been working with pd a lot you
7:49
can see that she's confident after
7:53
yeah all the problems she had with her
7:54
health her concussion her crashes and
7:58
obviously everyone saw her splits
8:00
and qualities so we're always sure she's
8:02
going to be then she lays one down it
8:04
was going to be hard too much
8:06
nina is a very probably the most
8:08
physical rider in the women's field
8:11
strongest when rachel is not around
8:14
and um
8:16
yeah i was i was impressed with the time
8:19
mostly
8:20
yeah i came into the finish area after
8:23
she went down because she went down
8:24
early and then i saw her time and i was
8:27
like oh no
8:29
yeah it looked like a like
8:31
was it five
8:32
yeah was it five five seven eight was it
8:34
five seven two fourteen five fourteen
8:36
yeah yeah that's fast down there
8:38
especially with the new bits of track
8:40
so exactly
8:41
we we noticed a bit of a change in it in
8:43
a style too and knees used to kind of
8:45
flap about a bit at the sides but she
8:48
looks like she's been working on that i
8:49
know she's been writing like you say
8:50
with petey a lot did you guys notice
8:52
that
8:54
oh yeah for sure like
8:57
um
8:58
i think they'll be riding also um
9:00
different tracks as well
9:02
like a lot of british tracks a lot of
9:04
bike parks because
9:06
when nina lives it's not very like steep
9:08
and there's not a lot of different
9:10
writing so she's been quite good at like
9:13
one type of track yeah but now i think
9:15
she's been pd is like
9:18
yeah
9:19
it's like the downhill bible guy you
9:21
know so if you want to learn from a guy
9:23
you're gonna learn from him and i think
9:26
um
9:27
yeah there's been a lot of change and
9:29
i'm really excited to see how she rising
9:31
again because
9:32
she doesn't appreciate laura gang too
9:34
much yeah especially if it gets muddy
9:37
like the muddiest you get usually the
9:40
worse it gets for nina so it's gonna be
9:41
a challenge and we'll see how she she
9:44
does there
9:45
cool talking to style it was great to
9:47
see rachel atherton back on her bike she
9:49
looked to be absolutely hauling when i
9:51
saw her did either of you see her on
9:52
track
9:54
i spoke to her briefly
9:57
at the lift station um really quick chat
9:59
but i didn't actually see her riding
10:02
she looked
10:03
just like the old rachel when i saw her
10:06
yeah
10:07
she looked really fast
10:09
yeah but obviously
10:11
um we all know that and she knows that's
10:14
what she didn't raise that for william
10:17
isn't the track that every ride in
10:18
section flat out it's just like
10:21
yeah the most physical demanding track
10:23
on the circuit so i think she made the
10:25
right decision would have been like hard
10:27
to
10:27
link link it all to get together
10:30
so i'm i was talking with g in the lunch
10:32
queue and he said a possible strategy
10:34
might be
10:35
practice at fort william do the seeding
10:37
in leo gag or lindsay hide and then race
10:39
either lens or hide or andorra someone
10:41
else told me that they'd heard say
10:43
andorra was appealing as the the new
10:45
track would be a more level playing
10:46
field but then on her instagram it
10:48
appears as though she's debating if
10:49
she'll ever race again
10:51
did she say anything to you jack when
10:53
you were talking to her what impression
10:54
did you get
10:56
um i asked her if she was going to race
10:58
and she laughed at me and said no
11:00
no
11:02
was that just fort william
11:04
that was that was at fault william there
11:06
yeah um
11:07
and and i i made another comment later
11:09
in the conversation said you know i
11:11
can't remember it was in context like
11:13
along the lines of
11:14
are you sure you won't be tempted or
11:16
will you be able to you know resist it
11:17
and
11:18
she was quite clear that under no
11:20
circumstances was she going to be
11:21
breaking that beam
11:23
so
11:24
yeah i mean i've said it to a few people
11:26
like
11:29
if she comes back
11:31
whichever way it goes
11:33
she's still
11:35
arguably the best ever female downhiller
11:38
and she's the one who's arguably
11:40
pioneered this
11:41
lifting level that the women are now
11:44
doing
11:45
um that's never going to change and
11:48
if she came back and won some stuff well
11:51
what's changed she's already won a
11:52
shitload she's already won everything
11:54
yeah so
11:57
but then on the other hand she might
11:58
come back and just start winning loads
11:59
of stuff and she might love that and
12:00
great um so but but yeah i mean you can
12:04
completely understand the cat you're
12:05
with her now having a family
12:07
you know having a
12:10
yeah i mean i've got a wife i don't know
12:11
if she's breastfeeding but i've got a
12:12
wife who's currently breastfeeding our
12:14
son and you imagine like it's not just
12:16
get you getting injured if she gets
12:18
injured and she's in hospital she can't
12:20
then breastfeed us you know a daughter
12:22
it's like
12:23
you know there's all those kind of
12:24
things to to look at as well and i know
12:27
from my wife she just puts the child
12:30
first she just stops everything you know
12:31
and look at all the injuries that have
12:33
happened recently like
12:35
you could just list like bang bang bang
12:36
bang so many riders that have been that
12:38
are injured and
12:39
the sport is so hard and everybody is
12:42
pushing to their limits and then they're
12:44
pushing each other further and pushing
12:47
the equipment to the limits and
12:49
we're not [ __ ] around like so
12:52
it's a big big decision to make and and
12:56
yeah it's uh i i wouldn't be surprised
12:59
at all
13:00
if she either comes back and says
13:02
i'm coming back to enjoy it don't expect
13:04
me to be competitive or just decide to
13:06
not come back i wouldn't yeah
13:08
cool
13:09
cami took second she's had a fantastic
13:11
start to the season
13:13
emmy she must be delighted with how it's
13:15
going
13:16
yeah yeah she's she's well happy i think
13:19
like obviously
13:21
she qualified first so that was like
13:23
another
13:24
first for her
13:26
um
13:27
and i think she handled it perfectly and
13:29
she was quite happy with the run
13:31
obviously like when you start last you
13:33
kind of want to win the race but
13:35
um
13:36
yeah i think she
13:38
she needed the points and
13:42
handed that
13:43
pressure really perfectly and i think
13:45
she was
13:46
in the morning
13:47
before
13:49
the race like in the morning practice
13:50
she she only did what run like always
13:52
like she always
13:54
i'm like there really early and then i'm
13:57
snapchatting her and she snapchat me
13:58
back from bed when everybody else is on
14:01
track
14:02
she has her own strategies and energy
14:05
saving strategy and i think it works
14:06
really well
14:08
but i think i saw the nerves on her yeah
14:11
not at not like just before the race but
14:14
in the morning before she got on track
14:16
but yeah
14:17
she she handled it perfectly and she's
14:19
now extended her lead so yeah it's very
14:21
cool leading the overall after two
14:23
rounds
14:24
miriam obviously had that crashing lords
14:27
which has clearly had a big impact on it
14:30
tony's out with a concussion finn's out
14:32
with a concussion
14:34
concerns are being raised that the sport
14:36
just isn't really doing enough to
14:38
support the riders in this area do you
14:40
guys agree with that
14:44
um jack i think you can go because you
14:46
had
14:47
you had an experience with that lately
14:49
right with with dan
14:51
yeah and the week before that i was
14:54
concussed after portugal i kept that to
14:56
myself really until afterwards and then
15:00
it wasn't just damn that got concussed
15:02
in lords but it was anna as well
15:04
um
15:05
i mean firstly mine was
15:07
a concussion well
15:09
i i don't know the correct terminology
15:11
but basically i had a big crash like
15:13
portugal national
15:14
um i definitely knocked myself out
15:17
briefly
15:18
um
15:18
i would it was in my restaurant so
15:20
obviously didn't ride again that weekend
15:22
i was a bit foggy on the monday
15:24
tuesday we drove up to a long journey up
15:27
through spain and france and i was
15:28
feeling better and by wednesday i felt
15:30
fine so i raced loads um but then
15:32
looking back on the way i was riding at
15:34
lords i definitely wasn't myself but
15:37
it's hard to know at the time i felt
15:38
fine and then anna had a crash in her
15:41
seating in lords and was airlifted um
15:44
and she's hit her head and she took a
15:46
couple of weeks at least to feel right
15:49
after concussion so we just let her take
15:50
her time with that
15:52
and then i don't think i've talked about
15:54
this on the podcast yet um i will speak
15:57
freely about it because um
15:59
i think it's quite important really it
16:01
was in my opinion an event and uci
16:04
complete [ __ ] up um
16:06
dan had a huge crash in his last
16:08
practice run before
16:10
uh qualified uh before finals sorry in
16:12
lords he
16:14
20th in qualifying he had more pace he
16:16
was going to be pushing for a good one
16:18
he'd gone out aggressive in the morning
16:20
had a massive crash on the road gap a
16:23
bit of an odd one but he was kind of
16:25
lucky to just walk away with with a sore
16:28
head um if anyone's seen the crash it
16:30
was horrendous yeah and he didn't know
16:33
where it was um
16:35
i had staff on the hill top and bottom
16:37
and they converged on him
16:39
um
16:40
and when they got there
16:42
he'd been
16:43
with the medical staff for 20 minutes
16:46
and he didn't know what really what
16:47
country he was in when jim got there he
16:49
was starting to come round and he knew
16:50
he was at lords he knew he was at the
16:52
world cup but he was starting to tell
16:53
jim that he couldn't remember the track
16:55
um
16:56
the medical staff let him go because he
16:58
had no physical injuries and jim brought
17:00
him to the pits
17:01
by this point i'm back at the pits
17:03
getting ready for my finals run because
17:04
i've got a very narrow time window
17:06
between practice and finals under no
17:08
circumstances did i think dan was gonna
17:10
go and do his race run um
17:12
so i go off and do my race run come back
17:15
down
17:16
first thing i get told by the guys on
17:18
the team um is dan was at the top
17:21
and i just looked at him and said who
17:23
the hell is letting go up there and they
17:25
looked at me and they went we couldn't
17:26
stop him and for anyone who knows dan um
17:30
will know that that would have been the
17:31
case he spoke with his dad they'd had a
17:33
conversation about it he decided he
17:36
wanted to go up and do his run um so off
17:39
he went and uh
17:40
one of the guys that says to his dan's
17:42
mechanic if he feels sick or if there's
17:44
anything strange do not let him
17:46
go in that start gate and they did the
17:48
normal warm-up procedure and everything
17:50
was you know what it was there was no
17:52
stopping down he did his run and still
17:54
managed somehow to come 41st or 44th
17:57
somewhere there
17:59
which is incredible but
18:00
the thing that i can't believe in all of
18:03
that
18:04
um is that the medical staff didn't
18:06
radio the uci and say rider number 34 is
18:10
here with a head injury on the side of
18:12
the track please take him off the start
18:14
list
18:15
like
18:16
how does that not happen like we're a
18:18
small team dan's over 18.
18:21
i wasn't there as a team owner
18:23
and somehow he's got to the top of the
18:25
hill after a conversation with his dad
18:27
so
18:28
maybe people will say we didn't do
18:29
enough but
18:31
how was the event organizer and the
18:33
medical staff let a rider who's
18:35
unconscious
18:36
well you know concussed on the side of
18:38
course get back up there for his finals
18:40
run so it's strange and then same for
18:41
dan a couple of weeks took him a couple
18:43
of weeks to feel 100 on the bike and
18:45
then about 10 days two weeks he felt
18:47
fine again so
18:49
yeah
18:50
it's a decision that should be taken out
18:52
of the rider's hands yeah because riders
18:54
will break
18:56
isn't it 100 i if i was at that age
18:58
remembering back i would have been
18:59
exactly the same as him and my the guys
19:02
who helped me out on the team you can't
19:04
even call them staff because most of
19:05
them don't even get paid we're just a
19:06
bunch of nights they're helping each
19:08
other out and
19:09
what what do they do in that situation
19:11
he's over he's 20 years old he's spoke
19:14
to his dad they've made the decision
19:16
we can't physically stop him whereas the
19:19
event organizers
19:20
they can follow protocol and they can go
19:22
sorry mate we've got your number we know
19:24
you've had a head injury you ain't
19:25
racing and how that was missed i have no
19:28
idea so we're just so thankful that he
19:31
didn't have you know another crash
19:34
um because if as we know it's the double
19:36
bang that is supposed to be the really
19:38
bad so yeah
19:39
so there should be somebody there
19:41
specialist in head injuries
19:43
if you
19:44
crack your head on track
19:46
the medics ring down and you've got to
19:48
go for an assessment of some kind before
19:50
you can determine to raise i mean you
19:53
look at the scale of these events now
19:55
you know
19:55
the huge world level events
19:58
surely they could find the funding to
20:00
pay for
20:02
if i'm not mistaken i think in some of
20:04
the venues there is
20:06
like i remember
20:08
some of the female riders um
20:11
from america that i know she had in
20:14
montenegro
20:17
and then prevent her from racing
20:19
but i don't know if it's like
20:22
an organizer's
20:23
protocol or if wci but obviously it
20:26
should be
20:27
like everywhere the same
20:29
and like you said i don't think
20:32
it will raise the budget that much but
20:34
it will definitely
20:37
help
20:38
um a lot you got to protect the riders
20:41
yeah for sure
20:42
back to the riders then um
20:45
fourth in lords fifth in fort william it
20:47
doesn't feel quite it doesn't quite feel
20:49
like valley hall's got going yet does it
20:53
yeah
20:54
i think without the crash in foot
20:55
william it would have been like tight
20:58
probably
20:59
in between
21:00
nina and cam or something like that
21:03
um
21:05
and she's pushing though
21:07
like in lord she's she kind of like held
21:09
back at the end and i think she was kind
21:10
of
21:11
maybe pissed off a little bit about that
21:14
and it felt like pushing it for william
21:16
and crashing was less of a frustration
21:19
for her yeah which i understand because
21:22
she was like right there
21:24
um but she has a like
21:27
home woke up now so yeah yeah from to to
21:31
me she's like still like
21:34
like number one threat in leo gang
21:36
yeah i would say so we'll chat a bit
21:38
about that when we get to leigh again
21:40
later on shout out to an eleanor farina
21:43
who took fourth in fort william i think
21:45
mondraker have adopted a similar
21:47
strategy to common soul with ollie
21:49
morris riding with elianora in practice
21:52
and showing of the lines it's a great
21:54
great idea that isn't it having a guy
21:56
who's a five minute rider say down fort
21:59
william towing a 5
22:02
15 520
22:04
yeah for sure it helps
22:06
for sure it helps and eleanor
22:09
has been on the podium multiple times
22:12
and
22:13
i don't think she really loved william
22:15
though and
22:17
like everyone knows fort william is a
22:19
very special place to get on
22:22
on the podium
22:23
um probably the most special so yeah i
22:26
think i'm really impressed with her
22:28
riding and she always been very like fit
22:31
and physical rider but
22:33
if she can't like keep it going and get
22:36
like she had some big crashes last year
22:38
in practice and stuff which prevents her
22:40
to do better
22:41
yeah that woman's feeling getting
22:44
more competitive every time
22:46
she's exciting yeah i kind of got the
22:49
impression that aside from nina the top
22:51
girls were all kind of happy to get out
22:53
of fort william uninjured and with some
22:55
decent points in the bag
22:57
did you guys think the same is is that
23:00
how they feel about fort william or
23:03
i think i don't know if you correct me
23:05
jack but i think it's the same for the
23:06
boys at least at least bernie was like
23:10
oh thank god
23:12
i know i banged my bash card and i could
23:13
have pedal but then go and we're live i
23:15
mean it's a pretty rough place to have
23:17
some some crashes and it's rough on your
23:20
bike it's rough on your body so
23:22
yeah everybody was kind of relief they
23:24
went kind of well and yeah except like
23:26
obviously but yeah i think it doesn't
23:28
matter if you're a guy you i guess if
23:30
you're a girl you spend more time on a
23:31
track even more time on a track so i
23:33
think it's worse
23:37
so on to the men's then and it was that
23:39
old common cell one two another
23:41
incredible display from the common sound
23:43
mock-off team they seem to have some
23:45
magic going on
23:46
what's insane
23:49
i mean i've been talking about it a bit
23:51
this week with various people but it
23:54
we talked recently with like about you
23:56
know domination at this in this day and
23:59
age of downhill
24:01
and we're seeing it aren't we
24:03
unless he [ __ ] up
24:05
you can't beat him at the moment
24:07
he's just
24:08
the best at it all
24:10
like
24:11
there isn't an area on the track where
24:13
you would think somebody's gonna have
24:15
him there isn't an attitude he seems to
24:17
be lacking
24:19
um
24:21
it's just incredible and then to see the
24:23
way those two are
24:24
i mean i couldn't believe
24:27
tebow's reaction to getting beat
24:30
that is just one of the most sportsman
24:32
reactions i've ever seen he was just so
24:36
genuinely happy for romeri
24:38
mate you just lost the world cup
24:40
right
24:41
but it didn't come across like that it
24:43
was like
24:44
i've just got second to be best mates
24:45
first and it's just that is what one of
24:48
the reasons why they're probably both
24:50
doing so well because they're helping
24:51
each other just get the best out of each
24:54
other and
24:55
you can't
24:56
argue with it because the results show
24:58
it don't they they do i mean coming
25:00
coming down early seemed to be
25:01
beneficial for tebow because the weather
25:03
changed for the top 10 did you guys
25:05
notice that did you think it had a big
25:07
impact
25:09
i'm not sure how i am
25:11
going at me go ahead no go ahead because
25:13
i wasn't i was at the bottom and i
25:15
didn't feel like i saw change maybe win
25:17
but you can maybe have a better
25:19
perspective on that
25:21
i kept thinking maybe there was a change
25:23
and then
25:24
you'd get omri or you'd get lorry and so
25:28
they were all back all the top ten at
25:31
the first split were back so danny hart
25:33
was three seconds back yeah emery was
25:36
two seconds back
25:38
it was everybody was back on tebow's top
25:40
split time and knowing those riders
25:43
if
25:44
you could see the wind had picked up i
25:45
don't know whether it would have been i
25:46
don't know because i've been there in
25:48
practice and i've seen
25:50
tebow ride the top split and i filled
25:53
them and i was like what the hell like
25:56
people and amari was like by far the
25:59
fastest in those turns by far i could
26:01
visually see it yeah
26:04
so i'm maybe the thing i picked up but
26:06
i'm not really surprised yeah i i think
26:09
it's more likely another one of them
26:11
like what we saw like do
26:13
uh andorra that year i think
26:15
just had an amazing top split because
26:18
the top split was lower this year so
26:20
normally it's in that top rock garden so
26:21
it's just that top section with your
26:24
three breaking points but it wasn't this
26:26
time there was another 15 seconds
26:29
which is the top rock garden and then
26:30
the start of pinball
26:32
so that just adds to the technical
26:35
element and the the
26:41
yeah because it's t-bar
26:43
you would just think now he's just
26:45
absolutely nailed it yeah
26:48
i mean we'll ask you bless yeah yeah
26:50
i'll go with that
26:53
amary's ron
26:54
have you watched his helmet girl
26:56
it's it's
26:57
[ __ ] insane it's like it's like a
26:59
video game in it it's like he gets up to
27:01
speed and then doesn't slow down at all
27:03
there's two things that stand out one is
27:06
just the pace he's going because
27:07
obviously i was there riding exactly the
27:09
same track and the second thing is the
27:12
way he's pulling on the handlebars he's
27:14
turning in places where certainly i
27:16
wasn't like
27:18
you watch him snap the bike and the way
27:21
he's just my best mate used to ride for
27:22
the team slightly lower level than i was
27:25
but not much he used to say to me
27:28
[ __ ] i'll make you turn with some
27:29
confidence there and i'd be like did i
27:31
and
27:32
for me to then look to that run of
27:33
ormury is exactly the same it's like
27:36
jesus christ like the trust he puts in
27:40
himself and the bike to turn the way he
27:42
does in the situations he does and the
27:44
strength he has to make it work
27:46
is absolutely phenomenal like i watched
27:49
it and it just pissed me off
27:52
like he looked sped up like
27:55
it's probably one of the only
27:57
like
27:58
people i looked and i was like this is
28:00
better i can't be it was insane watch
28:03
yeah
28:04
it's like he's riding you can't believe
28:06
when you you've been to the track and
28:07
you see those rocks the size of those
28:09
rocks and stuff you can't believe he's
28:10
going that fast down there and not
28:12
getting stalled or not getting hit but
28:13
that's the thing typically the faster
28:15
you go the easier it is the better your
28:17
bike will feel
28:18
but you have to have the strength to be
28:20
able to deal with that like that video
28:21
of him in that top rock garden where it
28:23
snaps on him yeah 99 of the field would
28:26
have been a massive over the bars there
28:27
yeah and because he's built like a
28:30
quarterback
28:31
just deals with it
28:33
yeah insane
28:35
bad weekend for loic
28:37
i've i'd never known
28:39
anyone go off track there before but
28:41
then i was filming for single track on
28:43
friday and i nearly got hit by another
28:45
rider
28:46
have you ever gone off track there on
28:47
that
28:48
that bit very nearly half before it's
28:50
the wind like the wind makes that track
28:52
so unpredictable you have to constantly
28:54
be reacting and thinking where's it
28:56
coming from now where is it what's it
28:58
doing to me here and because you snap
29:00
left full speed
29:02
um
29:03
yeah whether it was a wind i don't know
29:04
but yeah i have almost gone off track
29:06
there
29:07
so
29:08
collarbone six weeks if he's had it
29:11
plated do you think
29:12
less
29:13
less
29:14
when i had mine plated i was back on a
29:15
bike
29:16
albeit just riding around but i was on
29:18
trail bike off road after four days
29:21
wow so you if you fall on it obviously
29:23
you'll just on the plate and but if he
29:25
really wants to he could raise leeway
29:28
if it's just collarbone
29:29
if there's a shoulder element in terms
29:32
of the way his shoulders moving or any
29:34
ac involvement if it's just a collarbone
29:36
break then
29:38
if it's plated then the plate will hold
29:40
it still you have
29:41
i've always been told that motocross
29:43
guys can break the collarbone and get it
29:44
sorted and they're on right next day
29:46
yeah i remember seeing the um either one
29:49
of the world superbike guys it might
29:50
have been mark marquez
29:52
um he broke it in practice and rest on
29:54
the sunday or whatever
29:56
yeah so it can be done
29:59
but do you think he's gonna do you think
30:00
he'll
30:01
with ann marie winning the first two is
30:03
it too big a task now or does he just
30:06
switch his attention to worlds or
30:09
no idea
30:10
no i don't know but i would be surprised
30:12
if he raised slogan
30:14
because
30:15
i don't know
30:16
what's up three weeks
30:19
yeah
30:20
it will be four i mean it would be
30:22
possible but i don't know if he wants to
30:24
race if he's not like hundred percent
30:26
competitive i don't know like it would
30:28
surprise me but i mean who knows
30:31
and the other thing is as we saw last
30:32
year
30:33
let's say he does come to leary and come
30:35
seventh for example he could still win
30:37
the overall yeah yeah whereas if he
30:39
comes to the league and he doesn't get
30:40
any if he doesn't race lego again gets
30:42
no points then he'll drift quite a lot
30:44
further back so yeah who knows so having
30:47
won the the national a fortnight earlier
30:49
danny hart was probably alongside emery
30:51
the pre-race favourite for fort william
30:53
but it just didn't happen for him i sat
30:55
down with danny after saturday practice
30:57
at the national here at glangothlon the
30:59
other the following weekend and you can
31:00
hear that interview now
31:02
danny hart sunny line glock clangoklin
31:07
let's get the pronunciation right how
31:08
are we doing
31:09
yeah i'm okay just
31:11
sitting at my dinner sitting around now
31:14
in the sunshine and
31:16
just relaxing
31:18
nice back at clangoklan for a british
31:20
national bit different to uh last
31:22
weekend do you prefer the granite of
31:25
fort william or the the the of the
31:28
lovely dirt of clangoklan
31:30
um
31:31
this is a it's a good track here i mean
31:33
they've done quite a lot of work to it
31:35
and it's been really dry so it's sort of
31:38
going away a little bit each run but
31:40
it's good and then obviously fort
31:42
williams just fought with him
31:44
the two opposite ends of the scale so
31:46
it's hard to compare
31:49
we're already in the thick of the 2022
31:51
season and it's his second season on
31:53
cube
31:54
2021 sixth at three of the six rounds of
31:57
the world cup ninth in the overall fifth
32:00
at worlds were you happy with that for a
32:02
first season on a new team
32:04
i guess like in the middle of the season
32:07
when things were going
32:09
going in the right direction it was good
32:10
but then
32:12
just wanting more by the end of the
32:13
season i just couldn't quite get there
32:15
and then
32:17
yeah i was close like i would have
32:20
loved to have got on the podium in
32:21
snowshoe at the end of last year but
32:24
missed it by
32:26
next to nothing but so that was a shame
32:29
because
32:30
it's always a goal obviously a goal is
32:32
to win but at that point of the year
32:34
when we hadn't gotten on the podium i
32:36
was looking to try and do that and
32:38
just missed out so i was a little bit
32:39
disappointed and
32:41
dropped down in the overall because of a
32:42
couple of mechanicals and things like
32:44
that but
32:45
no it's okay
32:46
i was going to say another
32:48
another 18 points and you'd have been
32:50
sixth in the overall that first racing
32:53
snowshoe where you flatted that that
32:55
cost you really didn't it because you
32:56
qualified pretty well
32:58
yeah
33:00
and i i haven't had many punches in my
33:02
career so
33:03
they sting a little bit but
33:05
it's what it is you know the racing's
33:08
tight and we're pushing really hard and
33:11
these things happen
33:13
so 2022 a new bike
33:15
is it completely new
33:18
yeah it's a totally new bike from the
33:20
ground up so it's a full prototype right
33:22
now so
33:23
there's probably tubes from all sorts of
33:25
different cubes
33:26
on my bike so
33:28
yeah that i was really surprised and
33:31
happy that that that they managed to
33:33
turn it round as quick as they did
33:34
obviously cube is a huge
33:36
company ridden for some big companies in
33:39
my career and things often take a lot
33:41
longer in the corporate world of these
33:43
big companies so
33:45
for cube to get that turned around in as
33:47
quick quicker time as they did was
33:49
fantastic
33:51
you seem to be getting unwell with it
33:53
yeah it's going okay just need to
33:55
find a little more peace and
33:57
we should be
33:59
up there
34:00
so
34:01
how's the relationship going with cube
34:03
because
34:04
did you have a lot of input into this
34:06
bite
34:07
we have we
34:09
have an engineer all the world cups with
34:11
us
34:13
he comes testing and and all of that and
34:16
to be honest we can just
34:18
put things in his hands and he's
34:20
he always
34:22
pulls through so i say always i've only
34:24
been there for
34:26
it's only my first prototype with them
34:27
so
34:28
and he's and he's like i said they
34:30
turned around really quickly and
34:32
yeah and it's been good so far
34:35
excellent sixth again in lords some
34:38
great splits in some ways six this is
34:40
the worst possible result but
34:43
in a world cup you can't be too
34:45
disappointed with it can you
34:46
no right now sixth place like really
34:49
sucks to be fair
34:50
um
34:52
the thing with lords i was really happy
34:53
with how i rode i put it all out there
34:55
and
34:56
and
34:57
and rode really well loose you know and
35:01
i was happy with how i rode
35:02
and then yeah it was just really close
35:04
again in sixth so that it's probably
35:06
four six places in the past
35:09
eight races or something so yeah that
35:11
was a bit crappy but
35:13
it's better than seventh and eighth or
35:15
ninth so
35:18
so fort william national do you know how
35:19
many times you've won it now i went and
35:21
checked by the way
35:23
no i think every national i've done that
35:25
i've won to be fair so a lot yeah you've
35:28
i think you've on the results on roots
35:31
and rain there's 30 results for fort
35:33
william for you that's more than you
35:35
know a lot of people have even raced
35:37
so i you you've got five elite wins
35:39
there
35:40
yeah
35:41
so eighth at the world cup last weekend
35:44
i know you don't like excuses
35:47
but i i think you probably ride
35:50
that top section
35:52
and jack tells me all the time that you
35:54
ride it you know better than anybody
35:56
else on the planet
35:58
you were
35:59
27th at the first split three seconds
36:02
back on tuba it looked like the weather
36:04
changed before the top ten was it the
36:06
weather or did you make a mistake or
36:08
were you unwell or well i wasn't well
36:10
all week i was struggling to keep food
36:12
down i must have had some sort of
36:14
stomach bug but
36:16
to be honest i wrote it as good as i
36:18
could and i didn't make
36:20
didn't really make any mistakes
36:22
like that i can remember and i was like
36:25
two seconds off my qualifying
36:28
top split
36:30
and
36:31
there's no reason why
36:33
like i rode i went about everything just
36:36
the same
36:37
and i'm not gonna say it's the weather
36:39
or anything like that because it's the
36:40
same for everybody well no it's not the
36:42
same for everybody it can
36:45
whatever can happen can happen but
36:47
yeah from there i i had some
36:50
not bad splits after that but it was
36:52
just a tough week i was
36:54
i was ill and
36:56
yeah it's just always a really difficult
36:58
race for me
37:00
i think i think looking at the splits
37:02
everybody was down on table from the top
37:04
ten you know emery was two seconds down
37:06
on him quite early i think as well so
37:08
yeah
37:10
so
37:11
how disappointing do you get nowadays
37:12
because i remember a time when everyone
37:14
knew not to go near you if you had a
37:17
well not a good result
37:19
do you still feel the same or have you
37:21
mellowed a bit
37:22
i don't know probably for the first 15
37:25
20 minutes it's not a good place and
37:28
it's just like fort william like
37:30
it's not
37:32
it doesn't annoy me anymore it's just
37:34
more like more upsets me that
37:36
i just
37:38
haven't managed to
37:40
put it together in all these years and
37:42
and i know i can but when that world cup
37:44
comes around
37:46
it's definitely it's a really hard race
37:48
for me i'm not gonna i'm not gonna lie
37:50
to you and say oh it's
37:52
it's what it is like it's
37:54
it's it's hard and
37:56
obviously it's a big track as well and
38:00
yeah it's just a tricky one
38:02
do you think you put too much pressure
38:04
on yourself potentially i think like the
38:06
whole week goes by and i'm enjoying
38:08
having everybody around and it's great
38:11
seeing all the fans but and then
38:13
like that race run
38:15
all sort of
38:16
hits home a little bit
38:18
and then like last week like i've said
38:20
like
38:21
i wasn't very well so i was struggling
38:23
to like really embrace it
38:26
and that sort of then you just come down
38:28
and you
38:29
sit in your chair and
38:32
you don't really i didn't really
38:34
necessarily enjoy it like i was really
38:37
anticipating like a really fun week and
38:39
it was and the weather wasn't the best
38:41
so that always
38:43
makes it harder as well like you come
38:46
down you're soaking wet
38:48
you want to get your goggles clean get
38:50
get dried and get sorted to just go and
38:53
do it again so then you're not really
38:55
hanging out you know you're just
38:57
it's just doing a job at that point and
39:00
that that makes it tricky as well
39:05
there's two things you haven't won world
39:07
cup overall and fought william if you
39:09
could only pick one which would you
39:10
choose
39:12
well it'd be a world cup overall because
39:15
hopefully i'll
39:16
win foot william on the way to doing it
39:19
yeah the world cup overall would be
39:21
because i've won world champs a couple
39:22
times and
39:24
the world cup overall would be
39:26
awesome currently fourth in the overall
39:30
on 216
39:31
i'm emery's pretty well clear at the
39:33
minute four five five
39:35
just one bad race though
39:38
one bad one crash one puncher
39:41
and you don't score any points there's
39:42
200 points up the swanny so
39:45
it's all open still it's early doors
39:47
yeah i mean you're well positioned don't
39:49
you yeah
39:51
to
39:52
drive away from fort william and then
39:53
say i've gone up in the points with how
39:56
it went
39:57
was good and it sort of
39:59
annoyed me even more that i sort of let
40:01
it get away
40:02
because obviously there's some big
40:04
big hitters out of the
40:07
race
40:08
and we thought that's a time to
40:10
capitalize and
40:12
just didn't
40:14
it's the way of the world in it
40:15
sometimes yeah so sophia sat over there
40:18
she's still peddling her at the e-bike
40:20
around when when's baby number two do
40:22
i think she's booked in for the 2nd of
40:25
august at the latest but
40:27
i think she thinks it's going to come
40:29
before then and
40:30
if it's the 2nd of august
40:33
i'll not be present
40:35
i'll be in canada racing i think so
40:37
let's hope it comes before
40:39
and are you prepared for number two
40:43
no i don't think so
40:45
i don't think you're ever prepared for
40:46
one or two so
40:48
it's gonna be
40:50
a bit harder now i guess
40:52
sydney's getting older though so it's
40:55
getting a bit more work like i just said
40:57
the camper is like a big climbing frame
40:59
now
41:01
but uh no we'll be all right
41:03
excellent well best luck this weekend
41:05
and best of luck for the rest of the
41:06
season spot on cheers
41:08
shout out to danny who had a big one in
41:10
his seeding run on sunday at clangoklin
41:12
and glad to hear you're okay it's great
41:14
to have danny back on the podcast he's
41:16
always very honest do you think that
41:18
fort william win will come eventually
41:21
jack he can't do any more can he
41:24
yeah honestly i mean
41:26
i like danny i'm a big fan and i've
41:29
spent many a year cheering for him at
41:30
fort william hoping it was gonna be the
41:32
year um
41:34
and
41:35
honestly um
41:38
after watching
41:41
peer on win the last three times and
41:43
other than him it's usually minar
41:46
um my honest answer would be no i don't
41:49
think it will um and that's not nothing
41:52
against danny he's he's truly one of the
41:54
best in the world and we've we all know
41:56
that we've seen his race wins and
41:59
he's incredible but
42:00
fort william just seems to be
42:02
one of those tracks where
42:04
like look at laurie
42:06
like he did everything that he could and
42:08
didn't he and he didn't have the power
42:10
yeah he just wasn't a big enough dude
42:13
omri just went sorry mate i'm pushing
42:15
however many more watts than you and i'm
42:17
just going to beat you
42:18
um
42:19
and i feel like danny's potentially in
42:21
that same boat of he's got all the
42:23
skills and all the talent and all the
42:25
commitment
42:26
but one of those bigger dudes
42:28
whether it's minar or whether it's
42:30
summary or whoever
42:32
on the day
42:33
one of them will just step up and go
42:35
sorry man there's a second or there's
42:36
whatever so yeah
42:38
i just think uh
42:40
you know ruling him out of aldersol or
42:42
ruling him out of somewhere like that
42:44
obviously you would you would never do
42:45
that because
42:47
but
42:48
looking at the stats and looking at the
42:49
way fort william seems to be playing out
42:52
now unfortunately my answer would be uh
42:54
i don't think he ever will
42:56
so his consistency is incredible so
42:58
since he joined cube
43:00
there's been eight world cups in the
43:01
world championships so nine world level
43:04
races if you take out legere where he
43:07
got caught up in the weather after
43:08
seeding fifth and the snowshoe race
43:10
where he flatted he's had a fifth four
43:13
sixth and two eighths
43:15
he just knows how to go top ten
43:17
everywhere doesn't he
43:19
he's an unbelievable rider like
43:22
you see the way he looks like he's just
43:24
dancing down the track like i can't
43:26
remember i think it was the national at
43:27
fort william where i watched i was
43:29
standing looking at a line and he come
43:31
through and
43:32
he just looks like he floats like the
43:34
way he moves with the bike his technique
43:36
his balance
43:39
like it's just textbook um so yeah and
43:42
then obviously with that he's got as i
43:44
said the commitment and the racehead to
43:46
just keep producing um it's just
43:50
he's well positioned in the overall this
43:52
season as he said one bad result and you
43:54
emery could throw it all away
43:56
is the biggest threat to emery peer on
43:59
ameripair on himself emme
44:02
oh yeah i would say so we all talked
44:04
about him before the first walk up
44:06
already and we could see how
44:09
he was back on form
44:11
um
44:13
i think like jack said
44:14
the dynamic in between the markov team
44:17
teammates like they're really pushing
44:19
this and then probably like
44:21
the two best riders out there at the
44:22
moment so that's a huge advantage
44:26
and i don't know if like laurie and greg
44:29
have kind of the same dynamic i wouldn't
44:30
say so
44:32
um they're probably a bit more secretive
44:34
and stuff so i think as long as they get
44:36
it like
44:38
that well it would be like hard for
44:40
anyone to challenge them both
44:44
yeah i would agree like
44:46
if they get the recipe right and they
44:48
don't push each other into a situation
44:50
where one of them overtries to try and
44:52
beat the other or
44:54
if they're riding together well and
44:56
they're working together well they'll
44:57
know what that pace is and then they'll
44:59
just produce that run and
45:01
it certainly looks like when one of them
45:03
gets it right off the back of that there
45:05
isn't another guy in the field who can
45:07
at the moment um
45:09
do anything about that but
45:12
tracks will
45:13
change that and
45:15
certainly somewhere like valvasol
45:18
like laurie or danny or there's so many
45:20
we could name like
45:21
you know that'll be a bit more of a race
45:23
but um but yeah i think you're right
45:25
george i think
45:27
if if anyone's gonna cost omri the title
45:30
it'll be him himself aside from from
45:33
emery the form rider we've mentioned him
45:35
a few times already probably at the
45:36
moment he's laurie greenland
45:38
he's had a great start to life on the
45:40
syndicate eighth in lords second at the
45:42
fort bill national and then fort william
45:44
world cup he was fastest in time
45:46
training fastest qualifier and he was up
45:48
by over a second at split two
45:51
he also took the winning clan gokulan
45:53
seems to be liking the v10 and life on
45:56
the syndicate do you think
45:57
he's now in that group of five or six
45:59
riders that could win at every track
46:03
for sure for sure like i i wonder if uh
46:07
and well he won't be because i know laws
46:09
but
46:10
you look at him now and you look at how
46:12
homie looks on that bike and in that
46:13
team and
46:15
if you'd only just started following
46:17
down you'd think you'd be in there
46:18
forever yeah um whereas
46:21
to the other example of the other
46:22
extreme that pops straight into my head
46:24
is david trummer like
46:26
he's left yt where's he gone
46:28
like he doesn't look like he
46:30
it's not the same when you see him on
46:31
that mondraker whereas you look at
46:32
laurie on syndicate and it's just like
46:35
wow and you just think how much does he
46:38
maybe think oh we should have done that
46:39
three years ago um
46:41
so it's funny that you've pulled the
46:43
example up there of somebody who's gone
46:44
to mondraker
46:46
because yeah lori was on mondrick yeah i
46:49
never even thought but i had just been
46:50
thinking recently like
46:53
you know david came out of shadows a few
46:55
years ago and just had incredible
46:57
seasons and obviously it's gone the
46:59
opposite way to what laurie has done but
47:01
we have corsair on the mondraker but but
47:03
yeah i mean like a big fan of those and
47:05
uh
47:06
yeah be nice to see him really really
47:07
start pushing pushing
47:09
pushing for the wins cool well one man
47:11
who was lighting it up in fort william
47:13
before he went down hard just before the
47:15
motorway was dakota norton and we'll be
47:17
chatting with him after these messages
47:19
dakota norton welcome back to the
47:21
podcast how you doing ah man doing well
47:25
yeah super excited yeah busy guy
47:29
ah dude i got
47:31
more more going on than most at the
47:33
moment i mean everybody's busy and
47:34
there's always an excuse to say you're
47:36
busy right but uh we've been earning it
47:38
the last uh few weeks you know trying to
47:40
work hard
47:42
cool well straight back to the states
47:43
after fort william and you raced the u.s
47:46
national the following weekend
47:48
you took a big one in practice it's up
47:50
on your instagram for anybody who hasn't
47:51
seen it talk us through what happened
47:53
there
47:54
oh man um yeah just uh had some
47:57
deflection on her on a route just kind
48:00
of got ejected off the bike um
48:03
not really an ideal circumstance by any
48:05
means and uh
48:07
it's never really dude i haven't had one
48:09
for a long time that like scared me
48:12
heavily scared me like
48:13
i just got ejected into a tree and it
48:15
just like
48:16
man that was a scary one not not ideal
48:19
so two two big crashes back to back you
48:22
know i wasn't i wasn't crashing all that
48:24
i guess until the last two weeks
48:26
[Laughter]
48:29
you still took the win on a borrowed
48:31
bike i think tell us a bit about that
48:34
yeah so um as everybody knows you know
48:36
we're doing a ton of prototyping for
48:38
this uh new intense downhill race bike
48:41
and the bike is super awesome um
48:44
really impressed i think that showed in
48:46
some of the splits at fort william like
48:48
you know i'm never really a
48:50
top five sector guy i was third i think
48:53
before the cattle gate sector too had
48:55
some issues up top but um
48:57
yeah bike's awesome uh unfortunately
49:00
anytime you tomahawk these things that
49:01
the speedwiga things break so i was uh
49:04
on a borrowed bike for the um the
49:07
qualified actually halfway through
49:09
practice
49:10
uh we just ripped my fork off and threw
49:12
my fork on the other one i essentially
49:15
just pulled the whole front end slapped
49:16
it on m29 and dude honestly i pulled the
49:19
biggest bonehead move in the world i'm
49:21
you know i like live in this world where
49:23
we ride these mullet bikes now and i
49:25
guess we have 27.5 rear wheels and you
49:27
it's the first year for me riding a
49:29
mullet so all the time i go to change
49:31
tires and i'm like this 20 sec put it
49:34
inside of a 29er back tire the other day
49:36
i went to the track and i brought a 29
49:38
back wheel and i was like well this
49:40
thing doesn't sit in my bike so
49:42
i yeah dude is qualifying with 27.5
49:46
wheel in the back of the m29
49:49
the absolute bonehead i mean
49:52
nico was up by like 1.5 at the second
49:55
split and washed her out at the bottom
49:57
so um
49:58
he was like kind of the closest on this
50:00
on the splits
50:02
but uh yeah dude last run before finals
50:05
fully just tossed a random 29er wheel
50:07
and it humder
50:10
went for it wicked you you seem to place
50:13
like quite quite a lot of importance on
50:14
the us nationals
50:17
yeah man uh i think it that's primarily
50:20
because
50:21
one it
50:22
allows you to build some confidence and
50:24
i'm gonna be honest man intense really
50:26
likes us racing in america they're proud
50:28
of american racing and they they invest
50:31
quite a lot in um in me going to them
50:33
they help me out giving to them so
50:35
uh
50:36
kind of hard to pass them up really and
50:39
i just love going to that mountain
50:40
mountain creek up there if
50:42
you've if you live in the states you've
50:44
never been make the trip the place is
50:46
bonkers fun like every trail there is a
50:49
blast so it's kind of like vacation i
50:51
love going back there every year
50:53
cool so 2021 you were 18th in the
50:56
overall you missed round three in
50:58
maribor we covered also u.s national
51:01
champion were you pretty happy with it
51:06
ah
51:07
shoot man
51:08
happy with the way i rode yeah i was
51:11
super pumped i felt like
51:12
there was a point in time where i was
51:14
like
51:15
felt like superman i mean at valdasol i
51:18
thought i could have won the race and
51:20
i i like i think some of the time the
51:23
split showed that i had good speed there
51:25
um unfortunately came a little bit
51:28
unraveled at the bottom just under
51:29
braked in the corner but uh you know the
51:32
light went into the last race i think i
51:34
was 11th in points with missing around
51:36
going into the
51:38
finals at snowshoe the first race i got
51:41
six
51:42
and was really happy with that um 0.2 or
51:45
0.1 0.1.2 off the podium and rolled the
51:48
last jump i thought it was faster
51:50
kind of gave that one away that was kind
51:52
of a silly move but um
51:55
yeah uh
51:57
double flattering finals 18th in the
52:00
overall kisser goodbye you know uh top
52:03
10 overall dreams it just seems like
52:04
every year
52:06
i do a couple of bonehead moves and then
52:08
i'm just i'm just out of it so that's
52:11
like you know i was like this year i'm
52:12
going to be super consistent i'm not
52:14
going to ride over my head at all which
52:16
i don't really feel like i ever do i
52:18
just i think in the past um
52:21
you swap bikes all the time
52:23
always on a new team new bike and
52:25
there's a learning process to a new bike
52:27
right that davinci high pivot as it grew
52:30
the front end got super vague um i think
52:33
any of these bikes these high pivot
52:35
bikes that grow when you slap them into
52:36
corners sometimes the front end gets a
52:38
little little uh
52:40
under under uh on grip
52:44
so and then going to the yt completely
52:46
different bike and
52:48
ah man i just really wish i could get a
52:50
little bit of time to get used to one
52:52
bike and i think the the consistent we
52:55
see will come i i really believe that
52:58
i'm a pretty consistent rider i don't
53:00
ride over my head but i think with
53:02
swapping teams every year swapping bikes
53:05
some of that stuff is going to come so
53:07
overall super happy with the way i rode
53:10
man bum did not have that consistency
53:12
and being in the top 10 at the end of
53:13
the year
53:15
i think that's pretty fair assessment i
53:16
can see why you would be you know
53:19
pretty down on that having coming in to
53:21
snowshoe where you were obviously you
53:23
you mentioned yt then you lost your ride
53:25
with yt when did you find out about that
53:28
and and how did the intense deal come
53:30
about
53:31
uh yeah that was a pretty late one um
53:34
it was a couple weeks after the last
53:35
race it uh
53:37
kind of found out that the plug was
53:39
being pulled i think a lot of these
53:41
companies
53:42
um usually like yeah they they don't
53:44
want to um announce these things too
53:46
early right and uh that makes it hard
53:48
for us as riders to uh to find a place
53:51
to go so no no um nor poor feeling
53:54
fearing poor feelings there i mean
53:57
i didn't even think i was going to have
53:59
a ride the year before um
54:02
whiteley picked me up man
54:04
my manager martin he
54:06
he gave me the call and kind of saved my
54:08
butt to go racing last year i felt and i
54:11
felt like i owed him
54:12
um a lot for that i really do and uh
54:16
kept my career going and then you know
54:18
gave me an opportunity i wish i could
54:20
have gotten my podium last year
54:21
unfortunately i just came up short a
54:24
couple times but with that being said
54:26
you know um riding
54:28
for aaron this year is like
54:30
man really excited about that there's i
54:32
think there's a lot to be learned there
54:34
and the dude is just so laid back and i
54:36
am not that i'm like
54:39
a stress case so
54:41
i think it's really cool to like see
54:44
and learn from from aaron and and really
54:46
happy to be on with the whole intense
54:48
program the brand has a ton of a legacy
54:50
and and it's pretty sought after so it's
54:53
cool to be a part
54:54
cool did you know our um todd and aaron
54:57
before you you joined the team
54:59
um
55:00
me and aaron had talked briefly a couple
55:02
times but um never were super close
55:06
friends uh as we i think i would like to
55:10
say that the dude's my friend now we
55:12
spent quite a bit of time together i
55:13
mean
55:14
um
55:15
we get along super great we have like
55:17
similar backgrounds so it's pretty easy
55:19
to get on with aaron and he's just such
55:21
a laid back guy to begin with
55:23
um
55:25
and todd no not not at all so i'd spoke
55:28
with him a few times but he's a trip man
55:30
he's full of full of energy and he's all
55:33
about getting the best out of people so
55:35
it's it's cool to spend some time with
55:36
him now
55:37
excellent i know you've been doing some
55:39
big
55:40
testing this week with aaron
55:42
what's it like working with him talk
55:44
through a process of like a day like
55:46
that
55:47
i
55:49
i get some noise here
55:51
all right so i can edit this out
55:53
yeah okay i'll just wait until he passes
55:56
harley guy over here
55:59
dude this is like america harley in the
56:01
wild stereo right
56:05
it's either i fight for service at home
56:07
and and i always break up like on the
56:09
beeline podcast or i get noise so
56:11
there's no winning around here okay um
56:14
being on the team with aaron
56:16
uh is that that's what you asked me for
56:18
oh testing with aaron yeah no i i know
56:20
you've you've been doing some you know
56:22
you've been doing some big testing with
56:24
aaron this week just just give us a bit
56:26
of insight what's it like working with
56:27
him talk through the process
56:29
yeah so uh
56:33
working with gwen
56:35
is a real special thing because he's uh
56:38
he's so laid back about it and
56:40
he really believes in his abilities as a
56:43
rider so that's uh pretty cool to spend
56:45
time with him as far as stuff on the
56:47
bike goes i knew i was getting into a uh
56:51
a bit of like a works program
56:53
the one cool thing i think about
56:56
what intense does is they're not afraid
56:58
to say hey we're trying things we're
57:00
trying to improve we're they're not
57:02
always such a stickler on you can't tell
57:05
someone that you have a different
57:06
linkage
57:08
you can't tell somebody that you have
57:10
um you know
57:13
prototype rear end
57:14
they're like we make
57:16
parts for racing and uh
57:19
that's
57:20
they're not afraid to to not share that
57:23
they're like you know a lot of those
57:24
guys come from the motocross industry
57:25
and it's it's noah secret that yeah ktm
57:29
they have 20 different break levels to
57:31
choose from you know they have a menu of
57:34
things that you can try this link that
57:36
link um and all that kind of different
57:38
stuff so being on more of a works
57:40
program is really cool and we have a lot
57:42
of options and they've been able to make
57:44
changes like they made a link in two
57:45
weeks which was
57:47
honestly like unheard of in this
57:50
industry i i think i mean usually
57:52
there's never a turnaround like that and
57:54
you know they they really do what it
57:56
takes to make us happy with that being
57:58
said i mean we we got throughout fort
58:00
william and we're still feeling like
58:02
we're struggling with a couple of things
58:03
obviously we're making changes quick and
58:06
and they've been awesome with that but
58:08
uh we just needed to you know find some
58:11
comfort ride it's a new bike and that's
58:12
part of the process with anything so
58:14
they flew devon the engineer out here to
58:16
give us a couple days at windrock with
58:18
him and uh man we just have been working
58:20
through it um and it's so i got to give
58:23
it up to intense for all they've done to
58:24
make us comfortable when it comes to you
58:26
know working with aaron i think he has a
58:29
really good idea of what he wants to get
58:30
out of the bike and um some of the
58:33
things that he's you know looked for and
58:35
won with over the years so there's a ton
58:37
of knowledge there and uh he's he
58:40
definitely has a feeling that he's
58:41
looking for and um has a
58:44
uh you know equation to to winning so
58:47
it's cool to be a part of that um just
58:49
learned a ton
58:50
cool so 2022 you've had a great start to
58:53
the season
58:55
you're 11th in lords
58:57
and then i mean fort william
58:59
you seeded 23rd and you were on a hell
59:02
of a run possibly the most exciting run
59:04
of the weekend
59:06
sector two you were that was the longest
59:08
sector and i think you said before you
59:09
were third fastest behind matt walker
59:11
and laurie seventh at split three
59:14
you took that awesome high line in the
59:16
woods
59:17
and then binned it in the worst possible
59:19
place
59:21
just before the upper legs in the woods
59:24
how gutted were you to to make it that
59:26
far down and
59:28
and i think there's so much to take out
59:30
of fort william that's positive right
59:32
split for sweet
59:34
um man i felt like i was absolutely in
59:37
qualifying gripping
59:39
in sectors two and three like absolutely
59:42
rode i was absolutely on it and then i
59:45
dumped it in the woods stupid crash
59:47
couldn't get my foot out of the pedal
59:49
and i just like i come into the woods
59:51
and i was like being pretty conservative
59:52
and the rut was blown out so i went to
59:54
like get high and slid out on a route
59:56
and i was like i like was that walking
59:58
bass i went to put my foot down and my
1:00:00
foot wouldn't come out and i just went
1:00:03
like slow motion
1:00:04
fell under the bike couldn't unclip my
1:00:06
foot couldn't get up and i was like
1:00:09
and then
1:00:10
sprinted down 23rd and qualifying and i
1:00:12
was like well if i can go dump it
1:00:15
i can you know be be in the in for a top
1:00:18
10 on sunday which so there's some
1:00:20
positives to take out and i
1:00:23
had a i had like a little bit of a tip
1:00:26
over in the top corners i wouldn't say
1:00:27
that i had a like a big crash on my last
1:00:30
qualifying run but kind of tipped the
1:00:32
bike over
1:00:34
um didn't think anything of it had some
1:00:36
shoe covers on and my left foot
1:00:38
unclipped twice on the ride down and i
1:00:41
just thought it was my shoe cover
1:00:42
getting caught in the pedal and i was
1:00:43
like oh man that sucks like had a bit of
1:00:45
a bummer ride before the race um you
1:00:48
never want to crash on your last
1:00:49
practice run that's never great but bit
1:00:51
of a tip over
1:00:53
bust out in finals
1:00:55
rip rip the first few corners up top and
1:00:57
then as soon as i got off the boardwalk
1:01:00
into like that first pinball section
1:01:02
both feet out of the pedals and on the
1:01:03
top two and i'm like riding the top tube
1:01:06
in in my race run and i was like you
1:01:09
gotta be kidding me right like
1:01:11
not again so i don't know if i bent the
1:01:13
pedal up bent the crank arm bent
1:01:15
something um
1:01:17
in the pedal mechanism there's no
1:01:19
telling i mean you you crash things
1:01:20
break right and i was just a little
1:01:22
bummed with it we didn't catch it but i
1:01:24
think it it wasn't like super
1:01:27
um
1:01:28
noticeable uh but it was unclipping my
1:01:30
foot so 23rd at the first split and then
1:01:33
got back going and there's no pedaling
1:01:35
in the middle of the track so i never
1:01:36
haven't had any issues
1:01:38
um felt like i
1:01:40
nailed nailed it i actually didn't even
1:01:42
feel like i was riding
1:01:44
as well as i did in qualifying in those
1:01:46
segments but just charged carried on
1:01:49
and then as soon as it was time to
1:01:51
sprint my foot blew out again and i kind
1:01:53
of like got off line and then
1:01:55
like when you were doing that stump gap
1:01:57
when i went to pull right to because i
1:01:59
was doing that that uh straight line
1:02:01
yeah i just couldn't get lined up with
1:02:03
my foot out of the pedal and i just it
1:02:05
just threw me offline and my goggles
1:02:07
were all covered in mud at that point
1:02:09
and i actually didn't see the route i
1:02:10
hit my goggles were so covered and it
1:02:12
was just like i knew i was offline so i
1:02:15
just like gripped the bars as hard as i
1:02:16
could and i was like here we go
1:02:19
and then i was like all of a sudden my
1:02:21
feet were above my head and i was like
1:02:22
this is not good it's not good at all
1:02:27
so
1:02:27
man a lot to take out of it i felt like
1:02:30
i wrote super good at lourdes with a
1:02:32
week on the bike and we made so many
1:02:34
changes to the bike after that for the
1:02:35
positive i thought i wrote great in fort
1:02:37
william but another one of those
1:02:40
for the overall i mean
1:02:42
the points are loaded so far at the top
1:02:44
it's like
1:02:45
if i can just
1:02:47
nail one of these things and get on the
1:02:49
podium we're right back in the fight so
1:02:51
the mentality goes
1:02:52
from consistency to like
1:02:54
time to start laying it down 100 you
1:02:57
know we had a a national over here last
1:02:59
weekend and you're saying about you the
1:03:02
things with your pedals
1:03:03
under like well i put some fresh cleats
1:03:06
on earlier
1:03:07
earlier in the week and i must have put
1:03:09
them the wrong way around and so they
1:03:11
had the 20 degrees of flow rather than
1:03:13
the 15. never never realized rode for a
1:03:16
few days and then
1:03:18
like i was doing practice runs and my
1:03:20
feet were coming out like you just said
1:03:22
all the time and you know when you're
1:03:23
like there's something wrong here there
1:03:24
is something
1:03:26
and so i changed the pedals that didn't
1:03:27
fix it and then i was like i've put the
1:03:29
cleats on the wrong way around i want to
1:03:31
i bet that's it and as soon as i change
1:03:33
them around bang fine just back like
1:03:35
that five degrees of difference or
1:03:37
whatever
1:03:38
you just get used to where the the edge
1:03:40
is don't you yeah you know you know
1:03:41
where yeah
1:03:43
yeah i think my thing was the pedal was
1:03:44
at a bit of an angle so it would like
1:03:47
roll my foot out because it was it
1:03:49
wasn't like um when you're hitting bumps
1:03:51
like that you're you would get a bit of
1:03:53
a twist and it would unclip you that way
1:03:56
it's just like those little things those
1:03:58
little details and when there's only
1:04:00
seven of these races a year
1:04:02
you look at the dudes that are up there
1:04:03
every week and get it perfect every
1:04:05
weekend and it's like man those dudes
1:04:07
are good not only at the way they can
1:04:10
ride the bike so well but their level of
1:04:12
consistency in their entire program yeah
1:04:15
100
1:04:16
so on-site in fort william i asked matt
1:04:19
walker what the key to for doing well at
1:04:21
fort william was and he mentioned taking
1:04:23
all the outsides so you have a high
1:04:26
average speed you appear to do the exact
1:04:28
opposite to that taking every inside
1:04:30
that was on offer
1:04:32
it seemed to work for you did you
1:04:34
realize you were writing kind of
1:04:35
different lines to everyone else
1:04:38
no and i think that somebody said that
1:04:40
to me after and like i didn't even
1:04:42
know i was riding different lines than
1:04:44
anybody else i was just like
1:04:47
you know
1:04:48
we're gonna
1:04:50
maybe it's the 42 pound bike i don't
1:04:52
know we're just rolling quick but i'm
1:04:55
pretty heavy dude as well so i don't
1:04:57
think that rolling speed is
1:04:59
is um
1:05:00
a big factor in that and
1:05:03
i i really put our training um up there
1:05:06
with anything any of these dudes do i
1:05:09
train super hard so if i can like if i'm
1:05:12
fit enough to like take those couple
1:05:14
cranks out of every pedal or every
1:05:16
corner um if you watch me gnar or some
1:05:18
of them in our successful runs in the
1:05:19
past that dude's super fit he will um
1:05:22
he'll pedal out of every corner so
1:05:25
i think that that's pretty interesting
1:05:27
mario like he absolutely just smashed
1:05:29
everyone at the bottom just because he
1:05:30
was super fit and i think that he was
1:05:32
really strategic about where he was was
1:05:36
um spending his energy so
1:05:39
yeah i think that maybe you can get away
1:05:41
with running some of those insides if
1:05:42
you get some horsepower
1:05:45
100 so
1:05:46
fort williams a bit different to
1:05:47
everything else on the world cup circuit
1:05:49
are you a fan of that track
1:05:52
uh
1:05:54
no
1:05:55
no actually i'm not a fan of it
1:05:56
whatsoever
1:05:58
i mean i think that place is like i felt
1:06:00
like when i came home i was like man i
1:06:03
feel like i was out there at a race for
1:06:05
six months after being there for three
1:06:07
days i was like this place is
1:06:10
just like going to war it just
1:06:13
it got worse as the weekend went on like
1:06:16
the track
1:06:17
from first run to last run
1:06:20
you the track just continued to get
1:06:22
worse the whole way and i was the the
1:06:25
conditions and i was like
1:06:26
man just
1:06:28
get me in and get me on out of here
1:06:31
so so those guys like were we had a
1:06:34
national there two weeks before and it
1:06:36
hadn't been worked on for three years
1:06:38
and they worked on it for two weeks
1:06:40
solid before you guys started on it so
1:06:42
it was so blown out it was just it was a
1:06:45
mess
1:06:46
we got lucky then you did yeah yeah a
1:06:48
little bit but i think it's you you've
1:06:50
left it in a state similar to what we're
1:06:51
racing so
1:06:53
it's beat up man
1:06:55
the one thing i will say about fort
1:06:56
william is
1:06:58
i like these it's like a man's track
1:07:00
right not because it's like so gnarly
1:07:02
like valdisol or andor or something like
1:07:04
that but it's like physical yeah i feel
1:07:07
like it's like an outdoor motocross
1:07:09
national it's like going to red butt
1:07:11
you're just like show up and you're just
1:07:13
ready to
1:07:14
go
1:07:15
wide open and and
1:07:17
it's gonna be gnarly and you're and i do
1:07:20
like that about it rather than some of
1:07:22
these like a little bit mellower uh
1:07:24
sprint tracks where you're just like out
1:07:26
of the gate wide open i like i like
1:07:28
feeling like i'm like out there
1:07:31
like i'm heading pro motocross national
1:07:33
you know like big breaking bumps and
1:07:35
rocks
1:07:36
it's yeah it's wild if i if you crash
1:07:39
it's gonna hurt if your choice is do you
1:07:42
want to hop the rocks or do you want to
1:07:43
hit the rocks and either way it hurts
1:07:46
because after a while of hopping you hop
1:07:48
for you know a couple of minutes
1:07:50
it you know it takes it out here so yeah
1:07:53
it's a full-on truck
1:07:55
um and it's not that steep either round
1:07:57
so
1:07:58
it doesn't have like the gradient to get
1:08:00
you back up to speed if you make a
1:08:01
mistake
1:08:02
so
1:08:03
when are you coming back over for leah
1:08:04
gang and are you staying in europe
1:08:07
for a while then
1:08:08
uh yep i um i'm on a plane tomorrow
1:08:11
actually so i kind of at that whole
1:08:13
thing we i finished the last training
1:08:15
session um earlier today and then it's
1:08:17
like the whole scramble right pack the
1:08:19
place up and then uh lock everything up
1:08:22
take care of everything you need to take
1:08:23
care of because i'm not going to be back
1:08:25
for like three months
1:08:27
so
1:08:28
i mean there's a lot to take care of
1:08:29
before you dip out but um
1:08:32
before you take off but uh i think it'll
1:08:35
be good because i i've had a lot going
1:08:37
on at home um the last uh couple months
1:08:40
like you know i've been if i if i'm i'm
1:08:43
like pretty
1:08:44
like um
1:08:46
i don't really want to use the term like
1:08:48
obsessive compulsive but like
1:08:51
i i
1:08:52
am
1:08:54
a big like analyzer of details and uh i
1:08:57
fixate on things um obviously that's
1:08:59
some of the details that makes me good
1:09:01
as a racer but um when it comes to like
1:09:04
life uh i'll just work myself into the
1:09:06
ground if i stay at home because i have
1:09:08
this image of what i want things to be
1:09:10
and especially like i've been like
1:09:12
renowning this house and uh i've been
1:09:14
you know doing a lot of life stuff
1:09:15
outside of racing you know yes we don't
1:09:18
just go to the gym and sit on the couch
1:09:20
and do our rides and
1:09:22
eat grapes and get fans you know we're
1:09:24
we're mountain bike racers we're not
1:09:26
like professional golfers or something
1:09:28
so it's like yeah i mean i'm always
1:09:31
working on stuff outside of doing my
1:09:32
training so if i can just like take
1:09:36
a a backpack and my bike and a like a
1:09:41
closed bag to europe and just put myself
1:09:43
in an airbnb somewhere and just focus on
1:09:46
racing i feel so much lighter and i feel
1:09:49
like
1:09:50
i can focus so much more so i almost
1:09:53
like i have so much going on at home i
1:09:55
just have to get myself away from it so
1:09:57
i'm gonna go home go go to europe and
1:09:59
just go race for a few months and i
1:10:01
think that'll be the best for keeping me
1:10:02
focused for the coming races
1:10:05
excellent so so ninth in leo going last
1:10:07
last year do you think you can crack the
1:10:09
podium this time around
1:10:14
hmm
1:10:15
you know
1:10:16
i will say like i you know
1:10:19
i always think
1:10:21
i can do well at leo kang but and the
1:10:24
last couple years i think i've struggled
1:10:26
in the bottom
1:10:27
you know i think my bmx skills and like
1:10:30
my my technical um ability on the bike
1:10:33
kind of shines there because the time
1:10:35
gaps are so close i was 0.02
1:10:37
off the podium my first year on davinci
1:10:40
almost got it
1:10:41
and uh man i think i can run with these
1:10:44
dudes anywhere and i'm looking to try to
1:10:47
prove that i can be a podium contender
1:10:50
you know
1:10:51
yeah i think so
1:10:53
i don't think that leo gang is maybe i
1:10:55
like to think that i can do it more on
1:10:57
like mount saint anne like the val de
1:10:59
soul like the big tracks like the man's
1:11:02
tracks i just think that
1:11:04
i haven't really
1:11:05
had equipment that shines at those
1:11:08
tracks in the past like
1:11:10
um i think that that bike i rode last
1:11:12
year was super good at uh at leo gang
1:11:15
and switzerland um
1:11:17
so
1:11:18
and i think i can do it anywhere but
1:11:19
yeah i i do i really do i struggle at
1:11:21
the bottom a little bit so i know i'll
1:11:23
be in touch going into the woods and
1:11:25
then i just got to try to
1:11:28
look far ahead and and ride the bottom
1:11:30
well
1:11:31
cool so what's the aims now for the rest
1:11:34
of the season is it
1:11:36
are they looking at you for podiums and
1:11:38
positions or is it to get this bike
1:11:40
finished and get this bike and how you
1:11:42
know how far away do you think you are
1:11:44
with that with that
1:11:46
um
1:11:48
i think that
1:11:52
obviously aaron is
1:11:54
i mean i don't really think anyone
1:11:56
treats it as there's a lead rider on the
1:11:59
team
1:11:59
um
1:12:00
do i think that's like me not really i
1:12:03
think me and aaron both are like trying
1:12:06
to work together to do to do well and to
1:12:09
get those results um and that's why
1:12:11
there's always more than
1:12:13
one rider on a race team right
1:12:15
um
1:12:16
i think that
1:12:18
bay intense really wants to get back
1:12:23
to their winning ways and
1:12:25
the days when those bikes were super
1:12:28
competitive so i think that
1:12:31
yeah i am expected to go do my job and
1:12:34
i'm paid to get results
1:12:36
but at the same time i think these guys
1:12:38
are are pretty patient too because
1:12:40
hungry but patient because they know
1:12:43
that there's a little bit of a process
1:12:45
in developing a winning bike and
1:12:48
and we have a lot of really exciting
1:12:50
things in the works that's that's super
1:12:51
cool for me but do i think primarily
1:12:54
meme
1:12:55
i think it's it's just uh in the it's a
1:12:57
middle of the road thing you know we're
1:12:58
still developing the bike
1:13:00
but the pike's really good right now
1:13:03
like i i think i've showed that you can
1:13:05
do well on it and i think um
1:13:07
aaron will show that this season um as
1:13:10
well from the way he's been riding so
1:13:12
do i think that the pressure is to win a
1:13:14
world cup right now no i don't i don't
1:13:17
think so i think that they know that
1:13:19
that's going to take a little bit of
1:13:20
time and and that's you know obviously
1:13:22
you have everything has to be perfect to
1:13:24
do that because there's a lot of teams
1:13:26
investing a lot of resources trying to
1:13:28
win one of these things with a lot of
1:13:29
talented riders right but i think our
1:13:33
our
1:13:34
focus is to show how good this bike is
1:13:36
yeah excellent cool well look
1:13:40
thanks for making the time i know you're
1:13:41
really really busy at the moment and as
1:13:43
you say leaving leaving tomorrow best of
1:13:45
luck to you and the guys for the rest of
1:13:47
the season and shout out to joe breden
1:13:48
as well who you know took a really big
1:13:50
one in fort william poor boy yeah and
1:13:53
he's gonna be out for for a bit at least
1:13:55
um yeah have a good trip
1:13:58
yeah thank you so much um yeah also with
1:14:00
joe that boy has uh
1:14:03
absolutely been um joe's been
1:14:06
ripping the last couple weeks and uh he
1:14:08
was really
1:14:09
uh kept the pit light and made a lot of
1:14:12
laughter and excitement so he'll heavily
1:14:14
be missed but yeah super excited to get
1:14:16
back with the boys and get to the races
1:14:17
and see what we can uh accomplish i
1:14:19
think there's big things coming
1:14:21
cool
1:14:22
we'll be back with all things leo gang
1:14:24
after these messages
1:14:26
so leo gang in the past bemoaned has
1:14:28
been two bike parkie but now it's
1:14:30
definitely not
1:14:32
troy took the win last year but it
1:14:34
doesn't look like he'll be back in time
1:14:36
for this year's race
1:14:37
who's your money on in the men's can can
1:14:39
can you see pasta marie
1:14:43
ah that's a hard question for me it
1:14:45
really depends on the conditions as well
1:14:48
um
1:14:50
if it's like the usual gang like the
1:14:52
muddy
1:14:53
like really hard to ride
1:14:55
like
1:14:56
last bit it could be like a lot of guys
1:14:58
game
1:14:59
like like you mentioned tremor and i
1:15:01
think
1:15:02
he's being always so good there
1:15:05
and uh
1:15:06
yeah in the wet like
1:15:08
there's a lot of guys that could just
1:15:09
like put it off
1:15:11
if it's dry
1:15:12
it's going to be probably the same as
1:15:15
lords and it was not like that so much
1:15:17
to so many different guys but um
1:15:20
yeah i'd see amore it's pretty good in
1:15:22
the world too so
1:15:25
yeah it depends on on the conditions but
1:15:28
i would say
1:15:30
i would say
1:15:31
a mojito
1:15:33
lorry
1:15:34
danny if it's wet can be really fast as
1:15:36
well i mean it
1:15:38
totally depends
1:15:39
i could see ben were having a good one
1:15:43
yeah
1:15:45
i'm really a fan of benoit but i don't
1:15:46
know i think um well maybe if it's gonna
1:15:49
prove me wrong
1:15:50
but um
1:15:53
i don't know i feel like maybe
1:15:56
some other guys are gonna try to because
1:15:57
he had like two good results now and i
1:15:59
feel like maybe he's gonna like
1:16:02
think a bit about points and the overall
1:16:05
and i don't know maybe
1:16:06
i hope he does the opposite and i hope
1:16:08
he just keeps pushing he should do the
1:16:09
opposite but maybe you will not
1:16:11
it's a six left there's anyone here
1:16:14
so
1:16:14
so yeah i i could see benoit having a
1:16:17
good one
1:16:18
um at what point does america start
1:16:21
playing it smart for the overall or do
1:16:24
you think he just wants to keep winning
1:16:25
races he'll just keep pushing the win
1:16:27
races for sure
1:16:29
i think too
1:16:31
hopefully hopefully they can still learn
1:16:34
of the situation of last year because
1:16:37
that can happen again either in the
1:16:39
women's and in the men
1:16:41
um
1:16:43
but
1:16:44
yeah i guess it's it you have to at
1:16:47
least in the race run but like in
1:16:49
practice maybe kind of like try to be
1:16:51
smart still
1:16:52
but in the race run you kind of have to
1:16:54
go full otherwise you won't be anywhere
1:16:56
so will he be thinking about worlds do
1:16:59
you reckon already
1:17:01
oh they all think about it already i'm
1:17:03
pretty 100 sure they all think about it
1:17:05
of course you think like race after
1:17:07
races but for the french
1:17:09
to have a homework champ
1:17:11
it's
1:17:12
all they have on their minds
1:17:14
for sure yes so someone like laurie
1:17:19
i think i mean i mean he took the win at
1:17:20
clan gokula at the weekend seventh in
1:17:22
liargan last year
1:17:24
podium is that a good result for for
1:17:26
laurier or will he be gunning for the
1:17:28
win
1:17:31
i don't i'm not sure what laura did in
1:17:32
the past in exactly
1:17:37
yeah
1:17:38
see and if it's muddy you will love it
1:17:40
so much and will pull lines and nobody
1:17:42
pulls so it will be really like for sure
1:17:44
with the form he's in yeah
1:17:46
it would be better what i just said was
1:17:48
on the old bottom section which is
1:17:50
basically a different track yeah
1:17:52
yeah i'm not sure i can't remember
1:17:54
laurie didn't do world city in 2020 hurt
1:17:56
himself
1:17:57
yeah i can't remember where he was there
1:17:58
last year
1:18:00
so
1:18:01
laurie and benoit are tied for second in
1:18:03
the overall after two rounds on 289.
1:18:06
danny's next on 2-1-6 then matt walker
1:18:09
then finn and loris and tebow that's the
1:18:12
top eight
1:18:13
troy's injured loic's injured do you see
1:18:15
anyone else challenging for the top five
1:18:17
in the overall or do you think it's
1:18:18
going to come from from those just be
1:18:20
those guys now
1:18:23
i don't know like when you see from last
1:18:25
year
1:18:26
like
1:18:27
a little bit of weather
1:18:29
you get a good result and you get in the
1:18:30
top five i mean with the current like
1:18:32
point system
1:18:34
if you get like top tens constantly it's
1:18:36
not gonna get you anywhere so if you get
1:18:39
like this top five you can even with
1:18:41
probably with a like low egg
1:18:43
if you start like being the top three
1:18:45
all the time you'll be in the top five
1:18:46
overall for sure
1:18:51
i don't know i just knocking on the door
1:18:54
yeah i mean
1:18:55
i mean for lugang he's always been good
1:18:57
in lil gang hasn't he
1:18:59
so i don't forget him
1:19:01
not until he decides to forget us
1:19:03
so i'm i'm going for tebow in leo going
1:19:06
i think he's in that right position like
1:19:08
you said before about like he's he's
1:19:11
outside the top
1:19:12
top three or four
1:19:14
um because of that that crashing lords
1:19:17
he had some special lines on the top
1:19:19
section last year and he was first in
1:19:21
both two sec in the first two sectors so
1:19:24
i'm i'm going to but i think he'll
1:19:27
if he can stay on
1:19:30
i think loris i would like laura's to
1:19:32
win a race because
1:19:34
he's been riding so well and
1:19:37
i think
1:19:38
yeah
1:19:39
he's like the oh like all-around very
1:19:41
good rider and i think he's it's time
1:19:43
now that he pulls one out of the bag and
1:19:45
wins it
1:19:47
reese wilson won worlds that in league
1:19:50
in 2020 he was fourth last year
1:19:52
seventh in lords 17th in fort william
1:19:55
which having podium there in the past
1:19:57
was probably a bit disappointing for him
1:20:00
i think rhys is one of them riders i'm
1:20:01
sure he said it to himself george if his
1:20:03
head's not in it he ain't playing ball
1:20:05
um
1:20:07
and
1:20:08
i might be completely wrong here but
1:20:13
he's pretty sensible
1:20:15
and i he told me at the national that he
1:20:17
had a few knocks he was carrying and
1:20:19
i reckon in those conditions he's just
1:20:21
gone
1:20:22
i'm just gonna get some points and get
1:20:24
get the hell out of here um might might
1:20:26
be completely wrong um no i think you're
1:20:28
right because i've actually had the
1:20:30
conversation with um
1:20:33
with one of this team member
1:20:35
and
1:20:36
he was like well i don't know what to do
1:20:38
because
1:20:39
he told me he doesn't know what to do he
1:20:42
he was like
1:20:43
a little bit like
1:20:45
no recipe like to get faster he's
1:20:47
feeling like he's running good but like
1:20:49
you said maybe he's like hard and like
1:20:52
head was not in it
1:20:53
and he couldn't turn it around
1:20:55
but he still got 17. so i think it's
1:20:58
pretty decent oh god yeah um you know
1:21:00
chandra told me if he gets to 15 he'll
1:21:03
be real happy with it so he was not far
1:21:05
off yeah for sure yeah it's uh i think
1:21:07
he's one of them like i was saying
1:21:09
myself a couple of months ago i felt
1:21:10
like i was fast but it wasn't and then
1:21:13
once your head gets better
1:21:15
you don't actually feel like you're
1:21:16
trying that hard anymore but all of a
1:21:17
sudden you're going faster and i think
1:21:19
rhys is a little bit like that when it's
1:21:21
all clicking for him and especially when
1:21:23
it's technical
1:21:24
good luck to you like trying to beat the
1:21:26
guy but if he's not there mentally
1:21:29
i think he's he's just kind of like well
1:21:30
i'm just gonna look after myself here
1:21:32
that that would be my take on it whether
1:21:34
he would agree with that
1:21:35
he needs to have the fire yeah he
1:21:38
doesn't have the fire
1:21:40
he it's hard for him to perform at his
1:21:42
best at least yeah
1:21:44
so
1:21:45
you've both raced league a number of
1:21:48
times
1:21:49
you've done
1:21:50
i think i saw the results earlier emmy
1:21:52
you were you you seventh last year or
1:21:54
something like yeah yeah that's probably
1:21:57
one of my best race
1:21:59
and i was on a podium couple of times as
1:22:01
well there yeah what what does it take
1:22:03
to to win lee again or to do well in
1:22:05
lego
1:22:07
what's the key
1:22:09
i've always lost so much time at the top
1:22:11
a bit less now there's the first off
1:22:13
camber when it was all bike park i was
1:22:14
like oh
1:22:16
way off and then
1:22:17
kind of caught back in
1:22:20
in this more technical sections but um
1:22:22
[Music]
1:22:23
yeah there's like different products in
1:22:25
jackie channels like for sure for you
1:22:27
guys even worse like the motorway
1:22:29
depending on the wind
1:22:31
you either have to like squash it as
1:22:33
hard as you can
1:22:36
with backwind or like with your matara
1:22:38
is in the rain it's completely different
1:22:41
game
1:22:41
so um the weather always plays a big
1:22:44
part and there's like a couple like
1:22:47
gnarly gaps for you guys as well in the
1:22:49
stumps and like it's really interesting
1:22:51
track and
1:22:52
you need to be a well all run rider
1:22:56
to
1:22:57
to actually win especially now with that
1:22:59
new bottom section i think makes it so
1:23:01
interesting
1:23:03
yeah i would completely agree and for me
1:23:06
honestly for me it's i'd say it's the
1:23:08
hardest track on the circuit um
1:23:10
and
1:23:11
that's not hard as in hard to ride
1:23:15
but it's the hardest track on the
1:23:17
circuit to get the recipe right because
1:23:19
you have to be fast as hell at the top
1:23:22
like like you're just on a luge not
1:23:24
making any mistakes carrying momentum
1:23:26
everywhere and that stump section i was
1:23:29
talking to my mechanic about it today
1:23:31
i hate it so much i can't even describe
1:23:34
like
1:23:36
it's where i did my i hate it too
1:23:39
it's where i did my shoulder last year
1:23:41
i've had crashes there before
1:23:43
the roots are massive the stumps
1:23:45
everywhere the corner at the bottom is
1:23:47
always [ __ ] so you can't just press send
1:23:49
and just launch because then you can't
1:23:51
turn
1:23:52
and then you go
1:23:53
from that
1:23:55
onto the motorway so it's important how
1:23:56
much speed you carry out of that and now
1:23:59
you you do the motorway which is
1:24:01
obviously you have to be a scrubbing
1:24:03
king or a power king depending on the
1:24:04
weather you then dart straight or queen
1:24:07
sorry i mean and then you dart straight
1:24:09
into the woods
1:24:11
into the most technical wooded section
1:24:13
on the circuit so you've got every
1:24:15
little part that you need to get right
1:24:18
and um
1:24:20
yeah like
1:24:21
the weather then makes it interesting
1:24:23
and then yeah it's it's really difficult
1:24:25
so
1:24:26
yeah
1:24:28
so in the women's you talked about her
1:24:30
earlier emmy valley's on home turf
1:24:33
she famously crashed near the finish
1:24:35
last year and cami took it
1:24:37
is
1:24:38
valley the favorite do you think
1:24:41
well
1:24:43
the last two times there was a race here
1:24:45
the same person won and that's cam so
1:24:48
for me she's a favorite
1:24:50
but um
1:24:51
valley
1:24:52
is definitely hungry
1:24:55
and i think more hungry than anyone else
1:24:57
to take it there
1:24:59
because that
1:25:00
like she had two wins in snowshoe but
1:25:02
they were kind of like surprise wins
1:25:04
yeah you know so she wasn't expecting
1:25:06
too much of herself and now like
1:25:08
there's a lot of expectation but i don't
1:25:10
know she works well under
1:25:12
like that pressure
1:25:14
so we'll see i mean it's for me it's
1:25:17
calm valley and depending on miriam's
1:25:19
condition miriam
1:25:21
i would be surprised if um nina
1:25:24
can pull the same
1:25:27
type of result that she did in fort
1:25:30
william because it's a different type of
1:25:31
track but who knows
1:25:34
the reason i thought valley
1:25:37
ahead of cam was probably because cami's
1:25:39
leading the overall by 65 points now has
1:25:42
she started thinking about it weighing
1:25:45
yourself now
1:25:47
no i didn't
1:25:48
genuinely i thought yeah i know cami's
1:25:51
would hit the last two george read
1:25:52
george she read the script she wasn't
1:25:54
happy
1:25:55
[Laughter]
1:26:01
i'm just kidding i'm sorry carrie
1:26:05
but you're leading the overall as she
1:26:07
started thinking about it yeah is she is
1:26:09
she starting is she still trying to win
1:26:11
races or is she starting playing for
1:26:12
positions as well
1:26:15
um
1:26:16
it's kind of hard to to
1:26:19
explain that because i feel like she's
1:26:21
her writing style and her strategy and
1:26:24
the way she approach races is always on
1:26:26
consistency
1:26:28
like that's the way she wins races
1:26:31
so
1:26:32
i would be surprised if she like tries
1:26:35
more because that's not the way she won
1:26:37
races in the past so sometimes it
1:26:39
doesn't
1:26:40
it like sometimes like in fort william
1:26:43
it doesn't play out and she doesn't win
1:26:44
she gets seconds but
1:26:46
i think the the way she'd like approach
1:26:48
it it's like so towards an overall win
1:26:52
that i mean she doesn't have to change
1:26:54
anything
1:26:55
if it was up to me and the track is hard
1:26:57
enough
1:26:58
if it gets a little bit of weather to
1:27:00
just like try to be a little bit like
1:27:02
holding back and still that's how she
1:27:04
won the world championship so i don't
1:27:06
think she's gonna change anything
1:27:08
of course she wants to that's the only
1:27:10
thing that she hasn't won that's the
1:27:11
overall so obviously she wants it but
1:27:14
that's not the way she approaches team
1:27:16
so i don't think she's gonna change it
1:27:19
and
1:27:20
in the juniors jackson and jordan are
1:27:22
having a right battle
1:27:24
jackson was second last last year jordan
1:27:27
fourth does that give jackson the edge
1:27:29
this time around or do you think that
1:27:32
he edged him at fort william yeah i mean
1:27:34
honestly it's uh i was talking to
1:27:37
jordan's dad about this today because he
1:27:38
helps me and works with the team um
1:27:41
and i just think this junior season is
1:27:44
so exciting arguably
1:27:47
as exciting as the men's and the women's
1:27:48
like yeah because
1:27:51
what was it four hundredths of a second
1:27:53
between them it's insane and
1:27:55
jackson had almost a two second
1:27:57
advantage at split
1:27:59
three um
1:28:01
that is such good racing and the level
1:28:04
those guys are racing at
1:28:06
is top ten top five elite level anyway
1:28:09
so
1:28:10
yeah the fact they're pushing each other
1:28:12
that hard and then you've got remy mayor
1:28:14
smith who is not too far behind them
1:28:17
either um ready to slide either in
1:28:19
between them or in front of them if they
1:28:21
both make a mistake um
1:28:23
and as i said to steve is this gonna is
1:28:25
he gonna lift this game and all of a
1:28:27
sudden they have good runs and he beats
1:28:29
them so yeah it's really exciting and i
1:28:32
mean
1:28:33
i i wouldn't want to bet on either of
1:28:34
them 400th of a second like
1:28:37
you wouldn't want to put your money
1:28:37
either way would you no not fair and in
1:28:40
in the junior women
1:28:42
gracie hem street your tip at the start
1:28:44
start of the season if i remember
1:28:46
rightly i mean she's killing it
1:28:48
first year junior hasn't raced leah gang
1:28:50
before but that didn't stop her in fort
1:28:52
william
1:28:53
just how good is she
1:28:55
yes it's very good very very good um
1:28:59
i would say though
1:29:01
uh phoebe gale had a little bit of um
1:29:04
go around the road gap problem and
1:29:06
fought with him so i think she would
1:29:07
have won pretty easily if you didn't
1:29:09
have like
1:29:10
that was an issue for the junior woman
1:29:12
also for the woman now you see marine
1:29:14
like had to go around it because she
1:29:16
made a mistake just before so
1:29:18
um
1:29:18
[Music]
1:29:20
leo gang
1:29:21
it is it is an advantage if you raced it
1:29:24
before like for william and i think
1:29:26
phoebe gail is going to be hard to be if
1:29:28
it rains as well because i think she
1:29:30
might
1:29:31
be a little bit
1:29:33
better in the way maybe i'm wrong there
1:29:35
um
1:29:37
but gracie is very very good at like
1:29:39
bark bucky stuff well
1:29:40
where she comes from and stuff so i
1:29:42
don't know it will be
1:29:45
i was surprised with gracie in fort
1:29:46
william so maybe she's going to surprise
1:29:48
me again and she's a very good around
1:29:49
writer but i think my money is on phoebe
1:29:51
gill fully again
1:29:53
is gracie a first year i thought she was
1:29:55
the second year and she's the second
1:29:56
year yeah
1:29:57
she'd just done a couple last year yeah
1:29:59
all right okay
1:30:01
sorry my error yeah that's right
1:30:04
cool well thank you very much both for
1:30:05
your time it's been as insightful as
1:30:07
ever
1:30:08
before we go out i just have to mention
1:30:10
the the national at clangolan steve pete
1:30:12
raced in the vets category with us and
1:30:15
it was bloody amazing will london pushed
1:30:18
him close but he took the win and our
1:30:19
team riders neil white and dave list
1:30:21
took third and fifth respectively and i
1:30:23
know it meant a lot to to them both to
1:30:25
share a podium with petey so a nice one
1:30:27
dude for doing that hopefully we'll see
1:30:29
you in the start gate again soon
1:30:32
and also
1:30:33
i have to mention this because i i've
1:30:34
never known it happened before i'm sure
1:30:36
it has
1:30:37
but my good friend and great rival binzi
1:30:39
and i had a right old battle and in our
1:30:41
race runs we both posted two minutes 44
1:30:45
seconds
1:30:46
.554 so you literally couldn't separate
1:30:48
us this weekend either you ever
1:30:51
ever heard of that before
1:30:53
it had
1:30:54
happened to me
1:30:56
yeah
1:30:57
me and um
1:31:00
oh my god it was in legend it was when
1:31:03
leger had crank quirks
1:31:05
and me and casey brown placed
1:31:08
uh on the rdh at the exact same time
1:31:11
and i don't know if they had the time
1:31:13
that precise but yeah we have to share
1:31:14
second place
1:31:17
so it's probably more common than i
1:31:18
think then but
1:31:20
away from the elites there are these
1:31:22
little battles going on and everywhere
1:31:24
steve steve pete and will london
1:31:26
kneeling listing me and bins at me and
1:31:28
binsey and i'm sure everyone who races
1:31:30
us the road it is what makes racing so
1:31:32
fun and so special and finally just a
1:31:35
quick shout out to world of brian and
1:31:36
jax mates ben newton aka we ride m2b
1:31:40
ben's a fantastic skills coach and guide
1:31:42
but he had a big one a few weeks back i
1:31:44
know he listens to the pod a lot and
1:31:46
he's uh he's helped him get through a
1:31:48
few weeks in hospital so i just wanted
1:31:50
to say get well soon buddy hopefully a
1:31:51
bit of a break we'll give you a chance
1:31:53
to reflect on your decision to ditch the
1:31:55
downhill foreign and we'll see you back
1:31:56
on the start line real soon
1:31:58
that's all we've got time for in this
1:31:59
episode thanks to the sponsors of the
1:32:01
show hope technology jtech suspension
1:32:03
revolution bike park ride southern spain
1:32:05
schwalbe and singletrackworld.com as
1:32:08
always if you're enjoying the podcast
1:32:09
please subscribe so you don't miss an
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1:32:12
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1:32:20
that's it for this episode enjoy leo
1:32:22
gang everyone
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