Tales from the Final Two World Cups: The Debrief

They all said exactly the same thing, but the intensity and pressure of rating now is quite a bit higher than it was back in the days of protected writers. Which I think makes the rating more interesting, more dynamic, makes the feeder more interesting, but it also I think grinds the ratings. I I suspect that they have shorter overall careers now than they did in today's Steve Pete's time.

Hello and welcome. This is the NSMB podcast. I'm Pete Rogeman. I'm your host today. I am joined by AJ Barless. Say hello, AJ. Hello, how's it going? Going great, buddy. And we're also here with Mike Ferentino. Say hi, Mike.

Hello, Mike.

Good stuff. Well, thanks for joining us today, both of you. We thought it would be fun to sit down and chat uh a little bit now as the World Cup season has wrapped up for 2026. And you both had some pretty unique experiences, in particular, to uh complete the season there from Whistler to Lake Placid.

And we want to hear a little bit about what you both experienced. So just to quickly recap for everybody, AJ, you were covering the Whistler World Cup and then the Lake Placid World Cup as a photographer, B zone access, the whole deal. And then on Mike's side, we want to hear a little bit more from his experience embedded with the Canyon factory racing team up at Whistler.

And that's something that Mike, uh, you're working on writing about right now. But we thought there's probably a couple sneaky little stories you can fill us in on and some other stuff that we can get into that should be pretty interesting for people to hear about as they get ready to read your upcoming articles.

So let's let's jump in, guys. I think we'll start with you, AJ. Why don't you take us through before we get to the World Cup? Do you want to just just talk to us a little bit about your summer? You spent a lot of weekends on the side of race courses. Just just let us know what you've been up to a little bit and what your summer looked like.

Yeah, uh, I guess my summer really kicked off when the Dunbar Summer series got going over in Fernie, BC. Uh, that was part of the BC Cups. Uh, some of them were Canada Cups. It's confusing. I don't even know myself what they all what body they all worked with. But uh yeah, the downhill racing scene in in Canada and BC with the amount of mountains we have is obviously a prominent part of that.

Um, is really big right now. And as a race fan, I always wanted to be track side shooting, but my goal was always the World Cups, and I was like, why am I jumping straight to the upper levels of the sport and not like supporting the grassroots races that are trying to get to there as well? Um, so I guess I took it as a like growing thing to develop my own skills and get to know the riders who are building themselves to the World Cup stage as well.

Um, and it was awesome like meeting all the juniors and all the people who are consistently hitting each of those races and um the other photographers that were there and the families, like it's a big family thing, so you meet a lot of the parents and stuff like that too. And um the summer series is great because it's condensed, so it was I think it was a bit over seven days for the actual three summer series races, and then there was about four or five days between the last round and the national championships, which was held in Sun Peaks, where the last round of the summer series was held as well.

Um so yeah, it was it was almost three weeks on the go living out of the car and and shooting and walking trackside all day every day. It was it was pretty sweet actually. Like life was really easy, and you just plugged away at what you had to do and didn't worry about anything else. It was just don't know what's happening in the world, we're just doing this.

So um, yeah, that was cool.

Yeah, nice. And and then, of course, you covered the race at Crankworks down the 1199, which served as a preview, of course, for for a World Cup. And I I guess just to back up a little bit, I mean, I don't remember exactly when it was that we spoke, but you you and I were on the phone and you said, Look, there's World Cup's coming.

Uh, you know, I want to go shoot some Canada Cups. I'd love to shoot nationals, etc. Can we figure out a way? And you know, we worked that out. But you you sort of were you had uh the end of September Whistler circled on your calendar and were thinking about how that was going to go a little bit before we all were, and you sort of said, Hey, I I want to be out there shooting, let's get this, let's get this going.

And then we chatted about it. And why don't you just detail a little bit what it was like following some of those Canadians through the BC Canada Cup uh circuit? And then some of for some of them, for a decent number of them, of course, they were also racing uh at Whistler World Cup, which was a big deal for for everybody.

So how cool was that to see some of them you know building through their season, get to know some of them a little bit, and and did you see some progression specifically with some of some of those riders as they geared up for what for a lot of them would have been the biggest race of their lives?

For sure. With some of the juniors, there's like a massive growth going on through their whole summer. Um, and in speaking with them in the last week, it's it's uh they may not have had the results or gotten gotten as far as they wanted to the last couple of rounds, Whistler and Lake Placid, but they're super thankful and gracious about what they've learned in that process, and and they're super stoked to get going next year.

Um I think the the crankworks whistler event was a little bit different because you still got quite a bit of track time, like practice time was almost I can't remember how they split it up, but they were they were practice for over a day and a half. So like the first day was a half day of practice, and then a full day, and then I think they had another half a day essentially before racing.

Um, and that was something I learned from particularly one of the juniors, Jenna Foreman. She shared with me that uh uh getting used to the limited track time, she called it at the World Cups is a bit of a process. Um, not something I would have considered as a photographer standing on the sidelines, you're still standing around for eight, nine hours of the day.

Um but yeah, for them it's far less practice time than they're used to on a BC carp or uh, and I believe current works as well.

Yeah, that's interesting. What what other differences did you notice? I mean, whether it's the the way the tracks were set up, uh, you know, difficulty, speed, number of features, etc., or other ways in which the races were run from a you know from smaller national level or even provincial level race to uh to a World Cup race.

Yeah, um the length of the BC Cup tracks is longer than the World Cup tracks. Um the Sun Peaks, national champs track, for example, was uh I it was over four and a half minutes for the the winning times in some of the categories. I can't remember what the men did it in. I think they went just sub-four.

Um, and Gracie was saying there that it's like so long and so hard on her that way. Um, she did make a comment at one point, track side, that it was harder than a World Cup track, but what she meant was that the amount of effort you had to put in to keep the speed going, because it's not the same sort of steepness that they're used to in Europe, um, and then the length that they had to do that for.

So that was interesting to hear. Like the World Cups, I guess, and even uh Whistler and like Placid were both being called relatively flat. Um, yeah, and you hear that in many of the interviews, they say, like, even Whistler, they're like, it's heaps flatter. And I'm like, I don't know about that. Like, there's like a couple of sections that are pretty flat, but maybe those little reprieves from smashing down the hill aren't there on the European tracks.

Um, but yeah, it's pretty crazy to think that uh even Placid, like Placid was super high speed, it was flatter, but there weren't that many like just full flat spots. But yeah, I guess Europe's just steeper. I don't watching it on TV, you don't get that. Like I thought we were on par. I thought Whistler was on par with what I see on TV for Europe, but yeah, it sounds like it's uh it's another level again, and they don't need to pedal anywhere near as much over there.

That did seem to be that job with what I was hearing at Whistler, and it's interesting to note that like one, uh the tracks are almost a minute longer, some of the ones you're talking about, uh, for the racers to complete. And the World Cups are all nowadays being done in about three and a half minutes and for the pro man.

Um the discussion of how the whistler track was flat and steep, flat and steep it was difficult for them to find rhythm in it. And then Lake Placid was considered fast but flat, and you know, played into Luke Meyer Smith's hands really well. But yeah, it was definitely a peddly course that is different than most of the European courses, it seems like.

Yeah, I mean LMS was saying that his his tactic for that race was just to pedal everywhere that others weren't, and that's what he reckons got him the win. So yeah, it's definitely like being on the side of the track. I didn't think oh, it's gonna it's a peddly track or anything, but I'm also just so focused on what looks cool and flat stuff generally doesn't look cool.

But I never found myself on the track thinking, oh, this is all flat and shit, I need to find somewhere better. So it's uh yeah, definitely surprised me when I heard that they were saying things like that about that and whistler.

As um, as media guy covering these events, like how is it gaining access to uh to get it to become a photographer at a World Cup event? Describe the difference in the hoops you have to jump through as opposed to showing up at a BC event.

Um in some ways the BC event was harder to get sorted for, and in other ways it was easier. So I don't know if Stephen Exley will like me saying it, but he organizes the BC, he organized the Dunbar ones. Um, and I found you could just walk up the side of the track and start taking photos. Whether that's what he wants to happen or not, I don't know.

Um I asked him if I could work with his team and he didn't have any space, so I was just like, okay, I'm just gonna go off and start shooting. There were family members out there doing the same thing, like mums who are graphic designers and know how to handle a camera and stuff like that. So there was a little bit of um just general public up there doing stuff as well, and he had uh Sarah Kemper, who was his main photographer at most of I think all of them, and then Clint Trahand came in for I think from round two or three of the summer series and went through to nationals.

So he had a couple of paid guns out there, um, and they had media bibs and everything, but yeah, the marsh the only thing about that was the marshals would look at me with all my gear on, and I didn't have a media bib or anything, so they might tell me to get off the track, but you would just go up the ski run a little further and dive in somewhere else.

So um, as far as the World Cup goes, uh you may be able to do it without um a media outlet supporting you. For me, it seems having the support of NSMB to be there is really helpful. They like seeing that um legit online presence uh that you're producing stuff for. Um but they're very official. Like you go there, you get a lanyard with your your card on it, you get a bib.

Um Whistler and Lake Placid, both of them had lift passes as part of that lanyard uh card, press card, whatever you want to call it. Um which was awesome. I didn't have access to lift to I didn't have lift access at uh any of the BC cups, so there's a lot more walking involved. I walked up every track and then down.

Um so that was conditioning, I guess, but it was still hard walking down all day with a lift going up. It just meant it just meant I could focus on things a bit differently, I guess. But yeah, so easier, easier in the sense that a BC Cup you can just show up and shoot, but the organization side at a World Cup means that you have better access to the track via lifts and stuff like that.

Does it does it hamper you or hinder you? I guess I should rephrase that. But at the World Cups, then it also it gives you access to parts of the track that the general public can't really get into, right? Like you can get on the other side of the tape in places and or at least on the other side of the crowd control fencing and get you don't have to worry about wrestling your way through, like in the rock garden, thousands of James Law waving spectators.

Yeah.

Yeah, uh that is a pretty significant difference. The BC Cups didn't have a B zone. A lot of the time there wasn't even a way to walk next to the track, so you had to walk on the track to get to certain pieces of it, which can be sketchy. I mean, you don't want everyone with a camera going out and doing that, but I've also been shooting racing in events since like 2012 or something.

So although I hadn't done a lot of World Cups, it's not new to me. And I I've worked with the EWS before and I know just to get the hell out of the way and not be on the track. So um, but you learn to use the whistles. Like if the marshals aren't blowing the whistles, it can it can be quite sketchy. So you hear the whistles coming down the track and you know someone's coming, you're out of the way.

Like you're not, I don't know, you're you're like running up or down the track for a quick section, you're not on for a period, but uh you're listening for any sort of bike noise and any sort of whistle, and then it doesn't matter where it comes from, you're just out of the way as soon as you hear something, and then you're reassessing.

Um the B zones were good, it was interesting. Lake Placid's B zones were massive, so the spectators weren't as loud as close to the track as they were in Whistler, and it was actually something that the spectators were complaining about in Lake Placid. I don't know if they said anything to the officials, but among themselves, one of my best friends was there as a spectator, and he was talking to people consistently, and they were complaining about how far from the track they were in many of the sections.

Um, and apparently it wasn't like that last year from some of the chats that he had. So I don't know what happened there, but uh they were overly large. Like there was to me, it just looked like before I heard any of that, I was like, wow, these B zones are huge, we don't need this much space. And a lot of it looked like it was just the easiest way for them to run the tape, the the mountain when they set it up, just ran it like that because it was easier for them to do than to go closer to the track or whatever.

Um, so that's a bit of a bummer for the spectators. Like, you know, they're getting relatively close to the action, but in some sections they just couldn't really see it. Whereas Whistler, it was like, I think they nailed it with their spectator zone for sure. Like, people were really close, they could see so much of the track.

Yeah, it really allowed spectators to get in there.

On Friday at Whistler Mike, when we were walking down the track, practice day when it was wet. Actually, maybe it was quality day because the track was still wet then, and there were multiple people who had mud splatter up their chests from being close enough to the track that rider roost was hitting them.

Right, right.

Um, which is that's I think you're close enough if you're getting roosted by the racers going by. Yeah. Um AJ, this is not new for you shooting racing, um, as you said, at a high level, but spending uh the week at Whistler and then at Lake Placid, like you did. Did you pick up some some tricks, some little things from some of the grizzled veterans out there?

The you know, the the Svens and Borises, etc., who who have been doing this for some time?

Um not so much. Uh I'd say most of the stuff I picked up was just little things like not hiding behind a tree on a section that's close to the track because you'll frighten the rider or just weak him out a little bit. Um yeah, more about positioning than like camera work or anything like that. Um, but it is cool.

Like, I don't know, as a I guess an aspiring World Cup photographer, like hanging out with my idols, I guess you could say, like Sven and uh Dave Trumpoor, they've both helped me out so much over the years, and to actually be able to hang out trackside with them a bit more and have our lunch break, getting, I mean, I'm the new guy, so I'm getting heckled and stuff, but it was all it was literally fun.

And uh yeah, I don't know, like it was really just more about positioning and and like uh just not to get in the writer's way a little bit extra. Because coming from the BC Cup, it was so so laid back all summer. I felt like at by the end of the BC Cup, I felt like I was the guy, like I knew what I was doing, I could go wherever I wanted to do, uh go wherever I wanted and get what I needed, and I was one of three people out there shooting for something.

So um little fish, big pond is I guess what was happening at the World Cup. I was just another pleb on the hill with a camera in his hand. Um so yeah, like just and I guess learning not to get in other people's shots too. There's so many that you walk in, you're like, oh, this looks like a cool shot, and you turn around, there's someone behind you, and you're like, I can't take that one, or someone will yell at you, hey, I'm I'm lined up here, you didn't see them.

So there's a lot more of that. It'll be the same at Hardline next week, where you can't just go and grab the shot you think you want because you've got to consider the other photographers trying to get their shot too.

Is there a pecking order, or is it just so and so is set up, don't get in there, don't get in their way.

As far as not getting in their way, anyone. It doesn't matter who it is. Like if you get in Boris's way, he'll let you know real quick. Like he'll be shouting at you. And thankfully that wasn't me at all this time. But I've had him yell at me when I was at Monson Amp for World Champs a couple years ago.

Um, I didn't realize I was setting up to shoot the step down into the finish corral there, and all the photographers were behind me with the crowd surrounding them, so I didn't even see them. And I just it took me a while because it's so loud, but eventually I heard that people were yelling at me to get out of there.

Um, and it was Boris and a couple other guys, and Sven was there too. He gave me shit when I got up to him, like friendly, but yeah, gave me gave me a hard time. Yeah. Um, but yeah, he's I definitely heard Boris yelling at people here, uh, sorry, at Lake Placid, and then uh Trump was pretty vocal too.

Like, you know, these guys are that's their career, so if you're getting in the way, they're gonna let you know. Um and then the lesser-known people, maybe because you don't know them as well or something, they just they seem to a lot of the time just get get on with it. But you do get told to get out of the way by everyone and anyone.

But as far as like pecking order goes, maybe it's just because those are names, like there are the people like uh I can't think of any right now, but there are the big photographers who you recognize their names, but you don't recognize them, like you don't see them as much as because like Sven and Boris are personalities of the sport these days, they're not just photographers.

Um, and even like the Marshalls, like Dave. Want to practice on the hill in Lake Placid Marshalls were asking me if uh Sven or Boris were around, and I was like, Oh, so even the Marshalls are like looking for these people.

Kind of trip, isn't it? Celebrity photographers. Um and and Sven really was sort of the vanguard of that. Probably taught Boris how to yell at people.

Yeah, fully. Can you compare shooting Whistler versus Lake Placid a little bit from your perspective? I mean, we can we can read your articles about the races themselves and see how the different days developed and that sort of thing. But what struck you about one versus the other? I mean, you you talked, let's start with the crowd.

You know, how was the crowd at Lake Placid versus Whistler? Uh for those of us that weren't there. Um, but but also just what what was the experience like for you one versus the other?

Uh yeah, starting with the crowd first, uh Flacid would be a good one for the Placid crowd. Ouch. No, but it I mean they had energy, but it was minuscule compared to Whistler. Um there are a good chunk of people showing up in the mornings in the top rock garden, like right out of the start hut. Uh the chair placid did a good job in having a chair lift running for spectators only, and the gondola was running for riders only, so everyone was separated, you could come and go a lot quicker.

Um, my mate that was here for Whistler said that there was often more of a line here. The crowd was bigger in Whistler, but also because you had to share the lift with the bikes, obviously they get priority, so the the spectator line just kept getting held back. Um, whereas in Lake Placid, having a dedicated chair was just on and off real quick.

And then the top of the track was a pretty steep walk off that chair, but not very long, like five or ten minutes. So you had some people hanging out in that rock garden. I wasn't there when racing started, I had to be further down, but it seemed like they were up there during finals too. I heard chatter about the crowd in the first rock garden.

And then there'd be people spread here and there, but they had like a I guess a mid-station restaurant where it was the LLB booter in the broadcast where they come out on the ski run and hit that step down into a berm and then they fly down this motorway. So you get a lot of people hanging out there too, because there was food and music and stuff like that there.

So that was a good vibe as well. And there was another chairlift that took them there, so they could take a chair straight to that and you could download from there too. So some of the photogs in that were on race day hitting the top of the track and then quickly downloading to the bottom so they could start getting all the finished corral stuff.

Um, so that was pretty sweet. Like essentially, they had three chairlifts running on the mountain just for the World Cup, which is awesome. But yeah, the crowd size just didn't compare to Whistler, and again, we've all heard it now. You guys talked about it in the last podcast, but the Whistler crowd was big, and talking to veterans on the World Cup, they're all saying the same thing, like the Whistler crowd was big.

I heard a rumor, not a rumor, I heard the other day someone said that it was potentially bigger than Lege, which is crazy because Lege we see is just the pinnacle of crowd size and energy. So that's pretty uh pretty cool to hear.

Okay, good stuff. Thanks, AJ. Uh, I think lots of cool things there, and I'm looking forward to hearing a little bit about these racers that you've followed this year and seeing how they progress next year. I know that we've got high hopes for some of those. Mike, why don't we hear from you a little bit?

Uh could you just for those who who didn't listen in before, or maybe we didn't cover it in enough detail, tell us what what was lined up for you, what you were doing uh with the Canyon team during the Whistler World Cup, and then maybe we can get into chatting about that a little bit.

So um, yeah, I I was invited to be embedded with the Canyon team for the Whistler event, which was a little nerve-wracking at the outset just because I'm I'm one who kind of like steers clear of proteins. Like I want them just to be able to do their job, and I'll be a spectator and a fan and leave it at that and not really be in the inner workings of it.

And I wasn't sure what level of access they would give us or what the chemistry would be like. I don't know what the internal chemistry of the team and dynamic of the team was, nor how they'd accept outsiders. So there were there were some questions and trepidations on my end beforehand. And I mean, this is the first time I've held a media pass at an event since I don't know, 2000.

Um so it was uh it was a little interesting to kind of jump back into that world and uh and and was ultimately really fascinating. I I learned a lot, not just about the the dynamics within a team, how the individual athletes adapt to conditions, and I you know we hung out with the mechanics for a long time, talking about everything from their preferred method of cutting wet screams to how they pack bikes, to how much they hate certain work stands.

Um, it was highly informative, and hopefully much of that will be able to go on record. Um fascinating with how they deal with bike setup in this current World Cup environment, which I think is probably all the teams are in the same boat to some degree. Like there's not a lot of room to improvise during the season.

You don't get to mess around with setup a whole lot. Like you have to get to an event and get up to speed immediately. AJ was talking about that just before with like the you know, the Canada Cups or the BC Cups, they have multiple days of practice. You know, at the World Cups now, you have one practice day and then it's qualities and then it's racerun.

And you can there are some practices on race day, and I think you get practices on quality day, but it's it's a pressure cooker. They have to be up to race speed almost immediately. Um, and whether I was talking to Lucas Shaw or Alitha Osgard or Troy Brosnan or Henry Kiefer or Marine Kabarou, they all said exactly the same thing about the intensity and pressure of racing now is quite a bit higher than it was back in the days of protected riders.

Um which I think makes the racing more interesting, more dynamic, makes the season more interesting, but it also I think grinds through racers. I I suspect that they have shorter overall careers now than they did in, say, Steve Pete's time.

Uh yeah, I suppose that's fair to say. Sorry to cut you off there.

No, no. But I'm talking fast. Uh so that was an aspect of it that was really, you know, um interesting, seeing seeing how the team dissects a track during track walk. I've never been on a track walk. It was the first time I got to do that in my life. And that, like each athlete within a team has their own way of committing that track to memory.

Then most of them have the tracks memorized before they even get to them. But then there's just these little micro adjustments that they're making as they're walking together. And sometimes they're communicating with each other and like collaborating about line choice and what they want to do in certain sections and where the fast line's gonna be in the dry and where the fast line's gonna be in the wet.

But then, you know, they've got Fabian Burrell standing over them, also basically, you know, he's the race dad, telling them what he thinks about it, and it's interesting to see uh how they absorb that advice, how they work with it, sometimes how they will argue about it right there on the track, like no, no, this isn't where we should be going, this is what we did back in July.

And um, again, the the the amount of preparation, the amount of just intense micro-scrutiny of every aspect of how they're racing is uh it's really interesting from uh from a spectatorial viewpoint, it's probably really intense from being inside a team viewpoint. Um they they don't they don't really leave anything to chance.

And you know, whether it's their training leading up to the event, whether it's the mechanical prep of the bikes coming to the event, whether it's Gabe Fox's strategizing of how to dominate airs airplane storage holds going from Whistler to New York, um they think about everything. Everything is being considered and weighed as advantage and disadvantage at all times.

That's one of my favorite anecdotes from the week. And I imagine you're gonna write about it a little bit, but do you want to just explain a little bit what you're talking about there with Gabe Fox and the managing cargo space? Because that's that's a good one.

Yeah, I don't know how much of it would make it in the story either, because it kind of becomes its own just like segue. But like so, Gabe's been around for a long time. I mean, and from from the from Cove, from Cove bike shop days, right? You can look back at race results from the 90s and you see him in there.

Um, and then he's been involved in team management from free ride through Enduro and downhilling, Steve Smith time at Da Vinci to being instrumental with the Canyon team since it started about 10 years ago. And he has a he loves racing. Like he he is watching all the races all the time. The juniors at regional races, everyone at World Cup level.

He just he loves racing. And he has this encyclopedic mind that has everybody's performances year by year in his head. And I think he treats the management of the team and the logistics of the team in the same way where he's accumulated this wealth of experience, and he then treats it like it's part of racing.

You know, that I'm not I don't want to put words in his mouth there, but so this came up when Dennis and I had been sitting around with the mechanics, and then we're outside talking with the gay, just about like, okay, so you've got this homecoming, this is this important thing for you, this is Whistler, but then you have to be in New York in a week.

And so I take it, you're not driving. So no, no. Um we fly out, and I was like, so where do you fly into? Because we're looking at maps, and we've got Albany, New York is probably the closest airport to Lake Placid, or you could fly into Burlington, but then you have to drive all the way around this lake and get there, and he goes, Oh no, no, no, fuck that.

You go from Vancouver to Toronto, it's it's a direct flight. I go, Oh, but why? He goes, it's not that much of a drive, and it's a direct flight. You always want the direct flight. Take the shortest route possible and the biggest plane you can. You need the 777s. Like, what are you talking about? He goes, 777s, they got the biggest cargo hold of anything that's out there right now.

So you look for the direct things. So Vancouver, Air Canada's probably got five of those things flying to Toronto every day. Alaska probably has a couple, WestJet does. There's plenty to choose from. There's about 16 of us here. So every single one of us can reserve two bike spaces. And if we do that, that's 32 bicycles on that 777 that we reserved.

That maxes out its capacity to carry bicycles. No other bicycles can get on that plane. So he didn't say these words. So specialized with whoever are gonna have to go find their own damn plane at that point. Even but they're not gonna put 32 bikes on the plane. They don't have 32 bikes, they've got four downhillers, five downhillers, and that's 10 bikes.

They have two bikes apiece.

Two race bikes, or is it or do they they take a trail bike too, though, right?

Yeah, but they've probably got those everywhere.

unknown Sure.

Okay, let's say they let's say they got three bikes apiece. That's still 15 bikes. They are not gonna go near that 32-bike reservation that they've made, but they've effectively cockblocked anyone else from getting on that plane. And then he's just like, yeah, we made our reservation five months ago.

And it's just like that level, I get it. Like I know that they're highly organized, but all the teams are doing some version of that too. And I'm convinced of it. Like there is no scrappy little upstart, sloppy bad news bears of the downhill world at the moment. Like, everyone's running a pretty tight ship.

And the people that are running those tight ships are people like you know, you've got Fabian Burrell, three-time world champion, and Gabe Fox, who's been involved with many world championship efforts. And that's just the Canyon team. And then you look at the giant team, like their mechanic, Matt Eames.

Like, I have known Matt since he was a mechanic for Shimano at World Cups in the 90s. And every team has these giants in it. We're walking past the specialized booth, just Roskops there, talking fin aisles down off the ledge. And there's uh a lot of very experienced voices. Steve Pete at Whistler, he's out on the course, probably spotting lines for his son who was racing juniors.

Um, yeah, there's a wealth of information that's being put to bear out there from like just years and years, decades of experience.

Shandrone's been at track forever, too. Right.

Kathy Sessler and Minar at Norco.

That experience you bring up is a good point, too, because uh I flew direct to Montreal, but the planes wouldn't have been the same size as the direct flights to Toronto, they were quite small.

Right.

So he he like knows that that that route has bigger planes because there's more people doing it and they need more cargo space. Like yeah, and I would have been like, oh, direct to Montreal, just do that.

And I can only imagine that you you you have to go through trial and error to get to that. Like you're when you're first traveling around, you're looking for the most, the closest airport, and then at some point you're like, okay, what's really the biggest logistics we can move? Because we've got a bunch of moving pieces, and can we put them all in one place and shuffle them all at the same time?

Um I never thought of that though.

Yeah, neither. I looked for the nearest railport. That wasn't gonna cost a fortune.

And I mean, there's there's logistical considerations for for someone in your case, AJ, of course, with your photo gear, right? But uh yeah, the thought of moving a team around like that. I mean, Mike, tell us about tell us about the mechanics and the and the wheels.

Well, there's yeah, so the mechanics travel with hubs. Wheels would just take up a lot of room and be a total pain in the ass. And the way there will be some wheels that go, the wheels that are on the bikes, and I'm guessing at least a backup set or two. But basically, at an event, each athlete has about five sets of wheels that they have access to.

And at the beginning of the event, they'll all have fresh tires, or there might be one set with wets. There isn't a lot of variation. They've got cut wet screams or they're running ASCII DHRs. Sometimes they'll run some of the other minions, but by and large, they know what the riders want, they trust the casings, and they just know their tires and they don't mess around with it too much.

So you have your sets of wheels all built at the beginning of the event. And then let's say you smoke a rim or you rip some sidewalls or whatever, or you know, you tear some knots, or you've just you've used a tire. So that first fresh set of wheels, if they're not trashed, become the backup wheels. And then the ride is on to the next set of wheels.

So they get a new set of wheels put on their bike every run. The tires are glued to the rims, and that means you can't change tire or you can't like fix a rim. You just cut that whole thing out and go on to the next wheel set. So they're constantly rotating through, keeping what the good clean wheels are, and whatever the most smoked rim tire combo is is getting cut out and rebuilt.

So they just travel with hubs. And there will be rims and tires waiting for them at their destination.

Not to mention spokes and nipples and all that. But yeah, if it's so they're not, they're not setting up tires, they're building wheels.

And and that's sort of their that's their beginning ritual of a of a World Cup week, is they're they were all stoked in Whistler because even though I was thinking they'd be bummed because they didn't have their big truck set up like they do in Europe, they're operating out of tents, but they're in this really nice condo, and they're sitting in a living room in these comfortable chairs, they got their chewing stands, they're building wheels.

And they're like, you know, a lot of times we're standing outside in the rain having to do this. This is great. And yeah, it just uh that's that's the drill is like you build the wheels and then you get onto the bikes, and the riders start trashing the wheels and then you start rebuilding them.

I love that. So, so Mike, you you show up. Uh I think it ended up being Tuesday, right? With Dennis. Literally, I think you went over to the to the house where the team was staying. Go in, introduce yourself yourself, start sitting down and chatting. I mean, take us through what it was like going from meeting most of these folks for the first time to it's it sounds like within a couple hours, you know, they they know what kind of how you take your coffee and you were you felt like you'd really been brought aboard.

I mean, just walk us through what that was like a little bit because you are almost invading what is of quite a private atmosphere, right? And a and a tight-knit team. And they're yeah, so yeah, tell us how that went.

So, you know, it's like I again, I'm also not really the most um effusive outgoing personality. I'm always a little bit nervous when I'm entering someone else's space, and it's a house with all these athletes who are here for a World Cup, and yeah, you just don't want to mess their schedules up too much.

But Gabe had kind of told us that he'd organize blocks of time and we we could talk to the athletes when the athletes were ready. So still, Dennis and I were like, oh, here we are. Um, so we just sat down in the living room where the mechanics were, and I think the mechanics were wondering what the hell was going on first.

Um, but then we started talking to him, and at some point they kind of caught into the fact that Dennis is a shop mechanic and that I know how to build wheels, used to be a shop mechanic, and then then we just started nerding out about wheels, then bike setup, and they just began divulging all the things, and it was great.

They had a really good conversation with mechanics, got to figure out sort of the team dynamic and how they, you know, the athletes don't all hang out all year as a team, the mechanics don't hang out all year as a team. They often work in groups of one or two, and or you know, groups of two and and their riders.

So you sort of get to see what the interpersonal relationships are, and at that point it was like they're pretty damn comfortable with each other. This is a group of people who have been working together for years and they know each other and they know what the ins and outs of the team are going to be.

They know the dynamics and behaviors and whims of the athletes. Meanwhile, they've got this super bomber house, they've got Gabe running running the trains, they've got Fabian running the athletes, they've got this guy, Andrea, who his job is a course spotter, but he also helps out as a cook, and he's a really good cook.

You know, bean pasta. Um they just yeah, it's it's uh very it it felt more informal than I would have expected for one, the size of the company, the size of the team, and the relative levels of pressure that were coming to bear for the weekend.

Do you do you think that some of that was for a lot of them just how they helped displace some of that pressure? Or were you just in the presence of people who are professionals and that that is their reality? You're at the end of the season. Um I think safe to say it's been a successful season for that team, and most of them will have finished thinking it was a successful campaign.

But you know, is that just the way they are? Or do you think there's talk to on that team?

Well, yeah. Um I mean, as a team, I bet they wanted to win the overall. Um and common sense. All damn them, damn you, Max. Um, and as individual athletes, I think some of them were coming into this event with quite a bit of pressure and didn't really um didn't meet their own expectations or hopes for the event, and then went to New York, and that may not have gone as well as some of them wanted either.

Uh I I would think that there's five riders on that team. Two of them for sure had awesome seasons and awesome ends to the season. Oh one of them over-under depending which event it was. Um lucky that he walked away from Whistler. And two of them might have some question marks about the last two events.

Okay. Yeah, fair. I felt like it was very much like business as usual. I don't and even talking to the athletes, I didn't think I got any impression from them of like this is extra special or not. They just they're doing their jobs and they know what their jobs are and they're good at it. And yeah, they seemed pretty calm and collected and in control of what they were doing.

We had a conversation before this began, and we sat down with Sebastian, who works in marketing for Canyon. And it was there was an interesting point at which one of you two, I forget who brought it up, one of you two said, you know, there are racers that are racers, and there are racers that are mountain bikers.

Yeah.

Meaning there are some who are just born to race and go fast, but when the race season's over, they may, you know, they they may have other things that they're super passionate about. Yeah. And then there are racers who, you know, the final race of the year may be over and they go and ride their mountain bike some more.

Yeah. Yeah.

Did you did you gain some insights into what some of some of those members of the team where they fall in that category?

I thought I did, but then by the end of the week, I don't think I knew anymore. Um I I think I think Luca for sure is a mountain biker. Um, but then again, he's also a racer. Like every single one of them is a racer. That might be something that Sebastian didn't quite um paint in on that. They're all they've all been racing for a very long time.

Everyone on that team has been racing since they were children. And and that shows um, you know, the youngest team member there, Aletha, she's been racing since she was 12. Maybe she wasn't so much a mountain biker, because she describes not really enjoying riding all that much when she first started, but you know, her family was into it, and she got taken to all these Northwest Cup events and then forced into racing downhill, and then now it's just won the junior World Cup overall by a pretty staggering margin.

Um without winning a race. No, she won. She won the overall without winning a race, I think.

Not true. She won, I think, three. Oh really?

I thought she won well uh there was something about it.

It was it was sort of a seesaw podium battle for her all all year. And she and she won Whistler. And also put in a time that was what almost four seconds faster than Valley Holes. That's right, you're right. But so you know, uh Luca for sure, mountain biker. I think Troy's a mountain biker. Troy has gone and done some some off-World Cup events, and I think he really enjoys riding his bike.

I think also at the moment, though, he's becoming one of the elder statesmen of the downhill circuit, and I think he's working, and I think maybe he's more of a racer than a mountain biker at this point. But that's I don't want to put words in his mouth on that one. Um the one who Sebastian nodded at as maybe being a racer and not a mountain biker was Henry.

And I don't know if I agree with that. Henry was stoked on Whistler just because he was like, he liked the vibe, he liked the place, he liked where it was, he liked what it meant for mountain biking. And yeah.

Yeah, I wonder if if maybe that needs to be reframed a little bit to something like do you love racing as much as you just love riding? I don't expect you could be a good racer if you didn't like riding your bike. But maybe it borrows a little bit from something that may apply a little less to pros, but for anyone who's played competitive sports, I think there's often a turning point at which you sort of think, I may not love this anymore.

And I think some who are really gifted athletes can keep going as a pro in their sport, even if they don't truly love it. But it's a it's what they do, it's it's what they know, or it's it makes a great living. Uh whereas in in this case, you know, you sort of think, well, you can't, surely you can't be a downhill mountain bike racer if you don't love riding your bike.

But the question might be, I suppose if your racing career ends, do you still ride as much as you did before? Um, anyway, I just I thought it was an interesting way of thinking about these riders. But I think if you were to ask any single one of them, they would probably bristle at being asked whether they actually loved riding their bike or not.

Because that's probably not we'd we probably have to go back and see just how you know dig in to see what they were doing. Like how many laps were they getting in Whistler in the bike park before the race? Because that was nothing to do with racing at all. That was for them, the bike park is just like this big candy land to go have fun in.

And shit, half the racers who were at that event were stoked it was in Whistler because they got to ride Whistler before the event.

Yeah, there's definitely I mean it's not unheard of for racers to pack their bike away at the end of the year and ride dirt bike or go surfing or whatever. I think Minar was pretty big on putting the bike away until the next season and going surfing and stuff, and it's just the way it is for some of them.

When you do it all day, every day throughout the season, you want to break.

Yeah, and it's a long season now. Um it's a long season and it's an intense one.

Uh to correct my horrible statement before, Aletha won five this year. I don't know five. I don't know where I thought that. Someone came up recently and it was like they didn't win a race, but they won an overall, so I've got to dig into who that was.

I was when I was interviewing Aletha, I was going through my notes, and I could have sworn that my notes on her for 25 at World Cup had her kind of stinking the joint up. And she's like, No. No, I did not. She wasn't. I crushed it. I'm like, oh shit. Sorry. Nor does any of your family. Uh right. No, no, no.

Um, so now you you mentioned Gabe a little bit and you and you mentioned Fab, Fabian Burrell. Um do you want to talk a little bit about there being two personalities or or two team managers? I don't know what kind of insights you can give us there about how that works between those two.

I don't think I can yet. I'm still talking to them. That's going to be part of this next article that comes out. Um very different personalities with very different focuses on the team, right? Um, Fabian is definitely like the racer coach, and they all have their own roles as racers, and they all have their own coaches, and at the same time, half of them look up to Troy as a mentor and a coach.

Um, not coach, as a mentor. So I'm still kind of undiplomatically trying to untangle how all of those relationships intersect. And I'm I'm not sure how clear a picture I'll get. Hopefully a clear enough one to make some words show up on a page.

What are what can we expect from you know what you're writing? I know I know uh why don't you just give us a glimpse anyway, in terms of how you're approaching what you have left to write.

Knowing full well how much mission creep comes into every single thing I write when I start to write something and it ends up being something completely different, Pete. Sure, but it's fine. Let's just bolt at that windmill.

Um well, if you're listening to this right now and you know you're saying, okay, Mike's gonna write something, what what can you what can you tell everyone about about what's coming?

Okay, so one of the main premises that I want to write about. Um I wrote about the track walk, even though no one read it. Um I uh I really wanted to look at how Canyon approaches an event like Whistler from the idea of you know the standard home game, away game methodology of other sports and and what that means.

You know, for Canyon as a company, as a brand, and a team, this is an away game. They are a European-based company, and now they're coming to Canada. They don't have nearly the setup or equipment that they normally do. And what does that mean for a team? Um and then for each of the individuals on that team, it's a different thing.

For Aletha, this is basically a home game. Like this is as close to her backyard as she's gonna get. Having a World Cup in Whistler where her family where she could drive to it, where her family could show up. Um for Troy, he's Australian, but that man's record at Whistler was just unimpeachable. He's won everything he's ever entered in Whistler.

Um for Luca, it's home country. He's not in Europe. He's coming back and he's gonna then go from there to Lake Placid, which is really home turf. Uh, and then he gets to go home. He probably gets to drive home from there. For Henry, it's an away game. Uh for Fabian, it's an away game. For Gabe, it's the ultimate homecoming, where he has watched the entire arc of a sport go from Canada, the early free ride days, to just sort of ignoring Canada, but oh, here's Stevie Smith, but it's all Europe.

And finally, after what, 23 years, a World Cup comes home to British Columbia and it's in Whistler, and he's a North Vancouver boy. It I think it meant a huge amount to him. Um, and it was a hugely important moment in the sport of mountain biking from his ver viewpoint. I think from everyone's viewpoint.

I think this was a huge event for a lot of reasons, but I think it had a lot of extra special meaning for Gabe. So that's what I want to write about with the home away concept. Um and then the other one I kind of want to, if they'll let me, I would like to get into the mechanics and the bikes and the sort of talk about the sender itself and the adaptability and production versus factory kind of thing, depending on what I can talk about.

Okay. Uh any any more to say about that?

Not yet. Can't go there with that until I get green lights for for information and that. Uh yeah. Oh, we talked about the wheels. I don't even know if I'm allowed to talk about the wheels. Yeah, they run aluminum ribs. They glue the tires on. Sweet. I hope that's public knowledge.

That didn't seem like a big secret, but but yeah, I hear you on the on the bike stuff, there may be things they want to talk about and not talk about. Um but in any case, I think as deep as you want to get into the development story and the tech story behind that bike.

Yeah, honestly, one of the things Canyon had kind of pushed as an idea that we didn't really get into, but I think we can touch on, is they sort of had the 1010-10 thing going of like 10 years of the sender, 10 years of the Canyon DH team, previously the collective, and 10 years of Troy Brosnan being on that.

Because Troy arrived at Canyon basically at the behest of Fabian Burrell. And that was the beginning of the Sender program. Bike's been around, you know, being developed for 10 years now. It is uh it really is a pretty uh evolutionary process they've gone through. And I I think they've got a good bike there.

I don't know if it's quite as legendarily ubiquitous as say the Santa Cruz V10, which is you know, that is an iconic bike for a lot of good reasons. And it's still absolutely at the pointy end of things, right? And it's still being evolved. So but I think the sander probably makes a good case for being up there as an iconic DH bike.

We'll see.

Okay, good. Uh well we'll obviously look forward to uh to reading both those pieces. Hopefully both those pieces. Um other stories you want to let us in on from your time with the canyon folks?

Uh no, nope, nope, nope. You know, there's no scandalous stuff. Like I don't again go back to when Fabian was racing. And there would be scandalous stories to be told, not about Fabian necessarily, but the downhill circuit at that time was quite a bit more lawless than it is now. Um and yeah, I'm kind of I'm not not gonna shit on the past, but I'm I'm okay with that being in the past.

Like it's it's a it's a tightly run pro game now, and there isn't like a lot of room for individual expression and getting loose after the event. Um but it's also man, they're fucking fast now. They're just so like the the level of talent is so deep and they're all so good. And the fact that like you know, the world champion can't qualify at his home race speaks not to him necessarily having a bad weekend, but to just the intensity of the sharp end of it right now.

It's um it's a mesmerizing game at the moment.

Yeah, agreed.

Um also, we've just blown the better part of an hour on a podcast and haven't mentioned the fact that Rampage is happening this weekend, and I'm I'm sort of just not super like thrilled. I don't mean it in the wrong way, but I I'm not gagging about Rampage the way I was about getting a chance to go to Whistler.

And I'm I'm curious about what's gonna happen with hardline, but at the same time, it's not a World Cup. I the last couple events of the season really this whole season um reignited a super fandom in me and about World Cup racing, downhill and cross-country.

Yeah, I would agree. It it certainly did that for me, and I think we witnessed it happen in real time for the community of Whistler and people that came up there. Um let's let's chat about hardline for a minute before before we sign off here and and we'll get everybody out of here. But you know, Mike, I I think that's logical to sort of say, okay, it's it sounds and it looks like it's going to be interesting, a lot of fun.

It's not World Cup. I won't speak for AJ. I'll let him say his part. But I will say that for myself, having not yet been up there to see the course, but having heard from Cam and Dennis and AJ who have been up there and have put their work uh up on the site in terms of previewing the course, it is going to be fascinating to see this slightly eclectic collection of racers come down a course like that, which is very different from a World Cup course.

And I think it's great that Red Bull is trying something here in the absence of any longer having the, you know, obviously the broadcast rights to the to the World Cup. Um plus Cyprus is uh is uh a mountain that we ride on, you know. As much as Whistler felt like a home game for all the North Shore folks, as well as everyone else in the sea to sky, this is you know, this is uh really is a home game for you guys.

Yeah, there can't be much more close to totemic for North Vancouver, right?

That's it. Um we won't get into the fact that it's technically West Vancouver, but anyway, it's the North Shore, it's Cyprus. Yeah. Um you've been up there. What can we expect?

I honestly don't know what to expect myself because some of the easy parts of the track I can't imagine riding if there's any sort of moisture on it. So I the camber is so big in some spots, I just can't make sense of how someone gets down there. Um yeah, sure, once ruts develop, there'll be something to cling on to.

But uh one of the very first sections that Cam and I just gawked at for every good five minutes is just like bewildering. I don't know. I don't know what's gonna happen. Um, it's pretty interesting though. There's a lot of people getting invites that are local riders and racers, and and uh I wonder how much of that is like come and check it out.

If you don't want to race, fine, but you know, you be out there, have some fun, and if you want to suit up, come uh come race time, then you can do so. So I think there'll be a lot of people that will go and have some fun and be a part of that whole uh learning the course process that they all enjoy so much.

Who will eventually just be like, that's me done. I've had a great weekend. You guys can go ham and put it down against the clock.

Yeah. Well, we will see. It is one week away from day one of tires hitting hitting that course, at least on an official basis. And uh we'll all be up there.

Yeah, I think first riders are on track on Wednesday, Tuesday uh track walk. Okay, fair.

So just sorry to interrupt, what a psychotic four weeks it's been, right? Whistler, Lake Placid, Red Bull Rampage is going on right now, and and we go straight into hard line. Like it's a way to close out the season with a bang.

Yeah, yeah.

We're gonna be suffering after this. Nope. Well, I mean, AJ, you'll have been at three of the four of those events. I wonder if do you know of anyone that'll be at at all four?

Yeah, Dave Trumpor is down at Rampage right now. Uh I don't know if any of the other big dogs are down there, but I would assume at least some of them are.

unknown Man.

Splagging some miles. And and Rampage is, I mean, this is year three of the women competing, but that's made that that much bigger an event than it than it already was.

When do we go live with this one?

Well, it'll be this is a Friday, it's early next week.

So it's not gonna be spoiler alert if we just be like, Here, Robin Grooms three peep.

Yeah, I mean, first rider to win three in a row. And uh as Cam was saying, I spoke to him earlier today. He said, Well, she's also the only winner, the only female winner. She just did three in a row.

Yeah, um, yeah, she threw down on that second run. That was incredible. Like, yeah, I thought Hannah's run had a got had a beat, and then that second run, she cleaned up the flat spin and threw a can in on a flip further down. I was just like, Holy shit, she's just won.

Yeah, yeah, she did, yeah. And Hannah definitely like were kind of a class above, it looks like.

But yeah, yeah. It's it's so cool to see the the speed and level of progression uh that those women are bringing to that part of the sport right now.

Fell intentional. It was it was really cool to see too that the judging was giving riders a bit more weight than it used to for going fast. Like Hannah's run was almost a race down the hill. I think she was like 20 seconds faster than than Robin or something, and like still still throwing tricks and style and stuff, not as many tricks, but only just lost.

So it was cool to see their the judging is a bit more like we don't just want to see tricks and you win. It's like they're taking into account the different writing styles.

Well. Pete and I were talking about that earlier of just a few of the first hits we were looking at with people you know testing out their drops or their lines. It just does seem like the speeds are up this year across the board. And yeah, I don't know if it's a lot of things. Something to do with the venue.

Is that something to do with the venue, perhaps? I did hear chatter about that, that this is perhaps the longest course that they've I mean, this is back to the original site, but I think they're also using more of the mountainside than they originally did. Yeah. So uh I did hear chatter too that there's a three-minute limit on runs, and some of the riders were asking for more time.

Oh, really?

Which is which is wild. Um, but uh yeah, we'll see. We also were chatting about what it was. I mean, Red Bull put out a compilation of the winning runs since the first rampage. Oh which, if anyone, if either of you and anyone listening have not watched and are a fan at all of Hardline, I highly recommend it.

Uh, it was a real trip down memory lane to see Wade's winning run from a one. He crashed twice during that run. He cased hard on what now looks like a small canyon gap, which I promise would not have been small at all. But he he cased that and went over the bars. Um, there were dozens of spectators back in those days, not hundreds or thousands to the to the extent, and the audio was good enough that you could pick pick out individual people, you know, saying, Come on, Wade, or there was a random guy standing behind Wade where he crashed one of those times with his dog on a leash.

I mean, it was so such a different situation than it is now. It was really, really a blast to see that. And then, of course, all the all the winners since then. But the first three, I think the first three years were dramatically different. And then, of course, the progression through throughout the years, as you would expect, but those first three years, they they really didn't build anything, they were riding pretty raw, and that really does dictate what they can do.

Those first three years were they consecutive? They weren't consecutive, right? First three events, I should say.

I you know, AJ, I just watched and I forget. I I think there was at least a year gap between one and two or two and three, and then there was quite a gap until 2008. Right. And then they started being more regular again. Um yeah. Anyway, it it was about 30 minutes or something, and really just each run and not a lot more in terms of fluff.

Um, and and it did include the the women's the first two years of the women's winning runs also. Right. Uh but uh yeah, high highly recommend it. Was it was really something.

Yeah, it looks like you can access it just about everywhere. It's most of the big outlets have put up something about it. It's on Red Bull's page as well. Yeah. Every four-minute long video.

Yeah, there you go. We'll we'll put a link to that in the in the notes here, as well as a few other things. Yeah. Good stuff. Well, listen, gentlemen, thanks very much for uh joining us here today. And you know, a few more weeks of some very exciting spectating ahead of us, and then uh and then the long, wet, dark winter until we gear up for next season again.

Will we get the start of the long, dark, wet winter in time for hardline?

Yeah, right, exactly.

What is the forecast looking like for you guys up there over the next two weeks? Do you have any long-range predictions for this?

Currently, sun for hardline, but uh Dave Smith uh and I were chatting a week ago when he checked in it was dark and moody, just how he likes it. So we were both laughing because all the uh media squids at the World Cups were being sooks about the wet weather, but he obviously loves it. So we're hoping for more of that.

Yeah, yeah.

Right now the forecast looks very nice for uh uh Friday and Saturday of hardline. But uh things can change.

So yeah, time will tell.

I'm not sure what I'm hoping for. Like I'd be interested to see them ride it in the wet, although it sounds like that could be very challenging.

Um yeah, it could really take away from the event.

Yeah, we don't we don't want it to be you know unrideable. But uh yeah, we shall see. It'll be exciting. Cool. All right, thanks to both of you. Thanks to everyone from listening, and we will see you again after a hard line. Until then. Thank you. Thanks very much.

Tales from the Final Two World Cups: The Debrief

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