I wouldn’t say so, but I always have a little bit of pressure on myself because I know what I’m capable of. At the same time, I wouldn’t say that other people’s expectations get to me a lot. I always know I’m going to show up as prepared as I can and ride the best I can ride. What else can you do besides that? Over the years I’ve had a lot more losses than wins so it’s not new to me. You can put it all out there and you get 20th, like at Fort William. You’d better be OK with that because that’s racing. As long as I know I’ve done my best and put everything into it then I know I can be happy, and I know I am doing the best I can for my sponsors.

For me, last year was really good. For myself, I wouldn’t change it at all. I learned a lot about myself and about people, and where my beliefs were with certain things, little things that ended up bothering me that I didn’t think would. I maybe cared a bit too much about people’s reactions. So, for me, as far as growth as just a person and my faith and stuff, it was a really good year. For my sponsors, I would have liked to have done better, because it really didn’t show what we were capable of, or how good the equipment was.

Yeah, people really made that way bigger of a deal than it was. I was just straight up struggling with the stability of the bike with my riding style and just how short it is. I have a bike in my garage right now with a short chainstay because I enjoy riding it more, it’s just more fun, but it just didn’t quite give me the stability I needed at a World Cup track like Fort William with my riding style kind. A lot of people were like, “you should’ve done the testing” and, “you should’ve known”. We put in more hours of testing coming into last season than I ever had before, because I was on a new bike, but I was riding different tracks. I didn’t realise that the gap would be that significant.

I’ve been to Fort William a few years, I felt like I knew what to expect and I thought we would be fine. We were, but I still could’ve done better. It just magnified little things that I wasn’t really aware of. So, we just switched to a large bike the next weekend at Val di Sole and I qualified second with just a pretty average run. So I was like, “OK, sweet, on some of these tracks I just need a little more stability”. We then did some testing and figured out that just adding a little bit of length to the rear gave me that bit of stability I was looking for. We were good from then on out, the bike was perfect, I just didn’t ride it to its potential.

Yes, we do a lot of training here but we usually rely on East Coast (USA) type races before the start of the season. We go to Port Angeles and ride other tracks a lot before the season starts. So yes, a lot of people ask, “Why don’t you go and ride World Cup tracks?” it’s like, “Well, I haven’t in the past and those seasons worked out pretty good for me”. I’m pretty smart to know what it’s going to take. Last year was a little different because we didn’t start at South Africa and then have a month of East Coast riding before we went to the first World Cup, it was just straight into Fort William and Val di Sole. I thought we’d be OK, but hey it wasn’t, I made a mistake, but we fixed it by the next weekend.

Yes, this year we’re going to do South Africa first and that’s pretty similar to what I ride and race here. Plus after last season I know we’ve now got the set–up dialled. It’s always a trade–off though. People ask, “Why don’t you go to Europe?” but it’s cold and raining. It won’t be very much fun. You’ve got to do what feels best for you and I prefer to be here where I can wake up in sunshine and put in my training hours every day and be consistent and enjoy it. I’ve also been racing these races for a few years so I know what to expect.

Yes, it’s good, especially because success was always hard to come by when I was a kid, so I am more used to feeling like the underdog. People don’t understand how hard it is to win one race, let alone string a few of them together. It’s extremely hard. When you have results like I did anything but a win is seen as failure, which is crazy. A 20^th place at a World Cup is pretty awesome, even qualifying for a World Cup is amazing, but when you know what you’re capable of, obviously, that changes a little bit. Coming into this year is good, I think we’ll definitely be ready when we show up at the races to win races. There’s no reason we shouldn’t, but that was the case last year and then it still didn’t go my way. So nothing’s a sure thing but I know I’ll have the tools to win races this year, it’s just seeing if it falls into place, but I’m pretty confident that it will.>>