Dirt: Enduro racing gives you the full spectrum time wise – minute long sprints to one–hour dashes off ten thousand foot mountains. Do you believe it’s the best mix of mountainbiking?

Al: Yeah it’s pretty buzzing racing for such a long time, you can get really zoned in to it and nothing else matters. You can end up riding some pretty wild terrain near enough blind and some of the stuff you wouldn’t normally ride. In the short stages it’s like DH but with less practice and less suspension, so it can get pretty loose. There are so many aspects to it and it can get pretty intense trying to balance everything throughout a race weekend, there’s not much waiting around.

I hope so, it’d be rad for future generations to be able to take a sport like this so far and would get a lot more support from British Cycling and sponsors. With the backing it would receive as an Olympic sport and the content of the terrain and competition involved it could be a great spectacle for TV and be really big.

Never really took it seriously when I was younger, I just loved riding my bike and having a really good time being at the races with great people. I just wanted to see how fast I could go and I was happy with that, if it was a pedally track I wasn’t interested. I always had good support from my parents and everyone else’s!

I also had a few injuries along the way and I lost out on moving to Elite by one point two seasons in a row. My brother is in Elite now so at least one of us made it to the premier class. My best result was 41^st at the Schladming World Cup in 2006, after that I raced the full New Zealand national series got fourth at the first round and had the time of my life over there. Started to do alright with more consistency but got fed up of being on the back foot with bikes breaking and so raced MX and MX Enduro in 2008.

Yeah I’m working on that. My profile’s big in Italy and France, I just never raced Enduro in Britain yet. When there weren’t many Brits racing on the continent there was little British coverage, but that seems to be changing. I’m big on documenting my whole life through tweets and pictures right now and started telling fairytales on my blog (alexstock.wordpress.com) too so that should get some shout outs. Not to mention this interview in a mag. I’ve been reading for over 10 years! I’ve started riding a lot faster recently so that should help as well.

What prompted the move to enduro?

I was living in Morzine with some friends and working 30 minutes drive away renovating a Chalet in Samoens. I crashed my car so I rode my road bike 60km a day to work and back over a mountain. It was an interesting time in my life. Once I worked two weeks solid, eating seven meals a day and food shopping in full lycra only having enough spare time each day to watch Rocky films. I had no time or money to ride DH and only had an XC bike. After two weeks on my new training regime an article on the Maxiavalanche in Dirt started to play on my mind, I wasn’t about to waste the fitness I’d always needed. It was in Are, Sweden, and looked really wild and Dirt writer Richard Cunynghame’s description of the race sealed the deal. I didn’t know anyone that wanted to race Enduro but I entered the full Maxiavalanche series and the Mega. The first race was in Samoens where I’d been building for the last year and it was super muddy on spikes. I met some great people there and had some local support. It turned out I caused a bit of a stir coming third but it was just like racing UK mud. I got bad starts but really enjoyed overtaking and racing for 20 minutes over such contrasting terrain.

He’s proved it’s possible! He gets free handlebars and grips now. It was probably two years ago but it’s the new bandwagon now isn’t it. In a few years it’ll be easier to get a DH sponsor when everyone’s gone into Enduro!

Well my first Maxiavalanche was good because I had no expectations, got bad starts and battled through to third in both races. End of my first season the Finale Superenduro was pretty special. I was seeded 78^th and had to overtake on every stage including four people on a three–minute stage, not to mention the longer stages. I still put in good times, eventually finishing 30 seconds off the winner (my future team mate at the time, Karim Amour) and thinking “what if!”

Last year I finished 13^th in the Mega, which is good on paper but it was the worst race of my life. I got taken out on the start and my seatpost broke so it was stuck up but when you sat down it went down. I remember apologising to Joe Barnes for bouncing off him on the glacier at about 30, it was nuts. I wasn’t really enjoying it with a seat up my ass but I’d had a lot of practice after my first season where I never had a dropper post and used to raise it on the go (mostly in the wrong place before a big downhill). Then I had broken my thumb the weekend before and the splint started rattling loose which hurt loads. When it fell off with my wild imagination I had to look to see if my thumb was still there!! Then I got stuck in eighth gear and lost out to Jordan Regnier on the final sprint. That’s the Mega, what a race. Maybe this year I’ll have a good one.