Have you always had this attitude, even as a child racing BMX?

Yes. When you start, you start to do your best, you accept the result at the end, but you don’t say to yourself what the result will be before it has happened. The way that I am, I don’t like it when people force me to do things. I was helped by a lot of people and my parents, but no one pushed me or forced me to do what I wanted. I need to try things out for myself and I choose the wrong thing and I need to learn by making mistakes for myself like that.

No, not really, I wanted to do other things, I was still young. I’d been with Sunn for five years, and then been on a large USA team (Volvo Cannondale) when mountain bike was really big, and when you win everything you want to see something different. The deal I made with Commencal was to do All–Mountain, to ride things my way, do video shooting and to get coverage, but not to race. It was just too early in 2005. It’s only just started now with the Internet – that possibility for riders to get something good out of it, but the companies still don’t know what to do with your image and profile if you’re not racing World Cups or whatever, and back then it was too early, that’s for sure.

That’s the crazy thing with me, I can really just say, ‘OK I don’t do this or that’ and I always just project onto what I’m doing and not on what I’ve done. And I stopped racing, so that was that. It was the same for BMX, I was World Champion, and I stopped racing to do mountain biking and I never got back on the BMX bike again until my preparation for the Olympic Games, and when I stopped racing downhill I didn’t have a have a DH bike at home, so I never rode one. I had an All–Mountain bike and that’s what I rode. I never even rode a DH bike again since 2005 until I rode a Sunn bike last year at Whistler.

(Laughing) Yeah I did, I definitely missed riding a downhill bike a lot. It’s a different feeling, and I remembered you could go so much faster and ride the perfect line! In Enduro you never really know where you are going or exactly what is on the track because you can’t recognize it, so you make it up as you see it and really it’s a different spirit to DH where you can have the perfect run.

Well that was the project with Sunn. They were supposed to have a new bike, and I was going to make all the training camps with the Sunn team and get back on the French Cup, and then, why not, maybe the World Cup as well, but then it wasn’t happening. Sunn had some big financial problems, the bikes never got made and that was that.

Yeah it was…

When I look at the skies getting dark and it is raining, then no – I feel good sitting here (laughs), but it’s great to see it and watch.

Nobody can tell. I don’t know, I don’t want to say and I can’t say because I’m not doing it. I’m not racing or riding.

What I’m sure about myself is that I’m stronger physically and I’m stronger mentally than when I stopped racing downhill. But still a race is a race and I’m not here doing it.

Maybe yes I say once, why not? I’ve learned to never–say–never. That’s a choice I made to retire, and I do hope to have the opportunity to get back once more. I won’t race the whole circuit or the whole World Cup series because I think if I do well people will just look at the results and say OK, it’s easy, it’s always the same – she’s back the same as before, but they don’t see how much work it is to get to this level. How much risk you take to go fast, how many crashes you’ve got to take to be fast enough. It’s easy for people to say, “you can do it”, but I know how much work it represents, how much pressure you have to take to do it well.

Well yes I know, I’m still training and I’m fit, and I know how to go fast, but I’m not sure how I’ll react when conditions are changing and it’s raining like today, before I was young I just go, that’s it. When I wake up in the morning I can tell you now that I’m getting older. So yes, if I feel it, I feel it and I’m sure I could go fast, but maybe if I crash or get hurt I’m not sure I’d have the same motivation as before.

Exactly. There’s so much pressure on me, so much expectation. People say what you say; they still tell me I can do it. Yes, it would be great to come back, but if I don’t make it, or worse if I crash and really get hurt, then what would happen to me?

It’s hard to tell. The bikes and the tracks have moved on – it’s part of an evolution. It’s good for the sport to have steep tracks, and tracks with a lot of variety. The technology now means the suspension, the brakes and the tyres are so much better than before, so we can ride harder stuff. It looks like the speeds are faster on TV to me as well. Some of the men, like Troy Brosnan and Danny Hart, they ride so light on the bike and so fast – it looks like they are flying over the rocks and roots, really going fast. I like to judge myself against the guys and beat as many as I can, because men are so competitive. If a woman beats you then your friends are going to give you a hard time and that feels good (laughs)! In the women, when I see Rachel Atherton on a bike, she is the girl with the best skill. This year, maybe she doesn’t win because she isn’t confident enough at the moment of what she is capable of, but she is definitely a good rider, and Rachel looks the most like a guy on a bike. Florianne Pugin will get faster, and Emmeline Ragot as well – she has really good skill when conditions are bad, or it’s technical and not too fast, and then Pom Pom (Myriam Nicole) too, but she is still young and more from a motocross background and she can be good on some tracks, but not everywhere yet. Tracy seems to be incredibly strong this year, and I’m happy for her with the success she’s having now after a long time trying for the Worlds.

Changing the subject a bit, I wanted to ask you about whether you were that interested in the technical, bike set–up stuff. The Sunn team (and Nico Vouilloz) always had that reputation for preparation, for testing and for being ahead of their time in that respect. Have you been involved in your own bikes in the same way?

All the engineers and mechanics always liked to work with me because, whilst I couldn’t take apart and fix my suspension, I had a really clear feeling and sensation for what was happening on the bike. Francois Gachet was the main one who did all the testing at first, and him and Nico are both guys, so they would always be more into that stuff than me! At Sunn we were doing everything – different spoke tensions, tyre pressures and compound testing, telemetry on the suspension and timing. We gained a lot of time like this with constant changes year after year. We had a basic set up from which to tweak at training camps, and for me it was most important to have a good balance on the bike front to rear. Nowadays everybody has close to the same level of performance, but back then some bikes were heavy, some bikes were really bad. Tyres were really important. You always wanted the tyres you couldn’t get, so sometimes when we renegotiated our team contracts it was better to not have more money, but to push a lot to have the tyres that we needed to win.

For me it’s no question. It was the V–Process bike. I signed with Commencal, but they had no DH bike at the time, so I used the V–Process bike Nico and BOS developed. The suspension was so good on that bike, the wheels were sticking to the ground like crazy, and you couldn’t make a mistake and blame the bike when you were riding the V–Process. You steered it, and you stayed on the track. This bike couldn’t work correctly without an engineer though, they need to do a lot on the suspension, to open the shock and forks after each run, but when you had the back–up with you it was the best. I’m sure this bike would still be a good bike today if they changed the geometry a little bit.

Well I signed for one year and that is ending up now, so I want to continue with Ibis, I really like the spirit of the company, and I really like the bike. They want me to do exactly what I want to do so hopefully we can keep on going together, so I don’t have to change all my bikes and my work, my job and life again!

Well that’s not in the plan now…maybe I can get back on the World Cup once more, but I want a company to use my image, not my racing or my results to be the thing because I’m a rider now, but we’ll see. Never–say–never. I’ve learned you can’t predict the future.

No, because I got what I wanted and it was a really great experience. That gold medal was unexpected in the end, but the preparation you need to be at that level in BMX is really not in my spirit. l like training, but I like to have fun too. The pain, the gym work, doing sprints in a parking lot – this is not how I see my life. I need to be more free. All the races are in one place and in the city, but I like to be in the mountains.

What’s next for me is to do more publicity, use my image, keep riding fast, and beat as many of the guys as I can (laughs). In the past I didn’t show up enough to promote myself, but if I’d done it in a more public way I don’t think I’d have won as many titles. I need the quietness and that’s how I am, I can’t change that. Sure I could have been better known, but I am really happy with what I’m doing and everything I’ve done. All I want now is the opportunity to keep on and to be able to ride and I don’t need to be a superstar. I like my life and it’s good like that for me.