It is scary when you are starting after Minnaar, Chris Kovarik and Nathan Rennie…all the guys you’ve looked up to and the only guys after you are Atherton, Hill, Barel and Peat. It scared the hell out of me. Those were all my heroes. It was pretty nerve wracking for me. I ended up in the top ten.
When I think back about Steve Smith the first memories I have of him at the World Cups were of him absolutely attacking the courses. Laying it all on the line. He quickly earned the moniker ‘Sender Steve’ as he would try everything first and with full commitment and seemingly always ride at 100% until he could no longer. Loose and wild, hit or miss, was the best way to describe his style. But in 2011 his approach radically changed. He found consistency and smoothness. I asked him if this was a proactive cognitive decision.Oh yeah it’s been a long process. From 2008–2010 my aim from the beginning of the race was just set on the finish line. That is how I thought of it. I just wanted to instantly win. But it’s a long build–up of putting things together and at that time I wasn’t that fit. Even though you think you are. I wasn’t very strong and I wasn’t mentally strong, but I could still just fly on a bike and that’s all I was really relying on, going as fast as I could. It wasn’t until around the end of 2010, that I realized I had the speed but I needed some consistency there. So 2011 was the year for me for that. I changed from flats to clips because I just wanted to ride with a smoother style and work on consistency. Then getting that confidence through 2011 with a couple of podiums and 5th overall showed me I was doing something right and it was what I needed to come into 2012 focusing on the next step above that. I knew now I could race and ride consistently, but now it was about putting that fast speed I had together with consistency.
And what about the switch to flats?It wasn’t hard. I used to race clips in the beginning when I went from BMX to MTB, then one day when I was filming in 2007 with The Collective guys, I put some flats on so I could hike up all day. I was like ‘holy crap, I can slide around’ and it was so comfortable so I thought it was a good idea to switch. That was the beginning of a bad time, but could I could just ride way more out of control than with my clips and I thought that was making me go faster.
Wasn’t that a necessary process and part of your learning curve into developing his style, finding and knowing his limits?Well yeah, but when I made the switch back to clips it felt like I had just added the biggest thing to my bag. It was just so helpful. I had found the limits riding loose, now I had to just put that together with clips and a more fluid style.
2012 wasn’t the greatest of seasons to begin with?I trained really hard for South Africa and was pretty happy to finish 5th. During the massive break we went to Italy, where I dislocated my pinky really bad, it was the hardest track of the year and even though I really liked it, my messed up hand really slowed me down. I was able to get tenth there. But it was hard. Especially after crashing there the year before when I thought I could win. Then going on to Scotland I was still hurting as it was the week right after Italy. My hand slipped forward on the bar because I couldn’t hold on tight and I fell off on corner near the bottom, I slipped on the bridge fell off into the creek had to climb back out and up and still finished 19th.
At World Cups I’m thinking about the overall and going a safe speed, which is hard to work out. Like at Mt St Anne, I’ve got seventh two years in a row now, which is only just a fraction of a second off the podium. That just pissed me off because I know I can ride fast there.
Then I was pretty pissed at Val d’Isere, it is probably the most angry I have ever been in two years of racing because I actually didn’t make any mistakes, I felt good and ended up eleventh. I went from Windham finishing on a high and my best result ever with a second place so I was confident looking for a great result in France. Times were tight and it was a pretty fast track. I just came down in eleventh place and was so angry, I felt like a little girl and wanted to throw my bike. There was nothing to blame it on. It is motivating though, after that we had a bunch of time off and I went into Crankworx knowing I needed to step my shit up.
Most guys don’t take Crankworx super seriously. A lot of the top riders like Gee and Minnaar find it hard to find that spark when it’s not a World Cup event. You don’t seem to have that problem?No I’m kind of opposite to those guys a lot. I can kind of always go my fast speed at every race. I wouldn’t say a World Cup makes me go that much faster. This year at Crankworx I went there with a different mindset than usual. Most of the time it’s like a little break where you go chill out and ride and race, but I was pretty angry after Val d’Isere and after talking to Todd my trainer we went there with full race brain as if it was a World Cup. We were doing yoga every day and going to the gym training knowing Worlds was coming soon, so for me Crankworx wasn’t a break.>>
