Steve Peat
How He Plans To Become The World Champ On Home Turf
Red Bull Rampage
Downhill’s Most Insane Event
On Top Of The World Riding The Worlds Highest Downhill Trail
DESCENT RIDES
View from the top Starting high up in the moutains riders decend a single track trail
ON TOP O
OF THE WORLD “Top of the World will blow your mind”
The Whistler Mountain Bike Park will be opening its first lift-accessed alpine mountain bike trail to riders this summer. The alpine trail named “Top of the World” will be accessible from the Peak Chair at the summit of Whistler Mountain and will lead riders into the Garbanzo Zone of the Whistler Mountain Bike Park. The opening of the new trail will increase Whistler Mountain Bike Park’s vertical by 1,091 feet bringing the total vertical to 4,946 feet. With over 60 trails and 4,946 feet of vertical Whistler Mountain Bike Park offers more trails and more vertical feet than any other bike park in North America.
The Limit Riders take on some of the worlds highest trails
“TOP OF THE WORLD IS A TECHNICAL DOWNHILL SINGLE TRACK TRAIL AND IS SUITABLE FOR ADVANCED ALL MOUNTAIN, FREE RIDE AND DOWNHILL MOUNTAIN BIKERS,” Beginning at the top of the Peak Chair on Whistler Mountain, Top of the World takes riders through one of the most visually spectacular alpine environments on the planet. A layer of soft tacky dirt covers the alpine trail as it winds its way through three climate zones including Whistler’s Alpine Tundra and Mountain Hemlock zones before finishing in a coastal rainforest. Riding in the alpine is a unique experience and Whistler’s expansive and vast mountains make it a visually spectacular setting. One hundred riders each day will be granted access to this special trail. “We want to ensure riding in such a spectacular setting is an inspiring experience,” says Finestone.
“Top of the World will blow your mind,” says Whistler Mountain Bike Park Manager Brian Finestone. ”It takes the flow Whistler Mountain Bike Park is famous for and drops it on the peak of Whistler Mountain. With some of the world’s best riding set against the granite spires of the Coast Range Top of the World is the pinnacle of alpine riding.” Riding the Peak Chair will require a separate lift ticket which will cost riders $15 in addition to their Bike Park pass. The Peak Zone ticket will be valid for one upload of the Peak Chair and is recommended for advanced riders.
Taking a break Rider catches a break to take in the views
Advanced riders only The trail is one of the world’s toughest
WHEN, WHERE AND HOW? The Whistler Mountain Bike Park is scheduled to open for the 2012 bike season on May 18, with the Peak Zone likely opening in mid -July. More information on the Whistler Mountain Bike Park can be found at www.whistlerbike.com Deals and Packages To plan a trip to the consistently rated No. 1 Mountain Resort in North America this winter, visit www.whistlerblackcomb.com or call 1-888-4034727. Season long event and festival information is available online along with the most current weather and snow information.
RED BULL
RAMPAGE
The great equaliser of all mountain bike events, Red Bull Rampage draws slopestyle riders, downhill racers and natural-terrain freeriders together in one big-mountain test of all-around bike skill on near-vertical sandstone ridges near Virgin, Utah.
Air-Born Riders tackle jumps high up in the mountains of Utah.
RED BULL RAMPAGE
BREAKING
Take extreme skiing, the well known “you fall, you die” sport, transfer it to mountain bikes, hold it on a bare desert mountain with all the rocks showing, invite 26 of the world’s best freeriders to do their best tricks riding down the best lines they can find, and watch what happens. That’s the Red Bull Rampage, a legendary event even though it’s been gone since 2004. Now it’s back. This totally sick contest will be held Oct. 2-5, on a rocky ridge in the desolate desert near Virgin, Utah. Call it “extreme slopestyle.” Riders will get speed and air on slopes that, if they were covered with snow, would be rated double black diamonds. red-bull-rampage-dirt-biking The contest is run like an extreme skiing event. Competitors have four minutes to get from start to finish, and are judged on amplitude, line, style and fluidity. But a big difference is that on bikes, riders have to adjust for the fact that loose rocks and gravel will slide under their tires, and even if they nail a trick, the mountain surface can fiendishly wash them out. Think twice before going to Virgin, Utah, to see this amazing event. It’s taking place in a real desert, closer to Las Vegas than Salt Lake; which is about 250 miles away. Red Bull warns on the Rampage web site that this contest is not for the “casual observer.”
Express Yourself Competitors are judged on the lines they ride down the ciffside
G THE MOULD The warning sounds dire, with the location described as “remote, hot, dangerous, and unforgiving.” Just getting to the event site is an adventure; requiring a four mile hike or bike over “uneven” terrain to get to the course, no motor vehicles allowed.
The inaugural event was a landmark in the sport’s history and was followed by three more through 2004. If you won Red Bull Rampage - or even survived the weekend with all your bones intact - your reputation as a bad ass on two wheels was unassailable.
Spectators can only watch from the finish area, no one but riders are allowed up the mountain. And, no dogs allowed. Also, bring your own food; there are no snack bars. No bleachers. It isn’t only the riders who rough it.
Unlike events with a defined course and familiar obstacles, Red Bull Rampage let the riders determine their own route down treacherous cliffs; the more creative and risky the line, the better the score.
Those who brave the terrain to watch the Rampage will certainly see the most radical action sports event around. There will be crashes, helicopter life flights, and the most daring riding in the world.
After 10 years of making and breaking careers, launching insane tricks that fill global highlight reels and pushing the boundaries of professional freeride mountain biking, Red Bull Rampage will once again bring the best of the sport to Virgin, Utah for a downhill spectacle that will be sure to drop jaws around the world. On October 5-7, 2012, for 36 chosen athletes, Red Bull Rampage will be their chance to prove who is the most spectacular and well-rounded freerider on the planet.
Back in 2001, the Red Bull Rampage concept was conceived to serve one of the fringes of the blossoming mountain bike movement. There were riders - courageous, driven and a little crazy - who were at once exploring new terrain, testing their own limitations and defining a new genre of the sport and their riding style was not represented at all in competition. Freeride mountain biking was rapidly evolving with every insane drop and first descent, and Red Bull Rampage was on board to help push it even harder.
STEVE PEAT
SHEFFIELD
Sheffield Steel, Old School or simply Peaty. Call Steve Peat what you will, but after twenty years on the World Cup circuit he’s showing little sign of slowing down. 2012 was a troubled year for him though, scattered with injuries, crashes and flashes of raw pace. We caught up with him at the Santa Cruz V10c launch at Massa Vecchia in Tuscany to talk about the past season, how he prepares to go racing and how tough it is for young riders trying to break into the sport’s top ranks.
D STEEL
STEVE PEAT How was last season? Last season sucked for me... I felt good. I was really busy through the winter, so training didn’t go to plan. I came into the season not as fit as I wanted to be, but rode into my season. By Fort William I felt really good. And then I had some freaky, little crash in Fort William. Saved the crash, ok, but dragged my leg behind me, it got caught on a rock and I ripped my hamstring. Really, I should have just took bloody six weeks off to fix it, but I carried on riding through it. So I went to Mont St Anne and couldn’t ride that well. I ended up having a crash in my final run. I went to Windham and I had a mechanical. So I just struggled all year with crashes, then I crashed at World Champs. Flew off the track in Norway... But in all those races I had really good speed, I had good splits at Worlds, really good speed in Norway. I was stoked at that track, I think it’s the best track we’ve raced on for years... All season there were just freaky little incidents for me. Do you think the speed is there? Yeah, definitely. I had flashes of brilliance at certain races, I felt up to speed. Norway, I love that track, it’s awesome. I felt like I was up to speed for a top five, even, but it didn’t turn out... You said you had a couple of injuries, but they didn’t keep you away from the race track? I’m pretty good dealing with pain and stuff like that, and I love racing and I love riding my bike. So for me to carry on through that injury... I feel better about myself being able to do it, to carry on through it. But when I look back, I should have just taken a couple of months off, gone home, got some really good physio and got strong for the end of the season. After twenty years, you’ve kept that hunger to be there? Yeah, I enjoy it. How much has your training changed over the years? I’m one of those people, I like to mix my training up. So long as I’m having fun, but I’m training hard, I benefit from all different types of training. One year I’ll do something different to the next, but so long as I know I’m training hard I feel good about myself. I did quite a bit of boxing and circuit training in a boxing gym. I steered away from lifting weights and did more circuit training instead. In hindsight, I struggled a little bit with the strength and conditioning to keep me strong through the whole year, but it was different training and I enjoyed it, it was fun. I definitely got fit, and I got lean through it before the season. Do you feel you’re in better shape now than when you were younger? No. I feel like I’m too busy to have a proper structure. When I was young I could just wake up and do whatever I wanted, now I have a few more business commitments, family, a lot more shit to do in the sport. It’s definitely harder now to get the same amount of training, I have to fit my sessions in shorter periods and make them pay.
“NORWAY, I LOVE THAT TRACK IT’S AWESOME. I FELT LIKE I W UP TO SPEED FOR A TOP FIVE, EVEN, BUT IT DIDN’T TURN OU
K, WAS , UT...”
“I THINK GWINNY COMING IN DEFINITELY OPENED A FEW EYES. HE’S BEEN SO CONSISTENTLY FAST AND NO ONE HAS DONE THAT FOR A LONG TIME.”
Advanced riders only The trail is one of the world’s toughest
So, what does your average off-season day look like? I don’t think I have an average day! Haha, but how does the off-season work for you then? A few years ago, when the season finished that was it, you’d have a couple of months at home, take a little time off, do a few photoshoots and get into your training schedule. Since I’ve finished the season this year, I’ve been in Thailand for a week, came home for almost a week, had a few days away with the family, now I’m in Tuscany... I get home for one day, then I’m gone to Mexico for a week for sponsors. It’s quite a fun trip, but it’s still away from home for a week and it’s quite hard. After Mexico I have a couple of days at home, then I have two training days in a row down in Dorset at a UK bikepark, then I’ve got an SPS weekend, as season-ender, after that I have various photoshoots booked in here and there, I’m filming for This is Peaty. And around all that I have to fit training in. It’s weird, obviously, December/ January is the time I can focus more on training. An average day would be get up, go to the gym, do an early morning session, I usually get up at 6, to the gym for 6:45... Then I get back, breakfast, a few emails, help Adele get the kids ready for school, or have the kids while the wife does something else, and try to fit a ride in the afternoon if I’m not too busy. I don’t know, every day is different if I’m honest... Every day is different, but I do sit down with Dr. Rob Copeland, who’s my sports psychologist from Sheffield Hallam University, and we try and set out what I want to achieve for that winter, what I need to get in place, how much family time I can allow, how many sessions a week I want to train. I have to sit down and plan it all big time, because it’s so easy to get wrapped up in other stuff. Has your mentality changed? I don’t think the mentality has changed, as in racing... You’re not mellowing with age? I would say I definitely mellowed in certain areas, but I’ve been doing it that long that I can say “yeah, I’ll chill out today, rather than put a hard training session today, I’m experienced so can miss one.” Which leads on to missing a few more through the winter, and these days that’s no good because eighty people qualify for a world cup... and the seconds between qualifying and not qualifying these days are a lot tighter than they were a few years ago. So it’s not just your top ten, your top twenty guys that are fit and focused these days, it’s 200 guys that come and race World Cups. Everybody’s got a personal trainer. How much do you think the level has changed? I think Gwinny coming in definitely opened a few eyes. He’s been so consistently fast and no-one has done that for a long time. Consistently winning, he won five World Cups this year. The last guy to do that was surely Vouilloz? I’d say so really, yeah. Greg’s been sort of dominant, but never had a run of winning. Nobody has really, because you’re racing the fastest guys in the world. But Gwin has definitely brought a new approach to it. I think everybody is just way more pro now. Everybody keeps their cards close to their chest because they have their own training programmes and personal trainers and all that sort of stuff.
Do you think it’s harder for young guys coming through? It’s tough. I get a lot of people coming to me saying “I’m thinking of starting racing, how do I get sponsored?” I tell them, “You don’t get sponsored until you’ve done good at racing, then you have to prove yourself, do well before anyone will consider sponsoring you.” It’s the wrong mentality, there are lot of people coming to the sport with the wrong mentality. You’ve got to put your time in and earn your sponsorship and earn your dues. Now it’s going a lot deeper, because everyone wants to be sponsored, everyone wants to be at World Cups, be at that kind of level and, yeah, it’s getting tougher and tougher. As the World Cup schedule gets more international, rather than just the European cup, do you think that makes it harder for up-andcoming riders? It’s the World Cup series, you need to race all over the world. If you need to go to Japan, or South Africa, or Peru, or wherever. I think that’s better for the sport, it gets it to more places, more people get to see it. You’re not going to those places to see where the guys in 70th-80th position are finishing, or the guys that don’t qualify, you don’t go there for those guys, you go there for the creme-de-la-creme. To showboat the fastest 20, 30... Really, the exposure that you get from the race is top five guys, probably. It’s a showboat sport and there are plenty of other places for those guys to race in, other than World Cups. Do there need to be tighter criteria for people to get to the World Cups? You need to get 20 UCI points before you get into a World Cup anyway, so you have to do good at some races, somewhere, but then that opens it up for the people in Russia, for instance, if you had a local race that’s UCI accredited, you could get the top five people in that race with enough points to race a World Cup, but they’re not racing at a high standard of competition. So yeah, you do get people like that at World Cups. Would the sport benefit from a MotoGP-style feeding system, where riders move up through the categories? We’ve got that in our sport, but it’s harder to police it because of all the rankings around the world. Moto GP has 20 guys on the grid, so they have to pick the 20 guys. Whereas in downhill mountain biking you can have more people on the start line. I think it’s at a pretty good level now. You’ve got to be pretty shit-hot to qualify for a World Cup, it is the creme-de-lacreme. With that, you’ve got some nations that are really strong: England, Australia, New Zealand. There are a lot of strong nations. For England, we’ve got so many good top ten World Cup guys, that if there’s a national race with UCI points, it’s hard for the guys that are ten to fifteen, or twentieth to fiftieth position to get points in the UK, so they have to travel to get points to even be allowed to be accepted at a World Cup race. For me, that’s wrong somehow. They have to go to Bulgaria or Peru to find a UCI category one race to find enough points to be accepted into the world Cup because it’s so hard for them get points in their own country as the nation is so strong. What are your plans for this year? Crack on, World Cups, nationals. I enjoy doing nationals as I’m there with my SPS team, I’ve raced nationals for years, so it’s good. The best series we have in our country and I’m proud of where I come from, so I like racing nationals. I might try and do a couple of enduro races where I can fit them in. Have fun with it all riding bikes. JS
“YOU’VE GOT TO PUT YOUR TI IN AND EARN YOUR SPONSORS AND EARN YOUR DUES”
IME SHIP
DESCENT TESTED
SANTA CR
RUZ V10 CC
THE BIKE TRACKS EXCEEDINGLY WELL IN THE ROUGH. DESPITE THE BIG WHEELS, QUICK LINE ADJUSTMENTS WERE EASY AND THE BIKE RESPONDED QUICKLY AND PREDICTABLY For 2015 Santa Cruz introduces the 6th generation of it’s highly successful V10 platform. While maintaining the look and lines of the previous year’s V10, the new version is a further refinement of the bike and has seen a few big updates in regards to wheel-size, frontend length and rear travel. Based on feedback from the Santa Cruz Syndicate, the V10 lost the adjustable travel options in favor of a single, 8.5-inch setting and now offers adjustable geometry with high and low options. Between the two settings a few numbers change: at 63.5-degrees the head-angle is half a degree slacker in the low setting, the bottom bracket drops a quarter-inch from 14.17” to 13.92” and the reach sees about a fifth of an inch reduction in the low setting. Chain-stay length stays consistent regardless of which setting the rider
chooses. Wheel size was also updated to 27.5-inch, which Santa Cruz had been testing on the bike since around early 2013 eventually leading to the new bike being unveiled partway through the 2014 World Cup season. Also new for 2015 is the option of two different carbon V10 frames, the V10CC and the V10C. Santa Cruz uses two different types of carbon for these two different models. For the V10C, a less expensive carbon is employed to lower the overall cost of the bike. While stiffness and strength remain the same between the two frames, the benefit of the V10CC is a weight-savings of 280g, which is over half a pound for the nonmetric minded.
Advanced riders only The trail is one of the world’s toughest
Initial Impressions Santa Cruz put us on the V10CC X01 build, complete with ENVE wheels and a SRAM X01 DH 7-spd drive train. Santa Cruz really spared no expense when putting this bike together and everywhere you look is a high-end component. From the FOX suspension, ENVE hoops, Race Face SIXC carbon bars and cranks, DT 240 hubs... right down to the Thomson Elite seatpost, no corners were cut. But if you want a build of this caliber it doesn’t come cheap. This beaut’ goes for £10,799 and is one of the most expensive complete downhill bikes available. When deciding on what size frame to go with, our decision was based mostly on reach. Although Santa Cruz lengthened the front-end for 2015, we still found ourselves favoring the reach numbers of the XL as opposed to a large (what we normally find suitable for this 6’1” tester) at 445.9mm in low and 450.8mm in high. While setting up the bike and getting all our contact points and controls where we like them, it was confirmed the cockpit length was what we expected and put us right where we like to be in terms of body position. Although the cockpit sizing was what we’re used to, one thing that stood out immediately was how long the bike felt. This was confirmed when we checked the numbers. Sure enough, the reach of the XL V10 is comparable to the reach of some other size large frames on the market, while the wheel-base is in the range of some other XL bikes. This comes with a few handling characteristics that we’ll get into later. On The Trail Right off the bat we noticed how well the V10CC reacts to rider input. Santa Cruz did a good job of picking parts that offer excellent stiffness with little weight penalty. The ENVE rims, FOX 40 Float, Race Face SIXC carbon bits and the V10CC frame itself all really help make this bike stiff, light and extremely responsive. That stiffness is really felt while all-out sprinting, in the rocks and in corners, contributing to a super responsive feeling in general. Even though the bike rolls on bigger wheels, it’s still quick to get up to speed. When pedaling out of corners or mashing across the flats no effort is wasted and the bike picks up very well. While we’re on the topic of suspension, the combination of the 27.5 wheels with the VPP linkage makes for excellent small bump and chatter handling. Cornering traction was also great. The big wheels, Maxxis Minion DHRII tires, and the FOX suspension offer plenty of support and grip allowing the bike to really rail wide-open turns like no other bike we’ve ridden. The bike tracks exceedingly well in the rough. Despite the big wheels, quick line adjustments were easy and the bike responded quickly and predictably to rider input. The light weight of the bike undoubtedly played a role in this as well. While the bike never deflected nor displayed any weird behavior in the rough, we did notice when speeds picked up through extremely nasty sections that the bike was a bit harsh and although square-edge hits didn’t feel like they really slowed the bike down, the roughness of the trail was definitely transmitted to the rider more than with some other bikes we’ve ridden. That said, the V10CC’s excellent response to rider input and predictable handling makes the bike one of the fastest downhill bikes we’ve laid our hands on so far in terms of going all-out over abusive terrain. What’s The Bottom Line? The Santa Cruz V10CC with the X01 DH build with ENVE wheels is truly one of the nicest spec’d and fastest bikes we’ve ever ridden, hands down. Confidence inspiring in pretty much every situation, the bike is a blast to ride and we don’t want to give it back. Best suited for race-minded riders with an aggressive riding style, the V10 is a purebred race-bike through and through. With complete bikes ranging from £6,599 to the £10,799 package we tested, the V10 is definitely a bit more expensive than other bikes out there, but for that price you get an extremely refined ride with an undeniable pedigree that can’t be ignored. Whether or not that’s enough for you to pull the trigger is entirely personal, but we can say with confidence that the V10CC hauls the mail and delivers in record time.