Toughest Races ON the PLANET | BEYOND THE LINE Episode 2

Beyond the Line is back with episode number two. As the World Cup reaches its midway point, come join us as we'll serve you a rich plate of mountain bike action. Rob and Elliot went to the pits to learn about the structure of a downhill team. Will they come up with one of their own? I'll call on to that. With the Olympics drawing closer, how do cross-country athletes peak at the right times? Picking's quite mental. We did some research in the pits. We will also dissect all the highlights from intensely competitive races in Val di Sone, Leo Gang, Nove Mesto Namorave and at Red Bull Hardline. Due to injury, two-time World Cup race winner Jackson Goldstone can't compete. We welcome him to our studio as he chats about his rehab and the World Cup. He will join our host Rob Warner, Red Bull TV's downhill analyst Elliot Jackson and two-time cross-country World Championship bronze medalist Emily Betty. Hello and welcome to another Beyond the Line. We're right in the middle of the bike season now. The World Cup races are coming thick and fast. We have two downhills and two cross-country since our first show, so there's plenty for the two Es, Emily and Elliot, to get stuck into. Emily, a spectacular start for the World Cup, for the cross-country World Cup down in Brazil. The whole circus has now moved up to Europe for these last two races and very different looking races, right? Yeah, I mean, I quite like seeing the World Cup circuit go to different places around the world, but certainly coming back to Europe and watching some of the top superstars perform and win these races, very impressive. Yeah, making their return with some success. We're going to talk a lot more about cross-country a little bit later in the show. Let's start things off though with downhill and let's start things off with the 10th anniversary of Red Bull Hardline Wales, back in Snowdonia National Park. And Elliot, I'm going to say that this one was by far the best hardline we have ever had. It was absolutely insane from the start to the finish. It was insane. It was. You and I got to talk to Gee Atherton on the podcast and he was just so keen to make it gnarly again, you know? He succeeded. Terrifying. 90-foot jumps really taking the track back to that kind of raw origins and I think he nailed it. He did. He absolutely did. They wanted, that's right, to make the bits in between the features as difficult as the features. We know there's some massive stuff that was tested this year that's going to come in next year. But yeah, what an event. And one of the big things I think that I enjoyed it on a personal level so much was because I managed to get Juan Favellas, this 20-year-old lad from the Medellin, in Colombia. You know, it's difficult for these riders to get up to the northern hemisphere. Costs, visas. He turned up, he came, he saw, he conquered. It was absolutely amazing. People coming up to me after, you know, his second run of practice and going, who's this kid and why is he no-handing the road gap? No one's ever done that. I mean, it's partly your fault he's there, Elliot. Oh, for sure. You've seen how good he is. That's right. We see him when we commentate the Cerro Bajo hymns, Sebastian Olguin, Camilo Sanchez. I mean, they are so precise. And I think, you know, they're superstars down there as well. So for them to kind of come up, show that they can compete on the world stage at a race like Red Bull Hardline. And not only that, I mean, third place, right? That's not just competing. He deserves to be there. He does, yeah. Look at that. There it is. An amazing ride. Actually beating the world champion, Charlie Hatton, in the fourth. A day he won't forget. Bernard Kerr was really chasing that fourth Red Bull Hardline Wales win. Put everything into it, but it was the brilliance, I'm going to say, of Ronan Dunne that stopped him. What a year he's had. Double Red Bull Hardline winner now. One in Tasmania. Small matter of winning a World Cup in between. I don't think I've ever seen him ride better than we did there. You know, got a Red Bull hat on Thursday. What a week. Yeah, this year has been, like you said, it's been a dream year for Ronan so far. We, he was kind of known as this diamond in the rough last year. And for him to come out, you know, show us kind of what it means at Red Bull Tasmania, the Hardline Tasmania, now here at Red Bull Hardline Wales. You know, he drinks enough Red Bulls for him to have that Red Bull helmet. It is, it's awesome. I don't think we've ever seen Ronan ride better. Took a win by about 1.2 seconds from the three-time Red Bull Hardline winner, Bernard Kerr, who put it all out there. And you, you, Sherlock Homeboy, are going to show us exactly where Bernard lost that time, right? Yeah, well, I mean, when you guys were talking about, on the broadcast, talking about Bernard overriding the track, I wanted to show exactly what that means. So you have Bernard on the left, Ronan on the right. And this is right out of the gate. This is right out of the gate, right out of the gate. And so this is what it means when mistakes cascade. You see Bernard's tire hit him in the butt. And what happens after that? He starts to brake. So you see Bernard's tire locked up compared to Ronan is rolling right there. And as soon as you start to brake on a downhill bike, it makes the suspension uncompressed. And Bernard's just fighting to keep the bike back on line. Isn't able to get this jump that Ronan is right here. Yeah. And because Bernard goes into this dip, you see him come down. His suspension, right, is going to bounce him back up. Yeah. And because of that, you know, offline again, he's pointed off the track. Yeah. And in your mind, you're feeling super anxious, right? You know you're at the top of the track. Ronan right here, perfect again. Knees are pointed straight ahead. Lands off that gap really nicely. And then another mistake for Bernard, right? Really offline there. Knees are pointed out because he's trying to save a mistake. He's fighting. Fighting the bike, you know, comes around and it's just trying to get back up to speed, but isn't quite there. You can kind of see the speed difference. Again, Bernard a little bit off. And then Rob, there's your 1.2. And how easy is it though to overdo it at the top of a run like that? The tiniest of mistakes, I guess. In XT, you know, cross-country, at least you get a little bit longer to recover. I mean, basically that was it. It's kind of done there and then. When Ronan's riding like that, you're not going to pull that time. Yeah, in XT, we have little featured sections like that. So when you're offline, it does take you quite a few seconds to kind of get retracted and back into the flow of things. I get it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you're going to love this, Emily, because in 2022, it was another man who turned up, set a new course record and was the youngest ever winner of Red Bull Hardline. Jackson Goldstone becomes the youngest winner of Red Bull Hardline. Goldstone's so creative. And joining us now in the studio is the man himself, Jackson Goldstone, second overall in last year's Elite Downhill World Cup, the only man to win two races. And I would say, how are you? But I know after that crash at Red Bull Hardline Tasmania this year that you've undergone a full knee reconstruction, right? How are you getting on? Yeah, so I had full ACL rebuild three months ago now. So I'm about halfway through the process. It's getting a lot better, but yeah, still got a long, long road ahead of me. You have, but great to see you in Europe, riding a bike a little bit, even though I think you're probably not supposed to be. Yeah, on the bike a little bit, just mostly spinning around. And I hate to take you back to it. Look how fast he's going. That was like a MotoGP flick at the end there, man. You were moving. Wow. I was lucky to not hit that tree directly. I bounced off it, but it was a big one. Yeah, man. Yeah, because what happened? Just like, just back in, step down a little bit. Yeah, so I came into that section, no brakes, probably should have braked. And yeah, just missed my line by a few inches, rear stepped out into a hole, and then just that bucked me forward off the bike and to the left when the track went to the right. So that's what made me go off track and into the tree. And then the tree flipped me over more, so. It just never ended. Yeah. So what are you up to now? How's the season looking? Yeah, so I mean, I'm in Europe just for, I think it's almost six weeks now. Yeah. Yeah, I'm about halfway through my trip and just, yeah, watching the World Cups, hanging out, seeing you guys, seeing people. Okay, watching the World Cup. It's so different than watching on TV. What's it like for you to be on the sidelines, actually spending a whole day watching your competitors come down through practice and then the final runs? What's that like for you? Yeah, it's weird. You know, I'm so used to being on the inside of the tape and actually racing. It's still really fun. I really enjoy watching, but, you know, it definitely, definitely is upsetting and I'd love to be in there. I mean, it's been, you're such a, you've got so much phenomenal speed as you've shown the few times we've seen you race in Elite. Your first year, you had the appendix issues last year, still, like we say, won two. And then this year, the knee. I mean, it's been, it couldn't, I don't know how you're managing to take it so well, really. You've stepped up into Elite, all eyes are on you and it couldn't really have been much harder, your start. Yeah, I mean, maybe the injury took a little bit of the pressure off, but I think, yeah, I'm hoping to get these injuries out the way and have a clean season. Well, you'll be looking at a comeback when you come back. Next year, I imagine now. It must have been, yeah, and it must have been incredible for you. What did you make to see Amiri Pierron to come back, you know, a year, a full year, over a year from the top, to come back and win in Val di Sole in, I think, I don't know if you agree with us. It's one of the greatest runs of all time. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's a historic run already and it's only been a few days. Look at that, broken neck last year at the first opening race and then massive surgery to put a staple in there in between those two vertebrae and a year's recovery. Pierron, you know, he is a man who's suffered big injuries in the past, lots of them, and he always comes back, but even I, this time, I doubted from that injury whether he would come back to this, to this level of racing and he did it in three, four World Cups. Yeah, for sure. I mean, and the thing that was probably the most impressive to me, Jackson, was to see him do it on that track. You were on the sidelines. Like, why was the track so difficult this year? I never heard so many top athletes be like, this is the hardest practice race I've ever done in my life. Yeah, for sure. I mean, the track was absolutely destroyed. You know, the days prior to practice, it was raining so much and there was a bunch of like natural springs coming out from the ground. So tons of water was coming onto the track even when it wasn't raining and when it was sunny. So yeah, the holes were huge. The ruts were massive. And yeah, I think it's definitely been the hardest VeloSol we've seen. Yeah. I mean, we've seen, you know, you won last year. We've seen Gwyn nearly eight seconds back in the past. Your win, your win. You had an insane run last year too. Yeah, that was a good one last year. Where does Pierron's, because it was a massive winning margin compared to Gwyn's. I mean, it was different conditions, but like it was from where we were sat, it looked about perfect. He didn't, you know, if someone who's usually pushes too hard, that was absolutely the absolute perfect effort. Yeah, I don't think he could have gotten much more time out of that track and especially to do it, you know, after some rain because it was raining at the top halfway through the men's. So, you know, some of the other riders like Dakota and maybe Ronan as well. It was raining a little bit, but the track was definitely not as slippery. So Emery rode it like it was dry. He did. It was really unbelievable. See, as it was with Tani Seagrave, right? I mean, coming back as well, so many riders in downhill Tani suffered a massive concussion. We saw her racing last year, but she didn't really get back to the dizzying heights of World Cup wins. And this was the first one in a long time for her. Yeah, I mean, we talk about, you know, kind of the physical recovery of injuries. And I think with the head injury, a lot of it's mental. And I think a lot of it is like building your confidence back up. I think so many people saw Tani, heard Tani and were kind of wondering, is she ever going to be the same rider? Yeah, that's right. I mean, what's it like, Emily, in cross country? Because at downhill, you're sort of, it's hard to find the level. Well, I guess you might have more idea in XC when you come back of where you're at from your numbers. I don't know. I mean, our injuries are a lot less severe. It's usually collarbones or wrists or something like that. But I think when you see your other competitors recovering from such serious injuries, I don't know, it kind of gives you that mental edge that you can do it. Totally different injuries, though. But the resilience is what you're seeing amongst all the downhillers, which below is my mind. Yeah, that mental strength. Although you, when you get back on a bike, we know you won't even be on your mind, will it? Right? You just, you literally right now, I guess all you can think about is going as fast as you can. Yeah, I miss that feeling. And I mean, hopefully your, the time between your wins won't be as long as this. I mean, for Tani, over a thousand days and for Emery, over 600 days. So that's absolutely true of the greats of the sport. And Tani, yeah, look at nearly three years. Yeah. For Tani to come back and win again. That's pretty mad. Must be a good feeling seeing that. You're only going to be out for about 365 days. You should be all right. Gives me a little bit of hope. It did, yeah. Light at the end of the tunnel. You're one fast young Canadian. Finals is absolutely another. And he really has been riding brilliantly, especially in Leogang, right? What a ride that was. For sure. I mean, we know Vettel was great for him, third place. But to me, the Leogang performance was just incredible because he missed qualifying. He missed semifinals because he crashed in practice, couldn't even close his hand. He decided to take some time off, try to let his hand recover. But you don't normally do that, right, Jackson? You kind of need those first couple of race runs to get up to speed. Yeah. I mean, all the way from time practice, quali, semi, you're just building your speed up the whole track and pushing limits in sections and finding that edge. So to not do any of that and then come out and pull a second place is phenomenal. It's crazy. But yeah, I couldn't actually really get my head around it. What do you think? Do you think it's frustrating for Finn to see Bruni still beating him like he does? Because Bruni is like a pretty immovable object in that specialized team. It's true. Yeah. Well, I've always thought about this because everyone always compares Finn to Loic and stuff like that. But and I'm sure you get that comparison a lot too. I mean, even last year with Jordan at the beginning of the season, at least. Do you think about one rider? Is it more just trying to beat everyone? Yeah. I mean, in the end of the day, you're trying to beat the clock. The rider doesn't have an effect on you. Obviously, you want to beat them. But it comes down to you in the end of the day. So I think everyone's always battling. There will always be talks. But it's the clock that tells the story. It is. Yeah. And I mean, I just look at the overall standings there. Pierron up to fifth overall with that win. Straight in there. The overall is still not over, is it, for the men? I mean, Bruni's got a good lead. But as you know, anything can happen in downhill. And Leah Gang is the home race of world champion Valli Hull. She lives just literally over the other side of the mountain. It hasn't always gone to plan there for her. But this year, we've never seen her ride better, I would say. Yeah. If there was some sort of plan, this is how you execute it. I mean, 7.1 seconds. It's one of the best runs that we've ever seen Valli have. But to me, it's fascinating. This year, it almost feels like she's regressing back to her early days where you win in Fort William and crash in Poland. You win commandingly here and crash again in Val di Sole. I mean, is it a mental issue or? Well, I have a question as to whether she even needs to push her limit. If she's winning almost every time she gets a clean run. I mean, Jackson, do you think she has to push that quite so hard if she's going to guarantee a win if she keeps a clean run? Yeah, I mean, maybe she doesn't have to push that hard. But you never know exactly how fast the other girls are going to go or if it's going to be a tighter time than 7.1 seconds. You never know. Like you said, it's the clock. It's the clock. So yeah, I think every time Valli's going out there, she's probably trying to put her best run down and push that limit just so she can secure that win safely, let's say. But yeah, I think maybe she could tone it off a little bit. But if it doesn't work and she doesn't end up winning a race, then yeah, she's going to go right back to those cool shoes. I mean, look at the time. She was absolutely in a league of her own. Great to see Anne and Jukka come into second place. Miriam Nicole, another woman on the comeback trail as well. Look at the overall standings. It is Valentina, though, with that commanding lead, despite those two sort of throwaway results for her. Yeah, I mean, the story of these first couple of races for me is Miriam Nicole. Yeah. For her to have all of the kind of struggles mentally coming back from that head injury last year, not knowing if she could do it herself, you saw the emotion just pouring out of her. And Leogang, she got that first podium. Yeah, incredible. As is an American woman there in fifth place, eh? Elliot's not stopped talking about her. Here, he's going to tell us all a little bit more. My athlete pick is Anna Newkirk. After battling Valley Hole throughout her junior career, it wasn't until this year's Leogang that she finally secured her first elite women's podium. Finishing second in qualifying, semifinals and finals earned her the title of fastest privateer in the world. She started Beyond Racing with her best friend, Abby, and she's been able to compete with the top level with only a fraction of the resources. It's performances like these that demonstrate just how much determination, grit, and talent Anna possesses. And if she keeps riding like this, it won't be the last time you see her making waves on the World Cup field. Well, for me, Elliot, it's great to see. I mean, I remember my era when, you know, the women's side of the sport was dominated by Americans. So perhaps this is the start of it coming back. Yeah, I mean, it's great to see, have seen Anna progress from juniors. And I just think it's special that in our sport and downhill that you can have a small team that can compete with teams, you know, 50 times their size. That's right. That's the essence of it. That's why we love it. Well, you remember in first Beyond the Line this year, we gave our predictions for these first two, these last two, excuse me, World Cup races. There they are on screen. Okay. And look at the green ticks under my name. We were talking about this, Jackson. I feel like my pick, I got a little bit unlucky, right? I had good picks. There's only one winner, Elliot. There's no such thing as bad luck. Everyone, any racer knows that. You won one race. Look at that. Bruni, Valentina Hull, big green ticks, which means I don't have to do the challenge, but you two, you both failed. Your guy didn't even start the race. I'm sorry about this, Emily, but you're going to have to do, you're going to have to get physical for me. It's going to be, it's going to be press-ups or it's going to be squats. Who's doing what? How many? 25, 30, I don't know. All right. And while they're doing that, let's have a look at our predictions that we gave for Leger, the race coming up in a couple of weeks time. Now, let's see who we predicted. I've gone for Bruni, Valentina Hull. Emily has gone for Bruni, Seagrave. You're wrong again. It's not me doing the pre... Emily, perfect. Love your form. Elliot, could you just flatten your back a little bit, please? What would you do, Jack? Who would you go for? Elliot, keep that bum down. Who would you go for? I think all these are pretty safe picks. Definitely, someone's going to get at least two of those right. Oh my goodness, mate. How was that? Good work. You only did, you didn't do 20 there. Real quick for 20. Were you counting? Yeah, I was. Were you? I'm actually a machine. I don't know. What do you reckon? Anyway. I sweat and that's enough. That's enough. Jackson, I'm going to say thank you very much for coming in. I guess you enjoyed that as much as I did. That was a lot of fun. I'm going to let you go, mate. Good luck with the recovery. Good luck with the rest of the year. Perfect. Jackson, so good to have you. And clearly, Elliot doesn't have the fitness for World Cup racing. And nor do I, to be quite honest. So when we were in Leargang, we decided that we needed to take a completely different approach. So nice to be back at a World Cup race. We got to spend more time. We have, yeah, we have. I was thinking about it. The way we could do it is we could just start our own downhill team. I would make an incredible team manager. Rob, I think that I should probably run the team. No, I've got a lot of experience. I'm going to do it. I'm going to run the team. Great idea. Tad, you got a minute? I need some advice. How are you? Good, I'm good. What's going to get me the most points? What's going to make me a successful team? I'd say a bit of everything. How good is the video? Good. Yeah, so good. What are the three key elements to a team around specialised gravity's calibre? Key elements. First is working with the right people. Good physio. We have a cook. The main thing that I look for is personality. And then you put on top of that good management and the gears are apart. And then you find the recipe. Man and woman, down here, man and woman. That's it, four riders. Well, no, because what if one gets injured? Have you got backup riders that can come in at the last minute? Do you? Should you? This is the question. Have you? Have I? I need my first rider. You don't have the pocket deep enough. I mean, you can try. You're confident. I'm just going to get straight down to business. I'm starting a team. How much? We're going to have to talk about some team structure here. I mean, we got it as well. It's a little bit high maintenance. Valley. What do you think about riding for me? I think I have a phone call. I don't have email yet. No, get one. Things just go serious. Eight riders all of a sudden. Exactly. You need a mum. I need... Is that one of the... Everything needs a mum. A mum role. I think this is a deal. Yeah. I have pleasure doing business with you. Yeah. Look at Elliot signing up the riders there, eh? Incredible stuff. But it was, you know, we were thrown in at the deep end. It was, as we went on, I don't know about you, but I found that I had no idea what I was doing, basically. And just the structure was insane. The amount of staff. I mean, you actually ran your own team, Emily. You've done it for real. What does it take, not just to make a team, but to make a successful one? Yeah, I mean, I did the factory team for almost 10 years. And I really wanted to tap into the more business side of running a team. And that's really what it is. You're running a business. But first and foremost, the first thing I learned is the personalities are the most important because you were spending a lot of time together. I'm not sure I took care of that. I just went for out and out winners. People do need to gel. You absolutely do. Because in XC, at least, we're not working in silos. It is a cohesive, engaged team. And if you've got one negative energy, it's going to bring the whole room down. So it's really important, those characteristics. Yeah, I mean, it is interesting because you're always out there by yourself. But you're interacting with everyone. You're sharing things. You're working to build everyone up at the same time. It's always way more workload than you think. You need way more staff and way more boots on the ground than you think you do. Actually, I did find out. Let's have a look at my team structure. I think I probably should have gone a little bit bigger. These are the staff that I kind of went with. Why are you laughing? What is so funny about that? Emily's like, you don't want a silo in the next minute. You've got mechanic, physio, and coach for each rider. How can that be bad? That each rider has got a dedicated coach, a dedicated physio and mechanic. Someone is there to caress their every need. Where is your marketing team? How are your sponsors going to be happy with it? When you're as good as my team is going to be, the results will do the talking. I don't need media. When you win World Cups week in, week out, everybody knows who you are. Who's taking the photos to document all the stories? There's photographers everywhere at a World Cup. Yeah, they all work for teams. Let me show you how it's done, Rob. Let me show you how it's done. Throw my team up there so we can see whether we can see a real winning team. I like the look of mine. Well, because when I was thinking about building my team, you know, I thought about, I want some, you know, I want these elite riders. Look at the big line down the middle. Well, yeah, look at that. Just bypassing the riders. Everyone's connected. And then they have this perfect infrastructure layer down there. Media, so people know that we're winning championships. No stress. We've got Cook. We've got truck driver. We've got a team manager who can actually do things for the riders. I think maybe what's happened here... I think Elliot's gone up to you on this one. I think you need to think this through again. Is this because I raced on a professional team in the 90s when there wasn't things like social media and you were a little bit more in tune with the modern era? I mean, I don't know. But yeah, you might be right. I should have done some social media. Costings though. Okay. I mean, that looks like it's going to cost a lot of money. Let me have a look at what my team... Let's have a look at the costings. Okay, and you have what, 22 people on yours? Well, I don't know how you're... I don't know how you're... I was holding my breath there. Okay, what are you going to do with your... Are you going to have a truck? Yeah, a massive one. Are you purchasing it or are you leasing it? All right, stick another million on for the truck. I've got a 2.54 million. Did you factor in travel costs? I thought it was just team structure. I don't think I had to put all that, I suppose, for the costings. Hang on a second here. You have 3 million euro. Well, this is... Where did you come up with that budget? This is first year. I think that we, with those kind of people, we're going to go for some outside industry sponsors. I want to talk to your agency. Yeah, you know, I think we got some good decks. Are our budgets anywhere near there, Emily? I don't know downhill. I know XC and I would love a budget like that. So 3 million is completely out of reach. Yes, absolutely. We're going to leave downhill then. Elliot, that's enough on downhill today. And we're going to turn our attention now, thank you, to cross-country and to the art of being at your very best on the big day. One thing's for sure, we're all peaking for this. Peaking, I think, is having all your energy, all your confidence and all your power on a certain day in the year and kind of exploding into action. We always try to plan, but a plan is just a guideline. Sometimes you have an overview for the season, which kind of races you want to peak. I'd set goals of where I want to be at every World Cup and where I was in Brazil was exactly where I wanted to be. I think for each athlete it's different, but you have the off-season where you create the base for the season. I call it balance. So for me, peaking is quite mental. You're building up to a goal all the time. And key points for peaking, for me, are a lot of people over-trained. You still need adequate rest. You need the right interval work for the specific demands of the sport. And you need good vibes. If you don't do that many races, you need to perform well in the ones you do. If not, you drop back. And this is always a bit of a gamble, but in the past it worked out quite well for me. Performing over the season, it's the hardest, I think. A lot of races where you can perform and show your shape as well. Try to stay fresh because it's a long season, you know. But this year, it's so strange. It's like, for everyone, it feels like, they're like, oh, well, today didn't work, but the Olympics are coming. And I'm like, oh, man, you're putting so much pressure on this one race. When something like this gets thrown in, you have to just, like, almost, like, whip up the plan and like, right, we make a new plan sort of things. It's like, you can't just start preparing for Olympic Games a year before. It's like, it starts 10 years before. Because it's not that you're building your shape in just 200 days, you know, it's a long process to get there. It's such a special race in the sense of, I think it's really hard to predict, you know, it could be... I think it's a really open race. We have seen it in the past that the ones who were the strongest physically were not the strongest mentally and they just collapsed at the Olympics. Some riders are really, really fast and put all the energy in, but they forget sometimes the mental strength and then at the Olympics, they're dropping down. But I think you just have to be smart. You can't win every race in an Olympic year or in any year. Yeah, the mental game is, in the end, is a big part. To me, mental preparation is everything. You can have good legs, but you need to be super sharp in the head and the legs. And again, to me, that means that you need to, in terms of peaking, you need to have spent the right time away from the sport, in the sport, with family, on your own. And you need the right reason in your head to kind of put yourself in the hurt box on race day. Well, now I'm starting to see why riders' forms are all over the place. There is, it's everything, everything around that rider needs to be right for someone to peak. Is that how it is? Yeah, I really liked that the riders are focusing on what they need to be focusing on, and that's controlling their mental aspect of it. But I do think the physical side of things is quite interesting. And I would love to show you a quick graphic of a high level so that everyone at home can kind of understand what we're looking at here. So this graph is a simulation of a full year, a full 365 days. We've got our winter months here, our spring races. Ideally, our peak performance here at World Championships for a normal year, and then our deloading season that we recover, and then we start fresh. So in the winter months, we're lots of volume. We're building that big foundation, that base. Hours and hours on the bike. Yeah, we're talking over the course of the year, 800 to 1,000 hours. So this is big volume. Because once we get into some traveling, we need to scale back that stress loads because now we have all these new stimulations of traveling and the races themselves. So we increase our intensity here to simulate race, to sharpen the sword sort of thing. So now we're just changing the energy systems. We're still loading the body with stress, but we're reversing it to be a more race-specific stress load. So a normal year, our form would start here and we would peak, you know, July, August at World Championships. That's a normal year. This year is not a normal year because there's an even bigger race at the end of July. Exactly. But not for all athletes. A lot of athletes, like we know Pauline, gets the reassurance of knowing she's going to the Games. So she doesn't have to have that added stress. So what does that look like this year? Are you trying to peak twice or...? Yeah, the added stress you're talking about is there's another peak they need first just to qualify, to even make sure they're going to be in Paris, right? Exactly. So we have, you know, the Swiss, the French, the Americans. Which is why we saw such weird results in the early two World Cups. Yep, because they've had to cram all of this so that they're peaking here. Yeah. But then they need to detrain the stress, reintroduce more volume so that they can then have another peak here and then finish the season at the end of the year. A much harder ask then, right? Yeah. Very hard to get it right the second time. You're kind of just managing what energy you have left. So Pauline has a massive advantage, it looks like to me. Is that fair to say? Let's have a look at this. What's this one? Yes. So this is a more zoomed in version. This is a month's worth of training. We want to simulate this as many times as we can. So we're loading the body with stress. You know, maybe this is an 18 hour, a 24 hour, a 30 hour. Then you do it again. You take some rest. You do it again. It's 25, 30, 30, rest. And for sure, Rob, you were talking about, you were telling me that Pauline had this mask on. That picture of Pauline there is from the OKK Bike Revolution, a smaller race she did, what, a month ago? So two and a half months or so out from the Olympics. And afterward, that was her post-race interview after she'd won. I was with Annika Langvad and we were like, Pauline is serious. She doesn't want to get a cold like now. And I was like, yeah, that's crazy. We're like three months nearly away from the Olympics. She can afford a week off with a cold. But this disproves that, right? This is why she can't. Exactly. These are the most important times because you're trying to manage your stress and getting sick will compromise the whole structure. That month could go. A whole month can be compromised. So if you met Pauline here and she was trying to avoid being sick, it's so that she can still proceed with the next 60 hours of training that she's about to learn. She would much rather be sick on week three once she's got all of her fitness than week one before she gains all of it. I mean, ideally, you're not getting sick because it's a controllable thing, but it does happen. So we're trying to manage that as best as we can. It's a controllable thing, the science in these, you know, the riders that it's actually unbelievable. And someone like Pauline that just does it time and time again. It's the discipline. Everything about it is bonkers, isn't it? But if you can master the art, then maybe you can enjoy that sort of success. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, her alone, just not doing those Brazil traveling races. She was doing big volume where the other athletes are cutting the volume, doing hard races. Now they're in new time zones, different climates. It's a lot of different stress that some of these athletes are doing that others don't have to. Well, no doubt then that Pauline can perform under demand. She's proved it so many times, especially actually at the last two World Cups. She just turned up and won. No wonder then she's Emily's athlete pick of the week. Pauline Ferrand-Ferveau is certainly known for her ability to consistently perform at the top, winning over 12 elite world championship titles. But it's her composure when she decides to take control of the race that sets her apart from the other athletes and impresses me the most. Winning a World Cup effortlessly while in the depth of training once again showcases her ability and skills and has us all eagerly waiting to see if she can check the one box she has yet to do in her career next month. That performance was so elegant to watch. She looks like a dancer, a ballerina, if you will, on her bike, doesn't she? It was flawless to watch her perform. When Pauline is on form like that, she is an absolute maestro, isn't she? There's nothing going to stand in her way. You know, to come in and win back-to-back World Cups like that with relative ease and all those world titles we spoke about and all those different disciplines, cyclocross, the road, you know, everything. It's a big statement, but surely she is the greatest female cyclist there's ever been, right? I mean, it is a strong statement, but I think she's definitely earning that title. And just needs a gold medal. Yeah, she certainly wanted to test her skills and where she's at physically this time of year because she didn't make the trip down to Brazil. So she definitely flexed her fitness and you could see that it was almost coming easy watching that. Yeah, when we were looking at it, I mean, didn't even feel like she was breathing hard. And it did. It just felt like another day in the office when she came off. It wasn't like she was over the moon or anything. She's like, this is right on plan. Absolutely. I mean, she knows these tracks, so she probably didn't have to put too many days into it in advance. She was able to train through the race. But watching her in the early parts of the race and judging how it almost looked like she was trying to learn, you know, how Huk was racing amongst her, but then realized she didn't need to stick around. There wasn't much to learn. And so she just kind of was ready to go. She just... We can see the winning margin there on the wall. 1.02. It was a little bit more back in 2022. I think Pauline, she definitely backed it off at the end of that race. That could have been a much bigger winning margin, don't you think? If she was under pressure, but there's nobody that can challenge her right now. I mean, I remember in 2022 in Luana, that was that year that she was just demolishing the competition. And for Pauline to kind of put that much time into people with relative ease, like you were saying, man, July is going to be tough for everyone else. Pauline's a rider that if she can get out front, like Nino, if they can get out front and race their own race, they're going to prevail. It's just having that clean start and then staying focused mentally. But, yeah, mechanical preservation, making sure they don't have mechanicals. But their fitness is there, their mindset is there. They prove it time after time. So, yeah, seeing if the Paris track suits her is... I personally, I really hope that she gets it in Paris. It's Pauline Ferrand-Prevot's last year on a mountain bike. She deserves it. Let's have a look at the overall World Cup standings. Of course, not fair in there, as she might after missing those two races actually down in Brazil, as did Peter Shea as well. But look at Candice Lill there in sixth. I know she impressed you last week. Yeah, she's having an outstanding season. She's placed sixth in Czech Republic, and a strong third here. So first podium for Candice, which is great to see for the South Africans. And, of course, it wasn't the first podium for the man that did the winning in Val di Sole, for Nino Schurter, taking his 36th World Cup win. He just breaks his own record. He doesn't even have anyone to compete against at this point. No, that's how it is. He's 38 years old, Emily. Should he still be doing this? Heck yeah, he's winning World Cups, why not? Yeah, it was actually great to see him back there. Of course, Viktor Koretsky was just recovering from an illness, so he wasn't at the front, and Tom Pidcock wasn't there. But I think Nino needed this win. He needed this for his confidence. His ninth win in Val di Sole, to put it into some perspective, you know. But he's been there, you know, illness, those first two races. You know, we saw him in that documentary that's come out about him. He looked rough down there. He said the legs were there. He proved it in Val di Sole. The leg is there. He is a contender for Paris. Absolutely. I think Alan Hatherley here placing second definitely kept him honest. He was, you know, 15 seconds, kind of the whole race. That was what I was going to ask you, is it looked like there was a, like halfway through the race, you know, one of the groups bridged up, and then same with kind of Hatherley, and then Nino just opened it up again. Yeah, we saw that actually an image where he looked over his shoulder while Alan was in the feed zone and past the feed zone, you do see him like, yeah. So it was an ethical thing because he was past the feed zone, but you saw him, that was it. He was laying the hammer down and making that gap happen. And he made it stick. But Alan kept him, like I said, he kept him honest because he didn't let that gap grow. He kept him at 15 seconds. But it was Nino that did make it stick. Here's what he managed to say after the race. Yeah, I knew I'm in great shape. I had a great feeling already in short track and coming into this weekend, I could feel I'm, yeah, in a good state. And then I knew I need to do a hard race from the beginning. It's a track where you like, drafting doesn't help really a lot. So you can just go for yourself. And yeah, my strategy was from the beginning, go flat out and put the other on the pressures. And yeah, it went quite well. And yeah, super happy to win here again. Well, I don't know about you, but I just love, I love watching Nino win. I love watching him ride at the front, doing his own thing. Like there is no one like him. Well, that's not quite true actually, is it? Because at the race before that, the World Cup before that at Novi Amesto, there is a certain hurdle that everyone, that stands between everyone and winning another mountain bike race again ever. Tom Pidcock taking his fourth win in Novi Amesto Namuravi, the defending Olympic champion. He only turned up there because he needed that to get to Paris. I mean, what do you make of that? Can anyone stop Pidcock? I mean, he's raced nine mountain bike World Cups now and he has won six of them. Really? So wild. That's wild. He's a superstar. He's a superstar in every discipline. He dabbles in. And he's certainly Nino's biggest rival when it comes to winning championship titles now. He really is. And I mean, you know, like the mountain bikers are always on their mountain bikes getting ready for Paris. He jumped on a mountain bike just a week before this performance in Novi Amesto. He barely gets on the mountain bike. And we all know that it's very difficult. Only a handful of riders can switch seamlessly between the road and the off-road bike. But he does it. Just to remind you guys too, he is racing the tour. What is it, eight days before? It finishes. The Tour de France, three weeks of the most horrific riding you could ever think of, right? It's about 200 miles a day, isn't it? He's then got to try and get... He's going to pick the Olympics and then have to try and relax for eight days and be good at the Olympic Games on a completely different bike. It's impossible, right? Isn't it? Well, I mean, what's impossible? He's going to define it if anyone is going to. If there's anyone that can do it, it's got to be him. How can anyone have anything left in their legs after three weeks of riding up and down the French Alps? Okay, let's have a look at the overall World Cup standings then for this year's men's cross-country elite category. And it is a Frenchman at the top a man with his eyes set firmly on that massive prize in Paris as well. Viktor Koretsky, look at Schurter though. Right there in the overall. Mad to see. Blevins dropping back a little bit. But, you know, those are the peaks we're talking about. Those American riders, they're now kind of trying to recover before they work again for that second peak, the Paris peak, as I'd call it. Is that right? Yeah, absolutely. It's quite interesting to see how many Swiss are back in that top position. In fact, you know, we had four in the top eight or five in the top 12. It was so surreal. Yeah, and I mean, Flueckiger as well. I mean, hopefully he can kind of come back into form because Brazil did not go his way at all. Yeah, he was selected. I think they're really hoping that he's able to then put all that energy into peaking right at that right moment. But as of right now, he is off his game, but he's to be expected. Yeah, sure. Yeah, be back a little bit at this point. Well, now it's time to find out which one of us was on our game. And we gave our predictions at the last show for the last two World Cup cross-country races. And look at that. Two green ticks by my name. Two there by Emily. Congratulations, Emily. I'm not doing too well. Oh, dear, Elliot. Just the one. You are going to leave here a fit man. No, no, no. This same thing happened to me last time because Yolanda, you know, she's had some breathing problems. I actually didn't know that Pauline was going to be in Novo Mesto. You need to do your research. I think it... Stop talking. You need to save your breath there because what is it for him now? We're going to give him what? Five push-ups. 25 push-ups. That's 50 you've done today. That's good effort. And while we do it, let's have a look at our predictions for the next couple of World Cup cross-country races. Look at that. I've gone for Pidcock, Pook, Peter Shea next weekend in Cairns, Montana. Mattias Flueckiger. I'm pretty happy. I'm banking on Mattias Flueckiger really being back on form in Ligier. You've gone for Pidcock. I mean, everyone's sort of gone for Pidcock except for... Oh, this man here doing the Pid... How many is that, Elliot? How many is that? Okay, this is another one where I would have chosen Pidcock, but I didn't know that he was going to be there. How am I supposed to know? How do you guys get this information? That's why you're the downhill expert. There's a secret group chat, I know, between XC athletes. Who's going to be at what race, and you guys are in cahoots. And while Elliot's peeking, I am going to wrap things up. Elliot's going to leave here looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Emily, you've been a great afternoon though. Amazing for the insight on the... Actually, the pizza training. I mean, really interesting stuff. Thank you. Lots of exciting stuff to come. Elliot, you're feeling fitter than you've ever been? One day I will be as fit as you at your age. You know what I mean? What a way to end. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for joining us at home. We'll see you next time on Beyond the Line. That's it for episode number two of Beyond the Line. But there is so much more to come right here on Red Bull TV. On June 30th, we will head to Davos, Switzerland for the ÖKK bike revolution. How will the Swiss cross-country elite fare in one of the last tune-ups for Paris? Also, stay tuned for the premiere of Any Time coming your way this fall right here on Red Bull TV. Beyond the Line will be back with episode number three on July 8th right after a cross-country and downhill doubleheader event in Haute-Savoie-Léger, France.