Vali Höll Lost Her Team Mid-Season… Then Won It All | Racer

You can almost feel the energy coming through the screen. It's looking really, really good for Valentina Hall. Here comes the Austrian Valentina Hall. She is without doubt the fastest female mountain biker in the world. It's quite difficult to remember how young Valli is because she's been so dominant for years already. Valli has fallen into that space where we expect her to win. The new level that's coming is going to push her even further. It is a wild scenario that Valli Hall has not won this year. The bicycle industry is in a bit of a tough way right now. The money got less and less and less and less. There was no way out for the company. So much pressure with the current scenario with YT. When a big brand like YT goes under, it's shocking. She's racing for her future here today. I always feel like my career is pretty crazy because it was always so easygoing for me. Like coming into juniors, I could win a lot of races and it always felt super easy and normal and not really stressful. I didn't really expect something. I was just riding for fun and then I was winning. I mean, obviously you start racing World Cup when you're 16 and now I'm 23 and I still don't feel like one of the top dogs. It's so weird because like every time I see Miriam or Tani, I don't feel like them. Like for me, they're always like a level above. I don't know why. It's just the appearance and like the confidence. They're showing off. But then when I look on paper, I do have the same stats. Like sometimes I even have more titles or more wins than some other top riders, but I don't feel like it. Sometimes you do read some articles or something on Instagram and it's like, oh, she's the one to chase. Obviously, yeah, I've been the number one in the UCI rankings for the past two seasons and it feels insane because again, I don't feel like it. It would be nice to maybe have one time the confidence and be like, yeah, you know, I'm the number one. But it can change like that. First and foremost, I'd like to turn our attention to Valley. We are at round number three of the season. No win yet. I mean, it's always great coming back home again. It's like different feelings because first of all, you're home, you kind of know everyone. But then for the race, everything is so much more intense. The women's are faster than ever. There are so many girls who are able to be on the podium. I had a small mistake in the woods, but better today than tomorrow. There will be strawberries on it. Oh, they're cute. Definitely looking forward to riding them. Valley Hall is going to have to fight for it today, and if it's anywhere that she can, it is here in Leogang. A huge, huge battle between Valentina Hall and Gracie Hengstreet. This is her race of the year. This is the one all the effort goes into. One second faster than the first group. Valentina Hall goes very fast as Gracie Hengstreet. She had to learn how to ride at 80% or 90% to win races easily. 2025, all of a sudden the level lifted. Everyone in the elite women's field lifted. The racing was now separated by hundreds, if not thousands of a second. Valley's race winning run barely got her on the podium. Absolutely brutal conditions. Looks solid through the woods, but you can tell she doesn't have the level of aggression that Tanya has. Valentina Hall, round one, crosses the line in fifth. I think it's going to be a tough race for her. A lot of the other girls have raised their game this year. Four tenths of a second, she's losing time. She is not going to do it. This isn't enough so far for Valentina Hall. I'm Werner Franke, and I'm the team manager of the YT Mob. After Enduro, we got these shocking news coming from YT that they will go into self-administration. The money got less and less and less and less, and there was no way out for the company. I can't imagine how it feels for the riders, having signed for an extended period of time and being promised things and having that security, and then all of a sudden that just, yeah, being taken away. It must be quite a scary feeling. Yeah, so the week after Enduro, we got an email from YT. Yeah, it was a bit like, okay, what does it mean? Like, do we get paid? Like, do we even have a truck? We don't have a truck. Are we going to finish the season? And you know, normally my contract would still run another two years, and it's something that you sign with the hope of not thinking about it for the next four years. When a big brand like YT goes under, it's shocking. And not to mention, they've got three of the biggest names in the business. Vallejo, Oshino Callaghan, Andy Cole. They are all race-winning athletes, spearheading a huge brand, and all of a sudden that brand's gone. It's a shock. It's a real shock. And it's a bit scary, to be honest. To race good and race free and race fast, you have to be confident, you have to be mentally happy, you have to be in a good headspace. And when all this is going on, it's very hard to motivate yourself. And there's only one man that I actually can't hang for finishing out that year was the old team manager, Gunnar. He used a hell of a lot of his own money to keep all those athletes going. I think the impact of losing a big team around you is bigger than we think. Vallejo's fighting for the win, and they're not getting paid. It's a very difficult scenario to manage, and for the athletes, why are they doing it? It shows they're doing it for them. We see them show up to the start line, they're still here, and now they're fighting for their future. No, I think we can do an after-the-season interview. I want my money. We're here in Léger for round seven, and we just finished the summer break and restart for the second half of the season. It's been my most consistent season ever, but I didn't manage to win. And that's really tough. I'm leading the overall at the moment, but I'm the only racer that didn't win a World Cup yet, and it feels super strange. It's a weird one. I'm not feeling 100% myself this season, but I'm trying to make the most out of it. I definitely know that I'm a racer. I want to show that I can be the fastest at some point, and I really want to do it. I think that summer break really helped me to forget about the first half of the season and just kind of come in with a fresh mind, come in with the motivation. I normally have a scene where I'm driving my car, and suddenly I get goosebumps because I start thinking about racing, and that's happening again, and I'm so stoked. And normally I'm also dreaming about racing, and I didn't do it for the whole last year. And now in the summer break, I was dreaming about racing again and winning again. I was like, yes, my brain is finally going in the right direction again. I just hope that I can do it, but I've done it before, so I know it's possible. I want to be good in Léger. I know it's a track that suits me a little bit. I mean, I've been in the mix at all the World Cups this year, so I'm going to beat her again. In a scenario like Valley Hall, her ego is getting hurt. She's the best, and all of a sudden, she's not the best anymore. She's doing everything she's done. She's done all those, dotted her I's, crossed her T's. She's a little bit better in every possible way, and it's still not good enough. She grabbed it by the scruff of the neck yesterday. It is a wild scenario that Valley Hall has not won this year. 2.4 seconds faster at the second split. It's looking really, really good for Valentina Hall. 2.8 seconds at the third split. She has to stay calm in this lower part of the track. She's obviously riding well. 7 tenths of a second back off the time. Off Gracie Hempstreet. Is this going to be Valentina Hall's first win of 2025, or is it going to be Gracie Hempstreet making it a treble? Here comes the Austrian Valentina Hall. Gracie Hempstreet. You have to take it out after what this young woman is accomplishing. Valley Hall, for the first time in a long, long time, has not won a World Cup. It's been over 440 days since we've seen Valley Hall on the top step of a World Cup, which is wild. She's the current series leader, so she's been consistent. Does Valley want consistency? I think she wants a race win. She is going to have to push beyond what her A-game is to earn it. Now, she has a 59-point lead. There's three races to go, so over 750 points are still up for grabs. Gracie Hempstreet has now stepped up and won again, and just flat-out beat her in every single condition. Gracie is the young up-and-comer, and now she's only 59 points back. There has been anything we know from downhillers, and nothing is certain. There's no predictability. It's all to play for. People were just talking about me not winning. You know, her time will come, and sometimes maybe she's pushing too much for the win, so this is why life is a bit blocking it, when you know you want so much something, and you're pushing, pushing, pushing. She's had her moments. Might be like a down for her where she's not winning, but she's still on top for sure. I'm really confident she has the speed, and you know, once she will have it, it will make it even more beautiful. For the last trip, I asked Saraym if I could pit with them, because obviously the team is no longer existing. They were happy to take me back under their umbrella. We're in the US of A. I'm gonna call it Primateer Deluxe. It's definitely not bad. I think it's a pretty sick setup. I brought my best friend that turned into my manager now, Dani, and then also David, who has been one of my best friends from the early days. He's now kind of becoming my coach and checking lines with me. I need my inner circle. That's something that I realized, especially this year. It showed how much I need them to be confident and be able to deal with all the outside stuff. I'm the sickest kid in the circuit. Well, as Lake Passage was a self-financed holiday trip, I also just brought my kids from home, and I was riding in my casual gear, and I was finally in full black, and I was loving it. Race day morning was kind of stressful because the track was so destroyed from the previous day, and it was way harder to ride. I didn't feel really good on the bike, and then I had my little moment at the waterfall drop. Yeah, so David told me, watch out for the corner, it's slippery. I came in, both feet unclipped, seat bouncing off the waterfall drop. David was just like, I told you. I was like, okay, lap two, let's go. And then I would say after 500 meters, I had a flat tire and I rode down the ski piste. So I didn't even do a second practice lap. It felt good to be last girl on the mountain for race day, and I also like to have that little bit of extra pressure. Matt had his phone in front of me, and I couldn't really see the results, but I could see the nationality flags. And I knew Gracie dropped really early, but I couldn't see her in the top three. So I was like, we need to go fast. I did think a little bit about how the whole season went and how disappointed I was crossing the finish lines the last nine times. There is all of a sudden a title on the line. Valentina Hull here, she just wants to get back to winning. But it's been a long, long wait for Valentina Hull's fans to be able to celebrate a UCI Downhill World Cup win. See what the first split tells us, look really, really strong out of the gate there, Nico. She's got all the travails, 33 tenths of a second faster than the first split. Oh, a lot of force under her stem there. Didn't seem to face it much at all, just thud all that around. 474 days since her last UCI World Cup win. She's had all the difficulties, all the drama, off track with the white team all. Laps straight on the pedals, really nicely done. 1.3 seconds at the second split for Valentina Hull. On the hunt for another World Cup overall title. What's the next split going to tell us? 1.7 seconds faster, Nico. She's going faster. 1.9 seconds at the fourth sector. So Valentina Hull looking hungry, looking like she wants this one. Valentina Hull's UCI World Cup. So cool, so cool. Sure, no way. Oh, my legs. Yeah, it's been, it's been a long year. I've never been in those uncertain. Times every month. It felt so good to finally get it done and just be happy that I won a race again. It was so good. That's insane, I don't know what to say. If I've already won the overall before the last race, like last year in Mont-Saint-Anne, I need to race in shorts. Maybe I should start winning World Cups first. See you later, suckers.