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You can’t control the media Aaron. We are curious fans, and comments like that just further distance you from the people support your career.
And of course the fact that nobody cares about a company who gets lit up online, people will still buy their product at the end of the day, nobody cares that much. Did this vid really make enough of an impact on people to drastically damage crank sales? Doubtful.
But now John will most likely have to defend himself no less than a few times when someone sees him in the pits and asks about this? Aaron should’ve pulled his own post...
I really hope that Hall gave him the go ahead to make the post. You don't jeopardise personal relationships over meaningless stuff like that.
A sad day as a Gwin fan.
edited to add - having read Aarons response below, my comments are harsh, but I'm not going to remove them. When one of the guys you look up to as a professional does a dumb thing, it can get emotional. What I wrote is how I felt at the time.
I really take issue with his criticism of Vital for reporting this. It might be enthusiast press and not traditional journalism, but if he thinks he can dictate what gets reported on he's on another planet.
I wonder how many at Vital and other outlets knew it was their job to only post positive stories on Gwin? Probably want to get all photos vetted through his team before publishing as well. Heck, have his PR people write the copy from now on.
popcorn.gif for watching this blow up
Such a lame response...
Own up that the jump was overshot...move on.
Throwing your friends under the bus is something else.
What he´s doing is damage control 101, owning up to the mistake before the twitter shitstorm gets going.
It´s basic knowledge for any pro athlete in 2019.
Maybe he´s genuinely sorry, we won´t ever know, but this was handled rather poorly by him and for me he´s now back to square one after the tales of the mob series managed to make the guy much more likeable.
The excuses are also rather lame. Even if all he says was true, that still means e13 cranks can´t be ridden over an extended period of time? C´mon, that narrative isn´t doing them any favours either.
The way he handled it, everyone involved loses.
Maybe he didn't want it posted because then he would feel obligated to give the details of the story... Which ultimately would have to place blame somewhere. You guys just seem out for blood on his sponsor.
Human error is real. Parts breaking is real. Get over it.
I was just frustrated honestly. I had just got a message from the guys at Mountain creek who took the video respectfully telling me that they weren't going to send the video around, which was kind of them. One of the guys had sent it to someone else and that dude blasted it to Vital straight away. I can't control what the media puts out there but with this video and the circumstances being what they were, it just made the whole situation a bummer. They were old parts that we were told not to run and it was a bummer knowing E13 was gonna get hammered so hard. It would have been cool of Vital to ask for any background info to go with the video.
Also, John's my guy, there's nobody else I'd rather have with me at the races and he's been near perfect for the entire 5+ years we've been working together now. I trust him completely and we've built a strong friendship over the years, anyone who's spent any time around us knows this. A big part of having a real relationship with anyone though is being ok to admit when you've made a mistake. We both understand that and he'd tell you the same thing. He'd want the blame for this to fall on him and not E13 because that's reality. We don't try to cover things up by passing blame, we just represent the truth of the situation and move on.
These were old model cranks that E13 told us not to put on a race bike over a year ago because they'd been having issues with them. The bike I was riding last weekend was the very first Intense that I got months ago before I even signed the contract with them. At that time, I wanted to test it back to back with my YT for comparison and we didn't have a lot of spares to build it up since our new parts hadn't arrived yet. We pieced that bike together with random parts that we had laying around, John had saved those cranks for an enduro bike or something and just threw them on because they were the only ones he had at that time. Shortly after I signed with intense I switched to the XL frame and we built that bike up with all the current parts once they came in before team camp. I just recently went back to that large practice bike a few weeks ago after Maribor, I hadn't been riding it much before then and John just didn't think to swap the cranks out. We both had no idea but when he sent the photos of the broken cranks back to E13 for research with the part number, they came back to us kind of like, "dude, we told you not to run those, why were they on your bike?". When John remembered what batch of cranks those came from he was bummed to say the least.
Anyways, just trying to give some back story since it's kind of blown up over my comment. There's so many factors involved that me saying what I did on Instagram gave a really short perspective to the whole situation and I should of explained things a bit better. You guys all know that the media seeks out the drama constantly and only gives a certain amount of truth in a lot of things that are posted. That's ok, it's become a part of our culture these days but it doesn't mean that I should just roll with whatever way they decide to represent things.
The hardest thing that I've had to deal with in my career is harsh judgment from the fans. Might surprise you but it's true. It straight up sucks when people talk bad about you, especially since they rarely understand the reality of certain situations. You guys see a very narrow view sometimes of whatever the media chooses to represent, that's why I've always kind of made an effort to step in and make things clear. Sometimes for better, and sometimes maybe for worse. I'm pretty confident that if any of you were to go out to coffee with John and I to discuss this whole situation, or any other in the past, you'd have a very different view on reality when you saw the trust we have for each other, the factors involved, etc.
Just tryin to be real with you guys.
Hey Guys,
Racing is tough on bikes and riders. Some cases you can't simulate in FEM (picture of a FEM simulation of a crank). So here we go, overshooting the last jump wasn't the best idea, but who wants to brake.
The results of this special test will let you ride even safer with new products.
Not to sound all dadish but you can't control what people think or say. You can only control your own actions. The upside nowadays is you have your own communication channels to discuss anything you want through. In fact, you have more followers than Vital does on the gnarstagram!
I totally get this irking you. If I was in your shoes, I'd have to just look away. Only so many hours in a day, and I'm pretty sure we all won't look back and go "man I'm glad I spent _____ hours a day arguing on the internet!". (making this post extra ironic, I know) People will *never* know the full story. Smarter people are aware of this and take everything with a grain of salt. Not-so-smart people aren't so aware of this and will take everything at face value. Unfortunately, nothing you say or do will make a not-so-smart person all of a sudden smart. At least that's how it seems to me.
You aren't leveraged to one media outlet's portrayal of you. Or at least you aren't *that* leveraged. I'd argue its the other way around. You control your image more now, than ever, just by having your own channels to communicate through. The media is second rung in this respect compared to yesteryear, where their brush was the only brush.
As I alluded to earlier, by all accounts you are a hard working top rung dude. I wouldn't sweat any of this nor would I let a few negative comments do anything to effect your day. Life's too short.
Good luck at Fort Bill - and I sincerely hope you are too busy to read this.
I think Aaron should know that when you reach his level of success you are heavily scrutinised. People talking bad about you comes with the territory. It happens and it sucks but you need to realise that the positive impact you make by doing what you do massively outweighs the negativity. You are an ambassador, an inspiration and an idol to many people.
Onwards and upwards. All the best for 2019.
When we communicate through mediums where we only have text, choosing the correct words is of the utmost importance. We don't have body language, tone of voice, personal immediacy, etc. We literally just have our words and our message will be interpreted and judged solely on the words we select. The importance of this is compounded even more given that these threads/posts can stay around forever...
So because of pre-existing quality problems and breaking under normal riding conditions, I think E13 feared some public backlash that Santa Cruz never had to worry about. And because of this fear, the parties involved jumped to defend their image more so than normal. I'm not justifying how "E13" handled it, just providing an explanation as to how & why these are two different scenarios.
As for the post, in 6 months people would have forgotten about this. It seems to me that the butterly effect came into this more than ever, One person doing on thing slightly different could have changed the outcome of this. No need to play a blame game. Good luck for the rest of the season.
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