When I was thinking about how I wanted my 2024 season to look, I had a hard time committing to one form of racing. I knew I wanted to race some slalom, enduro, and downhill. I had a hard time deciding exactly how to fill my season. As a modern professional athlete, I feel like a lot of brands see more value these days in the content you can create, and not so much in your race results, unless those results are podiums at world cups. At heart, I am a racer; that's what gets me excited to train and keep pursuing a career in the sport. I grew up racing and never lost my love for it. With my obsession with all things two wheels, I thought, why not push myself to compete in more disciplines than I ever have? While I have competed in a few of these disciplines before, a lot will be new for me.
I feel as professional athletes, it is easy to pigeonhole ourselves into our one "specialty", but there is so much more to explore on two wheels and that is what I am planning to do. It's all just playing on bikes at the end of the day.
Discipline 1 kicked off from about as far from my comfort level as possible with a 100+ mile race in Cave Creek Arizona for the first BWR of 2024.
All photos by Tanner Stephens for Crankbrothers.