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00:04The absolute unpredictable, you know, in the South African terrain, anything could happen.
00:10It's not all about competition.
00:14It's a big mountain bike adventure.
00:18If you make one mistake, it's game over.
00:22I was like, oh gosh, what is that?
00:25I heard baboons attack people and I like stopped.
00:30Signing up for that race in the first place is definitely a risk that you take as an athlete.
00:35The longer a race goes, you feel like you're on an alien planet.
00:39You're like, we're racing right now.
00:46Okay, so quick question.
00:48How long can you ride a bicycle?
00:50Without stopping?
00:52Yeah.
00:53Great question.
00:54I love that question.
00:57I love pushing the boundaries of that, seeing how far I can ride.
01:01The White Rim is wild, raw, really remote, just breathtaking geography, and honestly kind of dangerous.
01:14Food, bike, that's about all I need.
01:18Today we're setting a new White Rim Fastest Known Time.
01:29World Cup racing, for me, required so much sacrifice in regards to actually being able to see the place that
01:35you traveled to to race.
01:37And so I gradually started gravitating more towards the longer adventure and endurance stuff.
01:43And that was a tipping point for me.
01:46What's going on with your tan lines?
01:48My tan?
01:49Yeah, those lines.
01:49Ah.
01:52Welcome to Andorra, where we've reached the highest point of the Mercedes-Benz UCI Cross Country World Cup.
01:58The women will be racing here at 1,900 meters in the rarefied air in Val Nord.
02:03And we're underway then, in Andorra.
02:06Looks like a good start from Laura Stiger in the middle there.
02:10Axio, it's sports, is mentally one of the toughest, I think.
02:15Everyone wants to win, and everyone fights for everything.
02:20With how short it's gotten, with how dynamic it's gotten, with how technical it's gotten,
02:26if you make one mistake, it's game over.
02:28He'll have the net, the number nine coming towards us.
02:32Crash at the bank.
02:33Cross Country is kind of the hardest you can go for an hour and a half.
02:39It's really dramatic, hard, intense racing.
02:44It's just all about pushing through the pain.
02:47If you have to sprint all out, you will end up in the highest gear.
02:50I don't even know if I've ever been in my highest gear.
02:53And you probably run a 32 in the front.
02:58If you come, end up, and you want to sprint for a World Cup victory,
03:02and you don't have enough gears, you will pay the price.
03:07Nino Schroeder, I'd say, is a legend.
03:10Are you a legend?
03:13And I know.
03:21He has done what so many cross-country mountain bike racers hope to accomplish when they enter
03:28this sport.
03:29Past years, I did many races, and some of them I still really love, and some of them I don't
03:37really enjoy that much anymore.
03:41Now I'm in a stage of my career where I really want to focus on races where I'm enjoying.
03:52He's right there.
03:54What time did he start?
03:567.41.
03:57That would be pretty darn fast.
04:01He could be five minutes ahead of pace.
04:03Yeah.
04:06Early in my career, I was like a lot of young junior racers where I dreamed of winning the
04:12World Championships, World Cup overall.
04:15I remember racing Val de Sol one year, and we were just surrounded by these incredible
04:19Dolomites, and all I did was sit in my hotel room and practice, you know, the five-kilometer
04:24course.
04:27You don't see the place.
04:29You don't get immersed in the place.
04:33You're always riding at the Axio the same lap, and you see kind of every time the same thing.
04:42It was experiences like that where I was just kind of like, you know what, I want to do
04:46events that allow me to see the place better.
04:51Right now, I really enjoy like races where it's not all about the competition.
04:56It's also like a big mountain bike adventure.
05:00The most famous probably, and the hardest as well, is the Cape Epic.
05:04The Cape Epic.
05:05The Cape Epic in South Africa.
05:11Yeah, I think top World Cup racers are including the Cape Epic in a lot of ways just because
05:15it's aspirational.
05:16It's a bucket list thing.
05:20It's kind of the Tour de France from mountain biking.
05:25Eight-day stage race.
05:27It can be three to six and a half hours.
05:29I think that was the longest day of racing through all sorts of terrain.
05:33You have a teammate as well, so you race with one other person, and you have to be together
05:37the entire time.
05:39When you're five days in, you're halfway, anything could happen.
05:43The absolute unpredictable, you know, in the South African terrain.
06:01It's different from cross-country racing.
06:04If you do mistakes, you have much more time to correct them.
06:08But also, if something really goes bad, eight days racing is just over.
06:15I think that for those cross-country riders who are obviously competing at an incredibly
06:18high level, I think there must be tremendous value, if not just psychologically, to go to
06:23one of those races and put in loads of miles.
06:25So when you know it's getting to that crunch time, that will probably do good things for
06:31your engine.
06:39The self-reliance required in endurance racing is a really cool part of it.
06:43It's something I really appreciate and enjoy.
06:45It's just sort of broadened my abilities as a whole, I would say, as a backcountry mountain
06:49biker, gravel rider.
06:51Those skills weren't developed in traditional cross-country XCO.
07:09A World Cup racing is all about spreading the roles to other people and having a mechanic
07:14that you can rely on to do that job way better than you could.
07:19Do you think they could race here unsupported?
07:22Unsupported?
07:22No way, no chance.
07:25But on the Cape Epic side, you need some tricks, you know, because we are not out there to
07:29help them.
07:30Even in the feed zone, we are not allowed to help them.
07:33So the rider have to, yeah, help themselves.
07:38We need to have, like, all kind of tools to fix the bike if something happens.
07:44On the bike, that's Wattbox, what is prepared with a tube, CO2, chain link, blocks for the
07:51tires, oil.
07:52We have an extra brake pedal, we have an extra brake pedal, we have a mech hanger.
07:55So they carry a lot of stuff.
07:59What else did we have in there?
08:01Baboon repellent?
08:01Baboon, gosh, pepper spray, you know, for the unknown.
08:08I was out on a training ride, like, alone.
08:11Like, I had been dropped by the rest of the riders.
08:13And then I saw this big thing.
08:15It looked like a person, like, they're huge.
08:17And I was like, oh, gosh, what is that?
08:19Like, I heard baboons attack people.
08:22When you look them into the eyes, they're going to attack you.
08:27And there's, like, four, like, just galloping.
08:29I don't know if you say galloping for baboons, but they were, like, running across the field.
08:35I was luckily too fast to watch them into the eyes.
08:40Oh, it was scary.
08:42Like, really.
08:44Mmm.
08:45It's pretty amazing how much you actually need to eat to meet your potential.
08:51100 grams of carbohydrate an hour, which is an ungodly amount of sugar.
08:58He looked really tired.
09:02I just hope he's got enough left in the tank to finish the loop.
09:06The fatigue component and just the sheer exhaustion that you feel is completely different than a cross-country race.
09:14You have to fight against all of these failures of your body.
09:26Did it, bro.
09:29I had to dig so deep.
09:38You can take great benefits of a Cape Epic for a cross-country race, especially at the beginning of the
09:44season, if you take your time afterwards to recover.
09:53By Nino putting the Cape Epic on his schedule, it shows that it can help prepare people for the World
10:00Cup season.
10:05But you never know how much impact that hours on the bike will have on your body.
10:12You just have to give the body enough rest to be ready for World Cup season.
10:20And always full gas.
10:31Laura, she goes 100% in marathon or cross-country.
10:35It doesn't matter.
10:41Laura Stigger takes third in her home race here, like she did a year ago.
10:48Great riding for Hayley Batten.
10:50She's riding really with some composure.
10:53When I'm racing and I'm in that really challenging place where it's how much suffering and different challenges you can
10:59endure,
11:00I think you just learn a lot about yourself through sport in that way.
11:03Here comes Mona Mitterwalner on the line.
11:07Mitterwalner got it just from Hayley Batten.
11:10Oh, what a finish there.
11:11Oh, it feels so good.
11:16The lights will go from red to green.
11:18We're going Brazil.
11:20Nino now leading the race for the first time.
11:28Moran's taking the lead.
11:30I don't believe it.
11:32Here they come.
11:32Who's it going to be?
11:34Scharter.
11:35Scharter takes the win in Brazil.
11:37His 33rd World Cup win.
11:40Three long years he's been chasing that overall World Cup wins record.
11:47I'm a really passionate mountain biker since more than 20 years.
11:53And I think the mountain bike is the best tool to get around in nature and in the mountains.
12:03And for me it's the best sport equipment, but it's also the best to explore new trails and see new
12:10places.
12:14There's something about having a place revealed to you by bike that's really hard to beat, whether you're racing or
12:21just riding recreationally.
12:24Riding a bike leaves you open to such a huge bandwidth of different experiences.
12:29And to try and isolate any of those will be to your detriment.
12:31I think it's great to try and achieve a full range of feeling.
12:37An easy way to do that is to ride a bike for 10 hours and then you'll feel a lot
12:40of different things.
12:42You know, if you want to slow down time or speed it up, just go and hurt on a bike
12:46or have a good time and it will all go west than past.
12:49Three, two, one, going up.
12:53Three, two, go.
12:58Next on Race Types.
13:01To be at the top in downhill, you've got to commit.
13:05You've got the focus downhill racers who are just like, I need to go the fastest down the hill.
13:10And then you've got other guys bringing an element of style.
13:15I was still at racing but my creative side is for sure stronger.
13:19So I just want to be different.
13:20I just want to be different.
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