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00:09All I did then was bad practice. Everything went out the window. Someone like G Atherton,
00:14he performs best when it's all up against him. We'll go and talk to G. If I can get anything
00:19from him and tap into his way of thinking, it's going to do me a load of favours.
00:22I'm going to go at this with everything I've got and I'm going to win the down thing. Tell
00:30you. I'm Matt Jones. I'm a professional freestyle mountain bike rider and I'm attempting three
00:41world's first tricks that have never been done on a mountain bike. One being the running bomb
00:46drop backflip, which I've been training at the swimming pool. The second being a backflip onto
00:53a hitching post and adding a frontflip off of the other side. And the third trick is a 720 no
00:59-hander
00:59to barspin where today at my slopestyle compound, I'm going to be working on that additional
01:03barspin. So the 720 no-hander, I was the first in the world to do in a competition. And now
01:08more
01:08and more riders have started doing that trick. So I want to take it to the next level and add
01:12that barspin on the end to create a new world's first. So this is my twin brother, Jono, who you've
01:18met in the previous episodes, and he's going to be the second pair of eyes today. We've got a big
01:22roll
01:22in a nine foot kicker. We're going to blow the air back up now and see how it goes.
01:34Just going to have a little warm up. I'm not going to go straight into doing world's first
01:39tricks. Just a couple of flips, couple of spins. Yeah. 360s backflips. Probably only going to take
01:44two, three runs and I'll be doing sevens, I think. You like the confidence? Walking up
01:49his bouncy castle now. It's hard to even stand. Are you going to hit me if I stand here? No.
02:10That was clean. We've had a 360 no-hander. Now we need to just add a whole another 360 to
02:16that,
02:16360 bar spin we've just seen.
02:16Yeah, hey? And a bar spin. Easier said than done.
02:25Yeah, boy.
02:32That was a bar spin in there, wasn't it? Yep. More of that then. More of that.
02:35It's sick to watch him putting like the component parts in to make the trick that he wants to do,
02:39but it's so much to add another 360 to that 360 bar spin we've just seen.
02:46Oh, that looks so cool. Yeah, that one was perfect.
02:53I've got a deal for you, Jono. A deal? If I land a 720 no-hander, first try,
02:59you hit it on my bike and do a backflip first try. Don't think about it.
03:03Yeah, fine. Deal. Here we go. You have to land it though.
03:05I will. Watch this now. Get it, Matt.
03:11Oh, yes. That was enormous. If you took a 720 no-hander picture out of the dictionary,
03:16it'd look something like that. So there's my bike. Go and do a flip. It's grand season.
03:21Come on, mate. One and done and then it's back to me. Well, you get to wear knee pads.
03:26You don't need knee pads. You've got such sweaty palms.
03:34Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh! I do not envy you at all. That's sick.
03:40Good work. Thank you. It's all getting a little bit serious now. We've had a bit of fun.
03:44I had a little go, but I think he's actually got this world's first in his head now and he's
03:48starting
03:48to try and create the little steps and the jigsaw pieces that come together to make this hopefully happen.
04:01Oh, I've fallen as well. Are you all right? Yeah, I'm fine. That's the beauty of it.
04:06I think I'm more hurt than you.
04:14I'm going to do the same again. Seven no-hander. Grab on, open up.
04:20As if you were going to throw the basket.
04:21Yeah, exactly. Simulate the position. It would be helpful if you filmed from the landing side
04:26because I'm pretty confident that as I open up, it will stop my rotation and I'll crash.
04:31OK. Because I'm struggling with this air time. Go on, boy. Go on.
04:42You OK? Yeah.
04:44Sure you're all right? Yeah, I didn't even take my hands off.
04:51It really hit my head and it's soft. Imagine if that was a real jump.
04:57Honestly, mate, like, everything went out the window just because I was thinking about
05:02changing the trick. I was so confident when I was dropping in thinking,
05:06even if I do crash, I'll be simulating the trick, but all I did then was bad practice.
05:12Shall we have a little drink, yeah? Yeah.
05:15You've not gone backwards. You've just not gone forwards. We'll be good.
05:22How's your head feeling, Matt?
05:23A bit knocked about, but it's more the frustration now of the feet of this whole challenge.
05:28When I drop in, I feel like I've got a job to do and then I take off and everything
05:32goes out the
05:33window and I just can't, like, make it happen. It's a mental block.
05:37It's exactly a mental block, yeah. There's a time limit on this. Like,
05:41Kai's down in Devon building the course. I haven't got weeks. I haven't got months.
05:46And I've just, in the last 20 minutes, hit a massive barrier.
05:50It's not too dissimilar to the downhill racing that I do. I know we're at different levels and
05:54things, but it's a sport where it comes down to one run and then everything, the whole weekend,
06:00suddenly matters. You get one chance, the pressure's against you. And there's some
06:04athletes that actually deal with that really well. And there's people like us, perhaps, that do
06:08struggle with it. Someone like Gee Atherton, he honestly thrives under pressure. He performs best
06:13when it's all up against him. Atherton's showing us what he's made of. Look at this. One of the most
06:17committed downhill racers of all time. He's hit the ground harder than anyone I can think of and he
06:23always gets back up. He's a man who knows how to rise for the big day. It's the same thing,
06:28isn't it?
06:28Piecing it together when it matters. Yeah, even if he's got a few tools that he uses, that he calls
06:33upon.
06:34Honestly, we'll go and talk to Gee because if I can get anything from him and tap into his way
06:40of
06:40thinking and his focus, he's going to do me a load of favours.
07:00Gee. Yes, Matt. Yeah, mate. How you doing? How you doing, mate? Good to see you. Yeah,
07:05you too. Welcome to Dovey. Who's driving? I'm sort of into this project now. Kai Forte is building
07:20the course down in Devon. Oh, is he? Yeah. I want to do a 720 no hand to bar spin,
07:26a proper slope style
07:27trick. No way. These tricks, I might take them to competition, but if I do them once in my whole
07:32life, I'll be happy. Yeah. And that is similar to the racing because you can spend a whole weekend
07:37doing runs down a track, but you know on that Sunday afternoon, you've got to have that confidence
07:42and it's almost like an irrational confidence. You have to tap into what you've done before,
07:48you know, use that as a tool. Yeah. The only difference is through the weekend,
07:52you get faster and faster and getting closer towards that race speed. But there's some tricks where
07:58it's just all or nothing. You can't build up. It's just like running off of a platform,
08:03holding your bike. Yeah. And the only way you're going to do that is if you know that you can.
08:14Look it up here, mate. Beautiful, isn't it?
08:18The mental side of things is massive because you're going to have those moments where you're thinking,
08:23right, is this even possible? Yeah. That happens all the time. Sometimes I get held back by this
08:28is a world first. No one's done it and therefore maybe it's just impossible. A big thing is not
08:32being afraid of those negative thoughts. You know, it's the same with nerves at a race. Sometimes
08:36people get anxious that they're feeling nerves. You know, they think I shouldn't be getting nervous.
08:39I should be confident. But you have to tell yourself that that's all part of the process.
08:44You know, you're going to have times where you're not feeling it. You're going to have times where
08:46you're questioning it. You're one of those people that will say, right, no one else has done this.
08:50I'm going to be the first to do this. Yeah. And I've got the skills and I've got the mental
08:54mindset to do it. And we know you can do that because of what you've done in the past.
08:58I just need to believe it myself. And that's it. That means a lot, mate, coming from you.
09:02Come on, Joana. Time for some laps. Show us how it's done, G. Yeah, boys. Let's do it.
09:12Wait up, boys. Oh, they're so much faster than me.
09:23All right, boys. Look at this. It's so steep. Bit of a steep chute, that. Whoa.
09:31Whoa, this place is mental.
09:41I can't ride that. Is he serious?
09:44Is he okay? Are they actually serious?
09:47Is he all right, Jono? Yeah, he's just dropping in. Yeah.
09:50All right. Yeah, boys.
09:53I always thought this was an easy track.
09:57It's well gnarly.
09:58I told you, I said it. Drops, jumps.
10:01Yeah, but you say that as a laugh all the time.
10:04Ready, boys? Let's go.
10:27We'll go that way. Lovely stuff.
10:32Woo!
10:33Oh!
10:45Holy ****. Yeah, boys.
10:50It's good, isn't it?
10:51Yeah, that's sick.
10:53That track's bloody mental.
10:55Yeah. Yeah.
10:56I always thought it was really easy.
10:57Fair play.
10:58Riding with G at the Atherton's very own bike park is really special,
11:02and it's taken my mind away from the project and all the tough tricks,
11:05and it's just allowed us to have great fun riding downhill.
11:08Tomorrow, we're going over to the Red Bull Hardline venue,
11:11which is an event that G and his brother Dan came up with.
11:14They wanted to build the hardest,
11:16the toughest downhill mountain bike course ever made,
11:18and yet it took G five years to win that event.
11:21So that's a prime example of the mental resilience that he possesses,
11:25and going over there to where G has had some of these challenges in the past
11:28is just going to wrap it up perfectly.
11:33So are we just going to drive up right up to the course and meet him?
11:36Yeah, he's going to be up there.
11:38I really want to drive up to the step up that I had my big crash on,
11:41because I just haven't seen it since.
11:44I watched that with my own eyes.
11:54That was a world's first and a world's last.
12:00I remember this uplift in such a daunting place,
12:03because you're coming up here every time to be taken to the top,
12:06and all you can think about is what you have to drop in and do.
12:10It's proper scary.
12:11It's steep as well.
12:12Yeah, I remember all this.
12:13It's like the steepest uplift in the world for the steepest downhill riding.
12:19There it is, G.
12:21The rain is exactly sideways.
12:26Did you see it?
12:30All right, G.
12:31All right, boys.
12:32Yeah, jump in the back.
12:32It's miserable out there.
12:34Buzzing off yesterday still.
12:36Oh, yeah.
12:37What a day.
12:38We're lucky we did it in this order.
12:40Yeah, hard line is, it's hard at the best of times,
12:43but today there'd be no going near it.
12:45But it took you, we think, four years, or if not five, to win it.
12:48Yeah, it did.
12:50I had four years of being absolutely hungry for it.
12:54Like, it'd been a massive event for me, like, putting everything I had into it.
12:57To have it so close, you know, win qualifying, say,
13:00and then have it, you know, snatched away was hard.
13:03And then tap it up again, and then again, and then again.
13:06After a while, you think, maybe I can't win a hard line.
13:09Yeah.
13:10You have to find a way to be able to be confident about this year being the year.
13:14You know, you have to find a way to be able to say, right, I'm the fastest here.
13:18I know the course.
13:19I'm fit.
13:19I'm strong.
13:20My bike's good.
13:20I'm going to go at this with everything I've got, and I'm going to win the downfield.
13:24And you have to be able to tell yourself that at the start.
13:27Otherwise, you know, you might as well not be there.
13:29It seems so simple when you say it.
13:32But they're such good points.
13:34Like, most of the ordeal and all these things that literally wake you up at night are .
13:41Yeah, you need to create this kind of mental list of things you've just got to go through
13:46as like a process, if you like, like ticking boxes.
13:49Yeah.
13:50All the things that you can control that you know you need to do to be ready for this.
13:54Yeah, the list of variables you can control is a lot shorter than the ones you can't,
13:59isn't it?
13:59But also plays a bigger part.
14:01Yeah.
14:01If you just take care of those.
14:03They're the ones that make the difference in you.
14:05Yeah.
14:05Just this big jump to go.
14:07He's sending.
14:08Atherton's come down to the line.
14:10It's going to be a home run.
14:12Atherton smashes Snowdonia.
14:16Does it bring some fear back?
14:18Yeah, it does actually.
14:19It's massive, isn't it?
14:22Yeah, on your back over there.
14:24Straight there, wasn't it?
14:25And you were stood right next to it, weren't you?
14:27Yeah, I remember looking up and seeing you just coming in.
14:39So the couple of days up in Wales have been amazing.
14:41Riding Dovey Bike Park with G was super special and really took my mind away from the project
14:46and the huge tricks.
14:50And today checking out the hardline course.
14:52Just kind of wrapped up all the points that G has been trying to get through to me.
14:56And it's been so helpful and actually really inspiring hearing them come from him.
15:00A really mentally tough legend of downhill racing.
15:03I do feel that I can take those on board now.
15:05Moving forwards, the course is almost complete down in Devon.
15:09Kai's been working really hard down there.
15:10And I'm at a stage now where I'm going into this like full gas.
15:14I have to really switch it on and get everything together for these tricks.
15:17And I'm insanely nervous because what's coming next is going to be really scary,
15:23really tough, but it could have massive rewards.
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