SAM HILL: 20 YEARS AT THE TOP
Whether racing downhill or enduro, it seems like Sam Hill has always been the man to beat. We look back at how the australian came to rewrite the rule book on how to ride a bike and get the inside line from sam himself
Whether racing DH or enduro, it seems like Sam Hill has always been the rider to beat. We look back at how the Australian came to rewrite the rule book on how to ride a bike and get the inside line from the man himself.
THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF MOUNTAIN BIKE RACING, WE’VE SEEN NUMEROUS WINNERS COME AND GO, SOME CLINCHING THAT ELUSIVE FIRST PLACE ONLY ONCE, OTHERS ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS, BUT IT’S A SCANT FEW WHO CAN BE ATTRIBUTED WITH TAKING THE SPORT TO A LEVEL BEYOND.
Riders whose skill, self-belief and outright domination have left even the best in the world scratching their heads and scrabbling to catch up. Sam Hill is one of those few. In a career that’s spanned two decades, the 34-year-old from Perth, Australia, has won every title going in both downhill and enduro, and by no small degree either – winning by huge margins, taming terrible track conditions and leaving onlookers wondering just how he managed it. Moreover, Sam has done it in a style that almost everyone seems to want to emulate.
With none of the skinsuits or speed tucks of past generations, Sam blasted onto the scene, foot out, jersey flapping, drifting insides and sticking lines no one else had even seen. And riding flat pedals, always on flat pedals. They’re the first thing you think of when someone mentions Sam’s name – that, and nearly always winning. How he makes flats work for him on 20-minute enduro stages is something we’ll never fully understand, but he does, and that’s what makes him one of the best and fully deserving of that overused term ‘game changer’.
I’m a believer
Coming off the back of his third Enduro World Series (EWS) title in 2019, and with the worldwide pandemic meaning he’ll likely hold on to it for another year by default, Sam is still at the top of his game, nearly two decades after his first World Cup appearance. We’ve always wanted to ask what his secret is, because it feels to us like when he’s on one, he’s unbeatable. “I think I’ve always just believed in myself,” replies the man in question. “I always want to win and when I’m riding well, I know I can.” Sam has never been a man of many words, preferring to let his riding do the talking, but all this has done is preserve the enigma. On occasion, you get a glimpse of his quiet confidence, when he quips one of his dry one-liners. “The horse just galloped straight through,” he jokes to Nathan Rennie in one of the old Earthed films, when asked about a ridiculous rock gap he was launching at the Vigo World Cup, in Spain, on his Iron Horse Sunday. But confidence, like fitness, has to be maintained, and even Sam acknowledges how important mentality is to achieving results.
It’s a sentiment that’s echoed by nearly every top racer we’ve interviewed – knowing you can do it is half the battle. For Sam, figuring out how it’s done was a rapid progression from the point he broke onto the World Cup downhill scene as a Junior in 2001. He won bronze at the World Champs that year then gold the next time around in Kaprun, Austria, and, when he hit the Elite ranks in 2004, his first race in Fort William saw him finish on the podium. From there, the momentum just kept building and, after winning his first Elite World Cup in Schladming, Austria, in 2005 he backed it up with another in Pila, Italy, the following weekend. Rotorua, New Zealand, was the site of Sam’s first senior World Championships gold in 2006, and then in 2007 his form simply couldn’t be matched – three World Cup wins, the overall title, another World Champs gold and not absent from the podium all season.
Foot out, flat out
Sam didn’t just win races though, he changed the way the rest of us set up and rode our bikes. Back when narrow, high-rise bars were the norm, he was one of the first guys to go wide, and it wasn’t long before nearly every DH bike you’d see at races was sporting a wide bar and the top fork-crown slammed on the steerer. The start of Sam’s winning streak also happened to coincide with when Five Ten shoes and Stealth rubber were just becoming available to the likes of us, prompting any aspiring young UK racer to chuck their SPDs in the cupboard and bolt on a pair of flats. Interestingly, things have gone the other way
now. At 750mm, Sam’s current preference for bar width is on the narrower side of normal and, with the exception of Brendan Fairclough and Connor Fearon, almost the entire downhill top 50 are back riding on clips.
The bikes Sam rode still stand out as classics of their era. Beginning his career on the Iron Horse/ Mad Catz team – where he and Bryn Atkinson were the new kids under the wing of Nathan Rennie – the iconic shape of the DW-link-driven Iron Horse Sunday, launched in 2005, became synonymous with the young Aussie racer. And when he switched to Specialized in 2009, so too did the Demo 8. These days we think of Loïc Bruni being the pilot of that machine, with Sam’s enduro wins now coming on the Nukeproof Mega in such convincing fashion that the Irish brand can barely keep up with demand.
Racing demons
Even though it’s the first-places that stand out on the results sheet, for us, the times that Sam nearly made it are almost as memorable as when he did. We cast our minds back to the Swiss Champéry World Cup in 2007, which at the time was easily the steepest and hardest track anyone had raced. In practice, the majority of the field could barely keep it rubber-side-down, then come finals day, the heavens opened, making a clean run nigh on impossible. Finnish Team G-Cross Honda rider Matti Lehikoinen was the eventual winner that day, having held back in qualifying so that he started before the rain, but that wasn’t Sam’s style. He’d gone fastest in qualifying by a monumental 14 seconds, so he left the start gate for his race run in the worst conditions imaginable. Watching his run, everyone’s jaws fell to the floor as Sam did what no one thought was possible – he smashed through each split time still in the green, on course for the win. A cruel slide-out in one of the easier turns knocked him back to third place, but that run is etched in our minds as one of the greatest ever.
“I’m just determined. I know what I’m capable of within myself and I go and do it,” Sam explains. “It’s like, how much do you want something and how far will you go to make it happen?” The answer to that is ‘too far, sometimes’, as we saw a year later at the World Champs in Val di Sole. On the form of his life, Sam was in another league that day. “Look how fast he’s going!” screamed Rob Warner into the mic as Sam dropped into the final turn with a six-second lead on Steve Peat. But in a devastating twist of fate, his front tyre gave up grip, sending him slamming into the dirt and the gold medal slipping from his grasp. “It still hurts to see pictures and videos of that day,” admits Sam. “If there’s one race I could go back and ride again, it’d be that one.”
Making the switch
Sam cites his World Champs wins as the most special to him, notably returning to form at MontSainte-Anne in 2010 and taking the title after being sidelined by injury for most of that season. The top results certainly didn’t stop here, but in 2015 there was a marked drop in Sam’s performance, as though that drive making him push to the very edge had disappeared. “I lost my spark for it,” agrees Sam. “After so many years of visiting the same venues, downhill started to lose its appeal and challenge.
I was missing the excitement of learning new places and lines, and the natural style of tracks that I enjoy the most were disappearing too.”
This was the impetus that kickstarted Sam’s switch to enduro – a form of racing that clearly suits him perfectly, with the variety of four or five new tracks per weekend and the need to be constantly learning and adapting to the conditions. “I’d done a few enduros for fun and knew I could do well,” says Sam, displaying that same unwavering confidence he had with downhill. “I wasn’t sure I could do well at every venue, but when I committed to doing the EWS my goal was always to win a world title.” The results didn’t take long to come. Sam got second place at his first EWS race in Ireland in 2016, followed by a win later that year in Valberg, France, and then in 2017 he
won his first of three consecutive overall titles. “What was the toughest thing about switching over from DH?” we ask. “I think being consistent over so many stages,” replies the reigning champ. “But that’s what makes the racing so fun too. You have to balance the all-out attack with keeping it together to the finish.” This is something we can appreciate after watching Sam take on the final round in Zermatt last season. His title was on the line right down to the very last stage and, with only seconds to spare, he had to ride on the limit, yet avoid crashing at any cost. He did it of course, and, with that third title win, cemented himself even more solidly as the man to beat. What’s more, he took the title last season without actually winning any rounds outright, rather by showing unshakable consistency.
The target is on his back now and there’s no shortage of challengers vying to steal his crown – Richie Rude, Martin Maes, Florian Nicolai, the list goes on. “Obviously, with having the number one, there’s pressure,” concedes the man in the top spot, “but I don’t want to give it up either, so a lot of that pressure comes from myself.” The stakes are high, but that hasn’t stopped Sam from putting on the incredible displays of bike handling we’ve all come to know and love him for. There’s a video clip of him at the Chilean Lo Barnechea round in 2018, where he fires into a series of dusty off-camber turns fully on the gas, foot out and sliding, with the crowd going wild. Whether on a downhill bike or enduro bike, it doesn’t matter, Sam’s style is just the same, and watching a rider of his calibre holding it on the ragged edge will never get old.
Racer and mentor
Alongside his own championship-winning ways, Sam’s skill and experience has also spurred on the careers of those he’s shared teams with. When he himself was starting out, it was ’90s DH legend turned Aussie national coach Scott Sharples who mentored him, but as Sam has matured as a racer, he’s fallen into that role himself. Brendan Fairclough and Troy Brosnan are two big names to have benefitted from his wisdom, preceding each other as Sam’s teammates on Monster EnergySpecialized. Today it’s young guns Elliott Heap and Kelan Grant who have the multi-time champ to practise with and learn from on Team CRCNukeproof. “I’ve always enjoyed trying to help my teammates and right now it’s awesome,” Sam tells us. “Elliott, Kelan and I all get along great and have a laugh, and we all want each other to do our best, so we’ll talk lines and share stuff that helps us learn the race stages.”
At just 34 you’d hardly call Sam an old-timer, but even so he’s certainly been in this game a while – 2020 marks his 20th year of racing internationally and his 18th season as a full-time pro. Things are panning out somewhat differently this year with racing looking unlikely, but in general the lifestyle of a pro racer involves a huge amount of travel and time spent away from home. As a guy with a wife and a young family, we wonder whether this plays on Sam’s mind. Not only has he achieved all that he possibly can in the gravity disciplines, but as the level of riding rises every year, so do the risks that need to be taken in order to make it to the top of the podium. “There are pros and cons,” admits Sam. “All the travel and long flights are hard, but at the end of the day I have an amazing job, and in the off-season I probably get to spend more time with my family than most people working regular jobs do.”
A phoenix rising
Right now, with no clear idea when he’ll get back between the tape, Sam says he’s relaxing into home life and riding just for fun. Having just come off the back of a brutal five months of training every day, we’re not surprised he’s choosing to step things down a bit so he doesn’t burn out. After all, there’s a fourth EWS title to be won, and after that, who knows? What we do know is that every year, without fail, there are always murmurings of if, or when, we’ll see the Aussie legend back at the World Cup start gate. And so far, apart from an honorary showing at the Cairns World Champs in 2017 – where Sam came sixth, and on his trail bike no less – he’s kept us waiting and guessing. But before we let him go, we just had to ask the question. “It’s always on my mind,” he answers with a wink. “I think it’d be cool to do it before I stop racing. Who knows, maybe a full season for my last year? But at the same time, I know what I’d expect of myself and I’d only ever do it if I was 100 per cent all-in.”