This week, Matt Jones joins us on the Downtime Podcast for an in-depth conversation about fear, creativity, and the business of building a life around mountain biking.

From jumping through two autonomous moving trucks in his latest Red Bull project to overshooting the Hardline canyon gap and launching his own MTB video game MAVRIX, Matt opens up about the highs, the near-misses, and everything in between.

He talks about how he manages pressure, why filming himself in public still feels awkward, and what it takes to balance content creation, brand building, and family life. Matt also shares how he’s turned ideas into real ventures, from his HELFARE clothing line to the development of MAVRIX, where he worked directly with real trail builders and brought in Rob Warner’s voice to capture the heart of mountain biking in gaming form.

This is Matt Jones as you’ve never heard him before – honest, reflective, and brutally real about success, fear, and doing things your own way.

#MattJones #MTBPodcast #MountainBiking #RedBull #mavrix

Photo Credit: Red Bull Content Pool

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Chapters:
00:00 – Intro: Matt Jones in London
00:40 – The Idea: Jumping Through Two Moving Trucks
02:40 – Turning a Sketch Into a Real Red Bull Project
04:35 – The Tow Car, Speed & Calculations
07:19 – The Red/Green Timing System
08:23 – Mental Pressure: Waiting for the Perfect Moment
14:36 – The Moment Matt Finally Sent It
17:25 – Comparing the Stunt to Hardline’s Canyon Gap
21:08 – From Woburn Woods to Global Projects
24:26 – Discovering YouTube & Early Breakthroughs
30:00 – Building the MAVRIX Mountain Bike Game
41:28 – Growing the HELFARE Clothing Brand
47:05 – The New MTB Athlete Blueprint
50:18 – Advice, Skills & Daily Habits
52:33 – Where to Follow Matt

I never thought I’d leave Woven Woods. I sometimes say to people, nothing ruins a good day’s riding like making a YouTube video. But no one was up for YouTube. It wasn’t core, was it? Craft is the biggest attribute. If I didn’t approach it with and treat mountain biking as work, I’d have had to then, yeah, find something else. You’ve got to put yourself in the room with people. You can’t sit at home and hope that anything’s going to come to you. It’s not going to happen. You can’t learn any quicker than being in an uplift uplift chat. Go. You hear some stuff, don’t you? [Music] Matt Jones, welcome to the Downtime Podcast, mate. How you doing? Good, man. Buzzing. Yeah, we’re in London. This is Fancy Pants, isn’t it? This is This is the dream, mate. This is absolutely the dream for me to have a place like this, but proper studio one day. One day. Yeah. Thanks to Red Bull for putting us up in this insane little spot. Um, we’re here ultimately cuz you’ve just released another nuts video. This time you decided to jump through two moving trucks, which I’m still not convinced is a great idea, but you survived. Where does an idea like that come from? Give us some kind of um background on how you come up with this stuff or whether people come to you. Yeah, it’s a good question. I don’t have a straight answer. It was 100% my idea cuz I I drew it and sent it to Hugh, who was my athlete manager at the time a year ago. Um, but I I’m obsessed with like I’m quite into how things line up and I don’t want to like trip myself up and sound like a complete weirdo, but like you know when you’re driving down the road like you see like lamp post lining up with things and I’ve got I like engage with that and I remember seeing trucks pass through and I I at the time I thought you could like you could ride a motorbike through that. There was I saw a curtainer open and then there was another low loader with like a digger on it and I thought there’s a split second in time where like light came through there and imagine going on a motor bike. I don’t know why I thought motorbike, but then um I was trying to come up with ideas for Red Bull projects and just pitched that and I drew it. I drew it on like up a a grass bank onto a main road, two lorries passing through, me jumping through it. And Red Bull said to me like, you know what, firstly, we’ve spoken to some of the people in the office. Everyone loves it. They think it’s so engaging. Most of them said it’s probably not possible, but if you think you can do it, 100%. And not only that, but they had a a partner in mind, which was Scanya. Yeah. who make now autonomous trucks, autonomous lorries that are driverless, which I mean we should probably get to that, but it made the it made the project work cuz those two trucks needed to cross each other at exactly the right time for me to pass through them getting towed in by a car. It’s quite a lot of moving parts. Yeah, it’s nuts. E, so what are the steps then? So you’ve drawn this, you’ve sketched it, you’ve sent it to your athlete manager and they’ve said, “Yeah, we’re in. Let’s go.” Like how do you get from there to the day where you’re suddenly on site with these trucks? That was a so yes between like an idea to reality was a year. Okay. Um because we need you know we relied on Scania. So we went and met them in Sweden. Then we went back to like look for a location. They have a training plate. Well not a training place like a test area near a runway where they’ve already got this GPS grid all set up so that their autonomous trucks can be used there. But it was a where we ended up doing it was actually a public road. Like we had to keep moving the ramps out the way for the postman to come. And a farmer wanted to dump like a massive massive truck of like actual human poo essentially. And when like the guy, one of the safety people was like on the radio, yeah, he wants to dump it. And he says where he usually dumps his [ __ ] is by the wooden ramp. We like having to having to battle all that. Um, but yeah, it was it was strange that a crossroad in Sweden became my home for a week trying to bring this project to life and with success, you know. Yeah. What was it like when you were first on site and you saw all the moving parts together like these two trucks gliding past each other, these ramps in place, you run up your your towing car. How did you feel? The the most daunting, the most like sobering moment was the first time I watched the two trucks pass and I’m just stood on the side of the road. like I’ve hung around moving traffic, but I don’t really spend much time around in the back of lorries and things and they’re they’re gnarly. It’s dangerous. Um, all the wheels and like they’re loud and I just thought this is this is very different to when I drew it, you know, like you can’t you can’t mess this up. And then we had to figure out so many details. How fast am I going to get towed in? What angle’s the ramp going to be? Will I hit my head on the top of the truck? It’s one thing the timing getting through, but if you like freak out last minute and pop off this ramp, you’d take your head off. Um, lots of Yeah. Lots of variables, but I’m quite good at that, like working through it step by step and building a a functioning plan. But this one relied on so many other people and so many other moving parts. Yeah. Yeah. We’ll talk about that a bit cuz that I find that pretty interesting. But I want to talk about the towing car cuz I know you like your cars. It feels like that wasn’t an accident. That’s a pretty smart towing vehicle. Yeah. An Audi, was it an Audi RSQ8? big old 600 horsepower family SUV. We needed good brakes. Okay. Um I go through both trucks. That was the plan. But the car can’t. The car towing me in driving at moving driving at a crossroads, moving traffic, and I need to let go of the handle as late as possible to not then decelerate and face variable factors like wind and rolling up the ramp. So the later I can release the handle, the more consistent I am. But that requires the car to slam on the brakes as late as possible. So the driver James had a pretty gnarly job. You know, he’s also driving a car at these trucks, but he has to stamp like left foot brake and stamp. And even when I whiz past the car freewheeling, like you can hear the you hear skidding up to the traffic and it made the whole thing more epic. But that was the only way. What speed were you getting towed in at? 43 mph. Okay. Yeah. 69 km an hour. Yeah. What speed are the trucks doing? Uh 20 each. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So combined overlap of 40 mph for the trucks as well, which is quite has quite a scissoring effect. Your margin of error here, right, for either getting taken out by the front of one truck or the back of the other is tiny. Was it8 of a second or something? That’s what that’s what I worked out and it was about right was Yeah. From from the two cabs opening up and revealing lights like revealing my window to jump through to the back slamming shut again was 0.8 seconds. But when I’m starting a quarter a mile away and I have to ride arrive within that point8. Um that’s tough. Yeah. That’s and it’s hard to be like revved up for that long. This is where the technology comes in. Right. So the trucks like you say are autonomous. They’re driving themselves. There’s no one in the cab of these things. And you had I think you’ve got a a GPS grid like you said on the site anyway for scanners work. And then you’ve got GPS in both the trucks and the towing car. So you came up with like an ingenious system of like a stop go light on the back of the car. Right. That’s it. So, so the trucks needed to be autonomous. The project lived and died with the the trucks crossing over at exactly the right time. Um cuz I’m I can’t track two things at once. Like you can kind of cross the road. You can ride a bike at a road and and follow a car with your eyes right and think I I’m going to skim in the back of that car if it’s traveling at constant speed, but you can’t follow two things. And when I arrived, I realized that there’s there are too many factors. So James had to manually drive the car and tow me in and you just can’t. And I had little pegs in the ground and I I started off thinking like the front of that truck needs to line up with my peg and and that front of that one needs to line up with that peg when I’m here trying to like split my eyes and if it does that and then so then uh the the engineers that are doing all the programming for the autonomy, they wrote a program which tracks the two trucks and what at what point they’re going to arrive at the ramp. And the car towing me had a GPS unit in it. So on the back of the car towing me there was a track Yeah. was a light. It was red. if the variable if it wasn’t a perfect system, i.e. I’m way off. I’m not going to get there at the right moment. But if I was within 0.1 seconds of what I deemed to be the right point of the trailer, it was green. But once it turns green, it won’t change. So I was then trust like, you know, you got 1 second to like let go the handle, hold on. You like it things could change. But it took so long to get a green light and to get everything to marry up that once I saw green, I was like, I have to jump through it, man. I’m not might not get this chance again. It’s a bit different to what you normally do though, right? So, normally you’re putting faith in your own ability to execute something and you control you, you know, you pretty well, right? This time you’re putting your faith in some engineers and some satellites and everything to just like turn into a green light on a truck and go. Was that hard? It was a weird mountain bike project cuz I’ve I’ve been I’ve been that scared before like with that River Gap hard line um at Darkfest. I jumped that 110T jump which is Yeah. like the biggest jump in the world. The risk’s huge, but all of that stuff, you do it on your own terms. When I’m ready, I’m going to go and this this is the one. The conditions are perfect. It’s now like it’s now or never. But with this project, I had to have that same full 100% like mental fortitude, I suppose, like I’m putting your life on the line, but had to do it over and over and over and over again, just staring at a red or green light. So, it’s really hard to maintain that that level of like calm but also confidence for hours and hours on end without me knowing when it’s going to be go time. It almost made me feel quite like cold to the whole thing later on in the day. I’ I’d like been so focused that that almost like wore wore that part of my brain out and I just ended up numb to it. Yeah. Nuts, isn’t it? You had family there as well. Does that help you or is that it also kind of reminds you of what you have to lose, I guess. Yeah. gnarly question. Um, my my wife was there, my brother was there. So, like I said, it was a year planning this whole thing. Um, and I obviously like let loved one know, let loved ones know I’ve got this project coming up in Sweden. We’re flying out there for a test next week. And it’s like, oh, what is it? It’s like, oh, it’s basically there’s just two lorries. I’m going to jump kind of like through them as they cross each other. It’s like, wait, wait, go back. What do you mean through them? It’s like, no, don’t worry. Like, it’s going to be really easy. Anyone could do it. I’m just lucky. I was always downplaying it cuz most people would say like don’t do that of all the things I remember turning to mates they’re like no don’t do that one like why why I believed in it. I believed in the maths and the timing and that really it it was like the easiest scariest thing I’ve ever done. Like anyone could do it. You just hold a handle sat down on a bike and if the light’s green you put your hand on the handlebars and go in a straight line. But if you if you like to freak out or turn left or turn right or break, like none of those work. All of them mean you get run over or if you pop too much because you freak out, you’ll hit your head. So you have to be like like robotic yourself with it. So I found that pretty interesting like to try and stay in that state where it’s like just do what it says. Yeah. You’re quite savvy on the kind of maths and engineering front. You were going to study mechanical engineering at university, right? Do you think that helped you rationalize cuz like you say you’re trusting these other people that have written a code and Yeah. like do you think that that fact that you can appreciate and understand the engineering helped you trust it? Yeah. If I if I’m honest I’d have never done it if I wasn’t 100% amongst it with the the maths and the timing because um the the engineers doing the autonomy have never done that before. They’re they’re programming lorries eventually to deliver things around the world without drivers. But I wasn’t sure that they had the they had the same mission as me when I arrived. They didn’t quite get what I was doing. They’re up for making trucks cross, but they they were always focused on the cabs crossing, but I needed the cabs to cross first and jump through. And there was loads of like stuff that’s lost in translation. It’s like, wow, we’ve done all this planning and we’re on different like wavelengths here. So, I spent a lot of time like sat down with them and it’s like, right, what happens if this? What happens if that? What happens if this? and I still wasn’t sold. And then I re I spun it and like they’re engineers, right? They just love maths and tasks and I just said to them like, “Right, I challenge you to make the car arrive at the at the point that I cross 6 m into the trailer.” And like when I switched it to a direct command, like a not command, wrong word, but like a challenge, they’re suddenly like, “Yeah, we can do that.” Whereas they Yeah. Like when it was all hypothetical and it was like what happens if and do you think I never got like solid answers when it’s like guys try and do this they were like yeah perfect we love that. It’s like quite binary in a way. Yeah totally. That’s probably how I think as well. Fair. And so you’ve got it dialed in. You’re happy with things. You did like a test jump with a gap. You did a test through a single trailer. How did it feel going through that trailer the first time just on its own? Single felt mad cuz it was again like riding it moving traffic. You got something close to your head. Your wheels are really close to the bottom and you got something Well, when you go up the ramp, there’s a metal cab in the way. There’s a Yeah. 8 ton truck at the top of the ramp and then but as you ride up the ramp it, it moves out your way. Never had that before. But one truck was 1.6 seconds, which is ample time, but two trucks is half, you know, and the windows literally half the size. So once we did one, everyone was super confident then. It’s like, right, this is on. Yeah. And you had a lot of run-ups, right, with red light, red light, red light. you were losing light of the day and you ended up having to kind of call it and come back the following day to do it. Yeah, that’s a horrific situation to be in. Like, how did you sleep that night? And how do you get geared back up again to to put yourself at risk again? Yeah, I was so we almost had it. We were actually within 200ths of a second of a green on the last run, but we didn’t know that. I don’t know how red is a red and how green is a green. So, went away feeling pretty devastated that it could have got done. And we had we had a bar booked in Stockholm that night. Like we thought we were all going to be partying and like patting each other on the back. But then yeah, back to the hotel, rubbish night’s sleep, thinking what happens in the morning, are the conditions going to be different? If it’s windy, does all the math still work? You know, but then we got it done quite quick the next day and then just got got drunk at the airport instead of a bar. Yeah. Do you can you sleep on nights like that? Like are you able to just put that out of your head? And I’ve I’ve always been a bad sleeper. Quite a knackered guy. So yeah, I just I’m up in the night thinking about stuff. I the I I the more that time went on, the more I felt I had to like tweak things. So even in the night, I was thinking like I was watching back a POV of me jumping through one truck and thinking actually that’s that’s not going to work. The back’s going to clip me. I need to tell the engineers we need to I need to arrive.1 second earlier. We need to rewrite the code. But then will I then have to do one? So I’m like I ended up second guessing myself. Yeah, I bet. Whereas when you get on a roll and you’ve got like a clear road map, things are easier. There’s nothing worse than like a long night of panicking. Is there? Definitely not. So, how did it feel when you got that green light? Were you just able to lock in and go? Yeah, literally locked in. Um, I was scared. I think I I definitely screamed when I went through it and I remember the back of the second trailer like being in my peripheral vision and coming at me and and I almost like I think I end up like kind of tuck my elbow and shoulder in, but it wasn’t even that close. But I can’t describe the feeling of riding up a ramp where you can’t see the landing cuz there’s two vehicles. Then they reveal like this tunnel of light and you’re like there’s the landing. But then you from both sides you see these backs coming and you’re like this is too late to pull out now. But I was locked in. You can feel it closing on you then when when you’re kind of in the moment. Yeah. And just the bottom of the trailers going in different directions under your wheels. Real close to your wheels. And I felt like my head’s closed. There’s all like, you know, I was I was never closer than a foot from hitting my head or a foot from hitting my wheels or even probably 2 meters from the sides, but that’s a tiny window when it things are moving and you know it’s like four. The other gnarly thing was cuz the trucks are autonomous, right? They have sensors and cameras. Um once they crossed they were they were programmed to not stop for another 50 meters cuz I could trick a sensor or something and they’d see the car and do something weird. So we didn’t want that. We wanted everything to be smooth. But then it the safety guy came over and was like um yeah I’ve realized that if you get stuck under a lorry it’s going to carry on for 50 m and I don’t have any equipment to cut you out. So then they got a a Norwegian like fire safety team down the next day who thankfully just sat in armed sat in fold out chairs and didn’t have to do any work. But yeah, I think it’s sometimes easier to not know all those details. I was going to say having those conversations is probably not what you want to hear, is it? No, that it’s a funny old project. Like I’ve done some big jumps and I’ve done some stuff where it’s super high risk, but I’ve I’ve always found that most of the projects and jumps I do is like as long as I’m like within 90% of perfect, I’ll be all right. Like I could probably get away with casing that jump or if I go deep, I’ll be able to take it. I’ll be able to land like pull it. Whereas this one like it has to be perfect. like any imperfection in its curtains. It’s like um so that’s why I was actually stoked that we had a team of clever people and everyone knew by the end like knew the risks and were thinking in the same wavelength and then you you make something happen and it feels easy. Fair play, mate. Impressive stuff. Yeah. Cheers. I’m stoked in the video, man. It’s a hard one to tell tell that story that went on for so long and it’s like an 8minute video, but a lot went into it and I think it’s a cool it’s a cool moment that people can relate to. Yeah, 100%. you can see the buildup and what you went through to get there. So, yeah, good on you, man. How so how does that compare then to something like I think you’ve said in the past the scariest thing you’ve ever done was test the canyon gap at Hardline in 24 was it? Like talk us through that and and how you see those two things differently. Um so the hardline gap was a 70ft jump which is really big but not preposterous like preposterously big. Um but that one was you know it wasn’t right. The ramp was the wrong shape. The rolling looked weird. We didn’t know whether to use the drop to get speed or pedaling. So, there was tons of unknowns, but there was other riders there to speak to and everyone brings a different view and experience. And Bernard was quite confident in one view and Gatherton who was there was saying, “No, no, no, we need this is how you’d ride that.” Um, but it’s still it’s still a jump where it’s on you. You can drop in when you want and you can wait for the wind and you can watch someone else have a go like Burner did it first, didn’t he? and learn from that. Whereas this was like I I drew this on a piece of paper and now I’m here getting dragged dragged in at 43 mph by a car. I hope I’m I hope I’m right, you know, and if I’m not, someone else will have to tell the tale. Yeah, fair play. Was it um like you obviously had a choice with the the Hardline one though, right? Like when you’re in a project like the the the truck thing, you’re pretty committed. I’m sure you can still say no, but like Yeah, you’re right. Like there’s you do feel pressure when there’s there’s so many people there like production crews 10 there’s guys running around with SD cards there’s two drone pilots there’s a whole team of medics there’s like that fire you just like all these people are here and they’re kind of here cuz I need to tick this box you know I’ve sold everyone a dream I’m going to do this thing scan you have literally got written a program to make it happen but but you have to you can’t let that get in your head you know you’re there on your own terms and you’ve got to do things be patient I’ve learned that Over the years, I used to be quite loose when I did slope style comps. I tried tricks I’d never tried in a comp and just and sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. So, I grew up crashing in the woods, whereas now I do these like bigger, more considered things um that I don’t think are necessarily more risky because you approach it in such a like a considered way. But the the hardline gap was I wasn’t even supposed to be there that day. Like I just burnt I was went up to test my downhill bike the week before hardline. Bernard said, “I’ll be going up the course. They’ve built this river gap. Do you want to come? And I was like, “Yeah, I’ll come for a look. I’m going to have to ride it next week.” And ended up testing it. Um, but I I I was confident about that, too. I I I wouldn’t I’d never do something where I think it’s doomed ever. And that river gap, I was like, I’m 100% going to make it to the other side. Absolutely. And then I could I could crash a 70ft jump. You just The only option there was you can’t fall in the in the ravine, but I wasn’t that wasn’t an option for me. Yeah, like I felt like it was zero chance in a test run I was going to land in the middle, but it did I did sort of start thinking, well, if this is in a race, you have guys like Ron and Dunn pedaling down here on a soft bike and then and that felt like less controlled. But from a testing perspective, Jim got really unlucky. Jim just hit it so fast. He his brain his brain did a different thing. He’s his brain told him it’s so important that I don’t fall in the gap cuz I die that I’m going to go twi double fast. Like he was so scared of going too slow that he went way too fast. Yeah. Um and you could see it on the running. But I suppose Yeah. Maybe less experience with big features that compared to yourself. Yeah, maybe. And they have softer bikes. I was lucky in a way that my bike’s always set up firm for jumps cuz it didn’t get I didn’t get bucked. But that was a wild ride. So, there’s been a few things in the last few years in that house jump where I’ve had to sort of turn my brain off and and get right into it, but I’ve I’ve enjoyed it. Yeah. Good stuff. So, looking back to when you were like shoveling 50 barrs a night after school building jumps, did you ever think you’d be doing stuff like this? No. No way. I never thought I’d leave Woven Woods, why would you? I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything existed outside of that little realm that I called like my hobby and my passion. Um, which is cool. I’m going back to Wen. going to re we’re rebuilding that bike park this winter together which I can’t wait for like this literally where I grew up riding and I want that same opportunity for like the next generation of youngsters and I don’t think Woven offers that right now so we’re going to make it like real good for beginners and and progressive too which feels mad for me and I never thought I’d like digging at Woven as a kid I always dreamed of what you could do with a digger I knew it would never be on the cards you know you just got to gr grind it out with shovels and now I’m going to be sat in a digger swinging dirt in my local bike like I can’t wait. It’s mad how it comes back around, isn’t it? It’s so cool that you’re getting that opportunity. Really cool. Yeah. Yeah. Mega. Are there certain pivotal moments in your career that you would say like, “Oh, this was a big part of me getting to where I am now.” Um, yeah, there’s been Yeah, 100%. So, mountain biking was in Slope Styles in the X Games um in 2013 in Munich. Um they built a slope style course up on this huge hill and I was new to it. I didn’t get invited to X Games. It was just like the top riders. I got invited to a little sub event on the same course called Red Bull Phenom. Six riders. Um Tom Manstein was one of them. Anton Tailander who won and went on to get sponsored by Red Bull. I there was this massive step down at the end of the course that no one was really riding. I don’t think I’d seen anyone do it in practice like even the top guys. It was just so big. Um, and it was really windy and I um I realized I could hardly do any tricks down the course and I was I’ve come all this way. This is like quite a pivotal moment in my life and I could do like a tuck no hander and a back flip. So I was at the top of the course and I said to a guy called Mitch Tuby like how fast do you think you have to go to do that to to hit that step down? And he was like oh man step downs you got to go way quicker cuz of the lip. And I was like surely it’s the opposite. And he’s like no no no you want to put a couple cranks in. And I took his word for it. And in my run, I’d never hit ridden off this step down. I did two pedals, should have breakd. I like thought I’m going to make a impact here and flip and I went miles probably like 70 foot. Really shattered my collarbone on impact. Um he lied to me. He was wrong. Uh but Darren Beerlo loved he was like, “Man, that was cool as shit.” And invited me to his invitational two week two weeks later in Canada on Vancouver Island. So I flew there with a broken collarbone, got 10th in his proper comp, which he invited me for just cuz he thought it was rad. And then that got me enough points. So I was like, a crash, a moment of madness really set me set me on a new path of getting into these bigger comps. And I just had to deal with the I never got the collar, but I didn’t get surgery on that till 2 years ago. It was it never healed. It was broken for years. Um, but I’m glad I didn’t. And then what other things? There’s so many moments. YouTube’s a big one, right? Yeah. I don’t think you were like super up for it originally, right? It took some persuasion. Yeah. Yeah. No one was up for YouTube. A lot of the top guys, it wasn’t cool, was it? It wasn’t cool. Everyone’s like, it was mountain biking used to have a quite a stiff culture, I suppose, of what’s cool, what’s not cool. I hung out with Harry Maine BMXer and he was killing it on YouTube and people loved it and he had tons of fans and brands like working with him and he just I went and did a video with him and he all he does is turn up at a skate park with a filmer and ride. I was like what’s the problem? How’s that how’s that an issue? So I got he told me you should do YouTube and I said to him I wouldn’t know what to do. I haven’t wouldn’t really know where to start and he’s like you’ve literally got a compound which is a that’s you own a film set for mountain biking and he it reframed the whole thing for me and then all the like the sorry boys like Brendan and Sam Reynolds everyone they were like oh YouTube it’s not cool and stuff and then couple years later they’re all doing it getting in the earlier you got in the better right I think with that platform yeah yeah 100% I love it and everyone the best thing now is when you go riding and everyone’s making a video it’s so Funny Pilgrim obviously I hung out with him loads. He gave me some good opportunities. We went traveling around Europe and something he called the bangers tour with Sam. He bought a coach and got the whole thing converted and we went on a road trip and he just self-produced videos which is mad to see and I was part of them. So I can’t he he taught me a lot. Do you still enjoy it? Cuz a lot of people tend to like get to a point where they burn out a bit with it and feel a pressure. But it depends what you do. Like I sometimes say to people, nothing ruins a good day’s riding like making a YouTube video cuz it can cuz you you’ve got a different approach. You’re not you’re not going to just focus on what’s fun. You might try and create some progression in the day or tell a bit of a story, but at the same time like some that’s some people’s dream to go mountain biking every day. So I feel like a duty to to tell the story and to and to yeah share around the world. I actually really like it. Did it did it come to you naturally or did it feel awkward initially? I still find it awkward now. Like I really struggle to stand on a train platform and film myself in public. I don’t mind it so much in mountain bike environments because everyone knows he’s filming a mountain bike video. But I still don’t I’m still not super confident. Interesting. It comes across confident though. Like you you the way you deliver feels like you’re super you’re super comfortable doing it. But as long as I’m talking about something I care about, then you just get lost. You just go with it, don’t you? Yeah. Switch everything else off, I guess. Yeah. So what what would you attribute your success to then? cuz you’ve got like you’ve obviously got insane bike skill, but you’ve got a work ethic like you graft clearly and you’re entrepreneurial. Like how do you see the split of your success between those three elements? Um graft is the biggest attribute has to be because I gave up m I gave up competitions. I was a competition rider. I never got a podium at crank works. I wanted one more than anything but always messed up. I had such a string of bad luck and then that like that happens to so many riders. It happens to every rider really. At some point they’re done with comps and then they have to go off and get another job. So I suppose sat now thinking about it like if I didn’t have a if I didn’t approach it with and treat mountain biking as work, I’d have had to then yeah find something else. But I got into YouTube and used to really seek out like brands and try and understand what they want and I’d mo it would I’d never tell a brand what I want. I’d say you know what what’s your focus this year? What bikes you push in? What markets do you want to grow in? What? And I think how can I help with that? And if you can make someone else’s life easier at a bike brand, then they’re probably going to stick around and work with you. Um, but I do, yeah, digging made I think my work ethic came from digging and moving dirt because there’s no shortcuts with that. Wheing wheelbarrows, there’s no there’s no shortcut, you know, you just have to grind through it and build a landing, which would could take a week, could take two weeks. So, I think that taught me a lot of life skills actually. Yeah, fair play. At what point did it start to become lucrative? Cuz I I would imagine the comp side of things, yeah, you can make a living from it, but you’re not going to make a fortune kind of thing. like at what point did you start to think, hang on, there’s really something potentially pretty good here? Um, good question. I started I mean, I I was getting paid before I did comps or through that path and, you know, Red Bull came on board and that kind of creates an uplift cuz there’s so much credibility to riding for Red Bull. I’m so lucky with that. I’ve been with them 11 years now. Um, but it was when I got into YouTube and I created an a it was that it’s when I had an audience that I could speak to and say anything to that has value like and brands are prepared to pay for that. So, I mean I I know in my whole competition career I made 30 grand prize money across all those comps. Um, which isn’t enough to live off, is it? You can’t live off mountain bike prize money. I mean maybe now with a Rampage win, but that’s one person and you know the industry’s got to filter out to everyone. So yeah, you got to kind of create create worth yourself. It’s really difficult just to ask brands to pay you. They’re not going to, are they? Unless you have something to offer. Yeah. I’ve heard you say that you’re you find your success maybe more your financial success than your kind of position within the sport a little bit embarrassing. Is that fair? Do you do you find that a challenge? He’s covering up the nice watch. Oh, really? It’s interesting. Um, yeah. I I was always scared. I I love cars. I really love I love cars so much. As much as bikes. That’s become like a big passion. The more time I can spend with them, the better. Um, but like yeah, having a owning a supercar is a bit embarrassing really. They’re not very low key, are they? Super. No, but you can’t like if you love it, you can’t don’t know. I can’t I don’t want to live vicariously through someone else. I want to be in it and drive them and experience it. So, I used to find it awkward like to share on social media, but then I realized that I’m not alone. Like, so many people love cars and I want to use them and abuse them and drive them and show it. Um, and that’s been received pretty well. So, I still Yeah, it’s Yeah, it’s embarrassing might be the wrong word, but I feel like a bit of an imposter syndrome maybe with the whole thing. Sometimes I can’t believe I’ve done it. It’s like feels outrageous. Yeah. Crazy. E, you’ve got a fair collection now, eh? Yeah. Talk us through what’s in the the shed at the minute with cars wise. I’ve got an aerial Nomad, which is the best. This got more power to weight ratio than anything. That’s like a off-roy kind of Nomad, right? Yeah. Off-road buggy. No traction control, rear wheel drive, hydraulic handbrake. Best on a track day cuz you can drive it into the gravel and drive out again. Had that a few years. I’ll never sell that. I’ve got um a Ferrari Challenge, a 360 challenge. So that was like a limited They b Challenge is the race car. So it’s super loud. It’s the loudest production car ever made. Love that thing. It’s so raw. Um, that’s 20 years old. Now, I’ve got a Lamborghini Merchilago SV LP 670. They only made 186 of them. 28 rightand drives. That’s super rare. That’s an investment. I think I I’d be lucky with that. Do well with that one. Um, I got a 1968 Ford Mustang GT. And then today I’m going home to pick and I’m getting a Porsche GT3 RS delivered. Oh, nice. Yeah. Brand new or? No, no, not the latest. Is it a 99.2 two second gen. Sam Reynolds has just bought a lime green one exactly the same as his. I drove his and just was like, “Wow, new new modern cars are the bollocks.” Cuz I’ve got a few like kind of old crusty ones, old class like future classics. But he made me realize that actually you just need something something modern with all the tech. Mega and if you buy smart like these things generally increase in value, right? They’re an investment that you can enjoy and have fun with. Yeah. It’s not a secret. Like this year cars have done really well. um that the Ferrari and the Lamborghini are 100% worth a lot more than I paid for them. So just by buying them, I’ve made money and then you can’t argue with that, can you? But you got to pick right and find the right ones and that kind of takes time. You need like you need to meet the right people to learn all that stuff. Yeah. And you’ve just driven the Mercago from Lisbon to Marba with a bunch of other supercar owners, right? Yeah. It’s like a club. It’s like a tour. Yeah. So how did that feel? Like you talk about imposter syndrome. Suddenly you’re in this group of other people that own these things. Did you feel at home? Yeah, definitely. They’re all cool guys and girls like and everyone’s the same. Like there’s builders there or who people have just, you know, they laid bricks and they look up and they’ve employed a gang of 20 people all laying bricks and they’re like can’t believe it. One of the dudes is a butcher. He’s got a massive Ferrari collection. Literally a butcher and he’s now just sells pallets of meat rather than like bits like lamb joints over the shelf. know is I love that there’s so many success stories but everyone’s grafted. I think everyone loves Yeah. It’s like a common thing like I used to hate anything that felt like work and now I hate not working. Okay. Just Yeah. I don’t know what to do with myself. Just love progress and like turning over new stones and Yeah. Fair play. Good on you. It’s worked out pretty well so far. Was it Am I right in thinking it was the Lamborghini that put you in the or owning a Lamborghini? Maybe not the current one that put you in a room to have the first conversation that started the video game project. Yeah. Yeah. Have I said that before? Maybe. Yeah. The Yeah. I bought a Huracan Performante Lambo in lockdown. Got like cheap. No one knew what the markets were going to do. So there was some deals to be had and I thought, “Oh god, go for it. This is now.” Then joined that supercar driver club and then a few months later went to an event. Um, it was quite like a private event that they invited me to and I just met all these insanely cool people, clever people. And one guy, Chris, has been really successful in growing video game studios. And he was fascinated in me and YouTube and having an audience. He said, “That’s like in in the games industry, it’s very hard to talk to people. There’s so many rules and regulations around targeted advertising, but I have an audience. I know the age, the demographic, the where they’re from.” So, he’s like, “That’s really interesting.” and you you get all that data. Then anyway, after dinner it was like, “Would you want to build a video game together?” And I was like, “Yeah, hell yeah. Let’s do it.” And then a couple years later, we had a plan. We had a studio. Now we built Mavericks, which goes live on console end of January. Unreal. Yeah. And that’s been a huge project for you, right? Like a lot of commitment and time you’ve put into this. Yeah. Tons. like it’s it slowed me down massively on YouTube, riding, um training, healthare, like everything’s that’s taken front and center position cuz we’ve got 20 team of 20 people working on it full-time and you can’t like let them rest. You kind of need to be on it and make sure everyone’s steering the ship in the right direction. So, I’ve got my brother working for me now, full-time on that. Jonno’s full-time Maverick’s employee steering the ship for me now, really. Then another guy, Duran, he builds South African guy. He builds a Darkfest course with Sam Reynolds. And he I’ve now employed him. He’s our level designer. So he’s like he could build the best jumps in the world. And now he’s doing it in Maverick. So we’re going to have a ton of new content. It’s pretty cool. Yeah. Cuz I want it to be an authentic mountain bike game. So you end up really needing to build a team of people that are from from the sport and from the industry. Yeah. Was it hard to make it feel that way? I think you spend a lot of time up there in person which is unusual or if not unheard of in the kind of athlete game. Yeah. Became office space. Yeah. Like yeah. Three days a week I was in an office with programmers and artists and yeah 3D designers and stuff and we were trying to build a video game and it a lot of stuff gets confused and lost in translation when you’re talking to people that don’t take it for granted that if you go around a corner and pull your front brake you you wash out. You know that all has to be discussed and understood. And now we’ve got we’re getting a good place. We’re really working on the physics right now, ready for the console launch. But with that, healthfare, YouTube, keeping sponsors happy, bike launches. Oh, yeah. Definitely been busier this year than I’ve ever been. Was it a shock to the system having a like a day job? Cuz a lot of calls. I don’t like doing calls. You’re an inerson kind of guy, right? You like being with people and getting things done face to face. Definitely. And doing two things at once, but like when you’re on Zoom, you can’t do that while driving a digger, if you know what I mean. I used to love doing just quick phone calls while doing other things. Yeah. But it’s necessary. Need to need to build the best game possible. Yeah. And it’s been out in like uh PC version, right? For what, a few months now? Yeah, we launched it hardline week. Yeah. So, there’s been a lot of players and we’ve done loads of updates. I’d say we probably released it too early. We should have waited a for a couple more updates, but I wanted to get like the core gaming community involved as early as possible to help direct what we do with the game. Because you can get the closer you get to something like a business or an idea, you can get a bit lost in the weeds with like what the what what direction you should go in and then suddenly you get all this outside influence and you’re like okay right this is we are in the right head in the right direction. Yeah. Were you a gamer? Yeah. When I was younger I did and lockdown I did a lot of Call of Duty and stuff but I just Yeah. I I played my stepson Rivers had Descenders a mountain bike game and I just played it. I just didn’t make it I didn’t like it. It didn’t feel like mountain biking. It felt just like an arcade game. I thought it just wasn’t I just knew we needed to do something better. Did it take a while to get that physics model down? Cuz it’s pretty complicated, right? A car is relatively simple to model. A bike is a lot harder. Yeah. Two wheel physics is way more complex than four cuz of leaning and grip. Um and there’s not very like a good like if you make a car game now all the the Unreal Engine’s got all that stuff like default in there. Um it’s still work. We’re still getting there. Yeah. Still being worked on. In fact, we’re having a big the whole team’s big push right now for physics. So we come console launches feels different and Yeah. And you’ve gone all in and got Rob Warner on the the commentary in there. That must have been a lot of fun to be able to bring Rob in and do that. Yeah, we recorded 900 lines of commentary cuz the game doesn’t it’s not live, is it? The game has to like look at what’s going on and pull lines from different pools and you can even assign probability to the lines. So if he says like a funny joke like he’s crumbled like an old woman’s hip, you don’t want to hear that five times in a row. So you play that one in 100. It’s mad that what’s going on in a game in real time is ridiculous. Nuts. I didn’t know Rob had 900 lines. That is a lot of lines. Yeah. Yeah. He’ll go he’ll go forever. Yeah. We did another day’s recording with him two weeks ago for the slope style mode cuz we got tricks in Mavericks now. Yeah. Coming for that update. So, we had did a whole another day of that of him. He doesn’t even understand tricks. I had to sort of explain what Superman se Grab is. Yeah. Good. It must have been a fun day in the studio with that guy. Um, what about when it came to launch? Were you worried because this is something completely different for you? Yeah. When you put out a video on YouTube, you probably got a pretty good feel like this is going to go well, it’s going to be average or if it’s bad, I’m not going to put it out. Yeah. This is something totally new, it could fall over and fail. Like, how do you feel going into something like that? Scared. Yeah. We’d put a lot so much time into it, a lot of money into it. But then there’s there’s an opportunity cost as well. If I if I didn’t create Mavericks, I could have worked really hard on Hellfair, which like still managed to grow this year. But I there’s an opportunity and doing stuff in secret has a huge opport opportunity. Like even the Scanya video, I was in Sweden for 2 weeks almost in total. You can’t tell anyone. And it’s like in a world where you want to be putting yourself out there and visible online, as soon as you do something in secret, all your channels go dry. And it’s it’s like hard to balance all those things. you have to work twice as hard just to give yourself the free time for those secret projects and things. So, Mavericks was like that. And then as soon as we released it to the world, it was like, “Thank God, I can be transparent now. We can bring people on the journey.” But the gaming community is hardcore. Yeah. Like straight off straight off the bat, even though it was an early access game, everyone has expectations of like Skate and the top games that cost 10 million quid to make. Um, so I had to kind of navigate that. But then the reviews now are like very positive. if it says or is like as good as you can get and we’re still in early access so I’m super confident um that we can build a really really good game uh just cuz people are already already loving it. Yeah. Yeah. And you took some of the top Mavericks players mountain biking in real world. Yeah. Two weeks ago mate it was insane. Yeah. We did Maverick’s Cup which is England game three days fastest time wins and the top three were from Liverpool one’s from Devon pretty much or uh Western West Super was it called Western Super and a lad from Italy 15-year-old and got them all to bike park Wales one of them’s never ridden really one um Leo the 15-year-old was really good and it was insane watching people who are the best in the world at Mavericks ride bikes like their con knowledge of line choice just from playing the game was ridiculous. Like really interesting. Like if I compared following someone one of the gamers to following like my wife, she just doesn’t know where to go on a corner. They knew exactly what to do cuz it’s made they’ve made it work for themselves in Mavericks. But they loved it. They said it was life-changing. Yeah, that’s really interesting. So like they weren’t fast. Leo was, but like their brain they have their brain could could make them go very like they would be able to do an extremely good time. Just their like body and muscle fibers haven’t caught up yet. But I think those hours spent in the game 100% create a like a threshold, a foundation to be a good mountain biker. That’s it’s a good sign that the physics model and the game are working well. If it’s getting people up that ladder, I need to have a go. It was a good day out. People like that video. Yeah. I didn’t think people would connect with it, but I think a lot of people are like, “That’s that’s interesting.” Yeah. And uh talk to us about healthare. Where did that come from? Um wanted to create a brand around YouTube, you know, I’ve got all these people and I didn’t have anything to create and I didn’t like create value and to work through those channels. So just yeah, clothing company felt opposite. Started off with t-shirts, hoodies, and then you know, I’m talking to a mountain bike audience like let’s make mountain bike products. So we made jerseys and eventually like race trousers, jackets. Now it’s a yeah proper proper business. Pretty crowded market though, right? Mountain bike clothing. It’s hard to get into and kind of differentiate yourself. Have you found it a challenge? Yeah, it’s not. But like I’m lucky in a way that it’s I’m not 100% reliant on healthare. It’s actually still a thing I’m just passionate about. Um, I really like when people are honest at bike parks and they say, “I bought your your trousers 2 years ago, but we had a problem with the zip and I sent it back and you sent me another pair, but like now we’ve changed the zips.” So, it’s all the same thing. I just like innovation and like I guess like growth. I don’t know. I love seeing people at bike parks wearing Hellfare. And my favorite one is when they’re wearing Hellfair, but they don’t know me or they don’t recognize me. It’s like, “Oh, you actually bought it because of the product.” Like, it’s not a hype brand anymore. were really making mountain bike clothing. It’s Brighton, right? He’s selling it all. I think you’re right. Adam Brighton, his waders, his Wer trousers. That’s big. That’s a big seller. Yeah, he’s There was a good launch video with Brighton. The fishing launch video. That was in the middle of winter. He had to swim on like under the bottom of Lake Windmir. Put a sock in his mouth. It was on a fishing hook. If If they haven’t watched that video, that’s going to sound so peculiar. It’s worth a watch. Maybe we’ll stick a link in the show notes. So, with all of this, mate, how do you find time to ride a bike? It must it must be cutting into your time to ride. Yeah, I’ve ridden way less this year than ever. Um, I built some stuff at home though. I’ve got a skate park at home. Just built a pump track for my Sun Cove. So, there’s stuff to do in like those short windows. But yeah, I’ve become quite like business focused, I think. But then everything’s growing. Like my YouTube’s still growing and when I do make mountain bike videos, they get more views than ever. And like Marin, I still I’ll be 10 years with Marin soon, next year. Um, and they love everything I do and there like that was a big moment for me riding for that company. When you asked earlier what some of the like pivotal moments were, I remember we used to go to Eurobike to get sponsor deals. Like certainly all the slope style riders cuz in downhill you you end up riding for a team. But in slope style you’ve got to go out and find all your individual sponsors yourself, your wheels, your tires, your rims, your bars, your pedals. And Eurobike in Germany was the place to do it. Um, and again it’s thanks to Sam Pilgrim. He drove me there once and told me kind of what to say and what to do. And then a few years in, I didn’t have a bike sponsor. I’d had a a bridge gap with Banshee for one year and they didn’t have like very good budgets and they were like they just they their focus wasn’t the same as mine and I wanted to do like big projects and things and uh I walked around that huge place all the bike brands and saw like to me back then it was Marin. I was like Marin. I’m sure like I heard of them when I was like an infant like Marin. And they were front of house amazing stand like flash looking booth and the bikes in there like weren’t proper. They didn’t look like proper gravity bikes. They didn’t have a downer bike. They didn’t have a jump bike. But I thought Marin they must be they’re like back. I wonder what’s going on there. And I just thought well that’s my chance. I bet no one’s going to go in there and ask for a proper deal with Marin cuz they don’t have a jump bike. So I went in and said like found someone to speak to. Turns out it’s called John Old used to work at Fog and he I don’t know if he knew who I was but um he was super forthcoming and I just said I really think I could help you guys like you haven’t got the right bikes for me to do my job but can you imagine if like we all we have to do is make a hard tail frame a jump bike um and I can do all these things. I could ride for you like test your bikes, we can create new stuff and got that got got it over the line like quite quickly and then nearly 10 years later we’ve done so much good stuff together like they are the best brand ever to ride for. It’s like a family. It’s cool, isn’t it? To be with brands for so long as well is is a a testament. But if I didn’t have the Yeah. And I’d say this to people like you’ve got to put yourself in the room with people. You can’t sit at home and hope that anything’s going to come to you. It’s not going to happen. there’s someone out there who’s who’s trying harder or willing to go further to meet the right people. And I learned that that day. Like just just wander in there and give it your best. Yeah. It’s it can be uncomfortable, right? But you’ve got to do it cuz otherwise I’d have walked straight past and I don’t know if I’d have ever found a brand that was that supportive. Fair play. Yeah. So you are you missing not riding so much? Yeah. But I’m going to I’m going to ride again more like next year. I think when Mavericks is live on console and you know the the team completely understand the mission and I don’t need to explain physics anymore cuz it’s in the game. I’ll have loads more time. Um I say that every year. I was going to say you seem like the person that’s just going to find another project. Like do you think you can ever like wind it back and relax a bit? Don’t know. I always say I want to Yeah. slow things down. But I do love it. Where what’s the drive? Cuz I don’t think it’s money. You’re not doing it to earn money. I don’t think, maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like you’re doing it cuz it’s in you. Uh, discover. Yeah, it we’re just in this, we’re in a in a world where no one’s figured it out yet. And it’s like extreme sports is still so new. There’s no coaches. There’s no rule book. There’s no like agency. Like if you do football, it’s like, right, there’s your team, there’s your coach, there’s your physio, and he’s your manager. You don’t have to do anything. Go and kick a ball. Amazing. Lucky them. But for us, like no, there’s not a a handbook or a a way of doing it. And I feel like we’re all figuring it out like and now there’s like is a thought of a recipe forming. It’s like you kind of do need a channel like whether it be YouTube or Tik Tok. You and why not if you do that like make a little business whether it makes socks or stickers or hats. And then if you do that, why not try and speak to brands about doing projects? But I feel like we’re all paving the way together as athletes, as extreme sports athletes. And I I don’t want to get off the don’t want to get off the treadmill. Yeah. Fair play. Do you all do you all kind of share thoughts and ideas? Like how much do you work together as a community to try and push all this stuff forward? Tons. Yeah. And the riders that are the most have been the most transparent with me, whether it be about sponsorship deals or, you know, just like I’m going to do this event and it’s going to be on these dates. Book it in your calendar. I think they’re the ones that I’ve I’ve watched do really well. I think the more you are transparent with people, the more they want to give back and you can learn quickly. It’s all just network, isn’t it? Yeah. At the end of the day, we all love riding bikes and uh pushing things and Yeah. And then up, you can’t learn any quicker than being in an uplift uplift chat. Go, you hear some stuff, don’t you? That’s where the business gets done. That’s where all my suspension tunings come from. It’s just hearing an old boy from Yorkshire telling me how many clicks of the There are some good tales in those vehicles for sure. Nice amount. We should start wrapping up because I know you’ve got a lot to get done today. We’ve got our final four questions that we’ve asked a lot of people over the years. So, we’ll hit those. The first of those, if our listeners had £150 to spend to improve their performance on a bike, what would you recommend they go spend it on? Doesn’t go far these days. Have they already got a bike? Yeah. Yeah. Four. It’s not going to cover the whole thing, but four uplifts at the same bike park in the same few months. Okay. Why four? Because you could probably get that for 150 quid. I think there’s so much everyone’s so spoiled for choice now of where to ride and they’ll go to Dy and do six runs and they won’t go back cuz they want to go to Black Mountain, they want to go to Cassuz. Um, if you go back somewhere you’ve been recently, you arrive with this level of confidence and like this like approach which is so much more positive. It’s like I was on that track two weeks ago. I don’t have to check it out. you just find yourself like thundering down and that’s how the best riders train, you know, they stay in one place. I know like we all travel the world and we go off to events, but Bernard’s moved to Dovey to become better at downhill so we can ride the same tracks every day. And that’s, you know, mo the motocross boys are doing it. They got compounds. Um, so I think it’s easy to think you need to go to all these different places, but if if you want to progress, you got to ride the same things. Yeah. True. And people go to these places and they want to ride all the tracks while they’re there. They won’t like just ride one track on repeat. No, cuz they’re like on in tourist mode, but yeah, that’s how you’re going to get quicker, right? Yeah, it’s the only way. So, that’s I know it’s a bit of a not not the right answer. It’s not like a material thing. It’s a good answer. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. You need to It’s repetition and 4 days riding is way better than like a new product. So, it’s cool. Better to go ride bikes than spend money on other stuff. Yeah. Nice. Um, if you could wind back the clock and sit down with yourself age 16, what advice would you give him? Um, there’d be some moments which is break a bit more for that jump. uh put an extra crank in there uh back in the competition days. What advice? Ah, it’s a good question. I’ve I’ve liked figuring out on my own to be honest. I think you end up with like with a better result. Uh get an airbag sooner. Yeah. Okay. When did you get one? 2019. Okay. Pretty recent in the grand scheme then. Yeah. Was that They were so expensive. 30 grand back then and then a mate realized you could just they’re essentially a bouncy castle. So we found a bouncy castle company on Alibaba that would do one for four grand cuz that’s all that’s in it. Just a load of plastic with a blower but European companies were like selling it as a extreme sports airbag. So it needs to be 10. So that yeah I don’t know something like that. All right. Third one. If you could have a coaching session with anyone past or present who would it be and what would you want to learn? And this could be riding. It could be business. It could be anything in life or a different sport. God, I’ve learned some really like positive stuff from meeting people like through cars or people in business. Um, like good life advice, but a training session. Ronan Dunn, how to go around turns. He’s pretty when you follow him around a corner, you can’t believe he’s going in that fast. And then he like you can actually hear him like exhale in the corner like like a boxer. He’s Yeah, I’d love to be able to go around turns quicker. That holds me back through a whole downhill run. Me breaking in turns kills kills the time. You must have had fun riding with him and Jackson in Medina for Hardline like that. Yeah, changed everything. Yeah, doing a week in Queenstown before Tazzy with those boys made actually made me go right. Yeah, fair play. All right, last one. What’s something you do every day that you feel benefits you? Uh time with my son. Yeah, whenever I can hang out with him feels great. How old is he now? He’s two and a half. Yeah. So scooting about on a bike. Yeah. Yeah. He’s love. He rides that pump track all the time on his balance bike. I need to get him pedaling. Yeah. That can that only feels good. You know, there’s some things that some days are good, some days are bad. That’s always Yeah. A positive. Nice. I like it, man. If um people want to follow you and want to check out what you’re up to, where are the best places these days for them to be looking? YouTube. It’s all there. There’s 800 videos there to sift through. um video games called Mavericks um which comes out on 22nd of January on PS5 and Xbox Series consoles. I guess that’s it. Yeah. Wicked. Yeah, we’ll stick links to that along with the truck video in the show notes. People can find that. Yeah. Thanks for making time. I know you’re a busy guy. It’s been a lot of fun. No, I haven’t done a podcast in ages. Felt good, man. Thank you. It was brilliant. Cheers, dude. Legend. [Music]

8 Comments

  1. the car part is hilarious says hes embarrassed a little feels like hes showing off then goes to list the most absolute CLASS collection of cars ever "so yeah I own two perfectly matched together in opposite qualities race cars and a 25 year old murci SV"

  2. I only wish this was 4 hours long. 😅 Great podcast with a great guest 👌. He definitely knows how to engage his audience. Wish him all the success in the world. Such a great role model for the up and coming 👊

  3. He shouldn't feel awkward or feel like he doesn't deserve to have nice things and car's. He's worked his ass off and is a great ambassador for mountain biking, and is such a nice guy in person. Good things come to good people.

  4. Stumbling across Matt's content on YouTube got me into this sport, and that's now extended to my son and daughter, who are loving it too. Stoked to see him doing so well and can't wait to play Mavrix on PS5.

    Great podcast, as always!

  5. 31:30 Good call on getting the 991.2 – I told Sam the same thing – because it's still somewhat usable for more than an A to A ride.

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