-1024x683.jpg)
[Nino Schurter images from ScottSRAM]
Electric bikes, and especially racing them off-road, are a tender subject within mountain biking, and one that can blow a few fuses and short-circuit folks on both sides of the “electric bike fence”.
- How much does an e-bike cost to maintain long-term?
- “There will always be haters in life, though I think there is a shift for acceptance”: What happened to eMTB racing and can it be fixed? Tracy Moseley weighs in
We recently published an opinion column on cross-country e-mountain biking, which asked questions of the low start numbers and field disparities at the World Championship level, at the moment, which was something that raised a few hands from all sides, some with thumbs up, some with middle fingers up.
Somewhat ironically, a few days later, I caught up with South Africa’s reigning XCO World Champion Alan Hatherly, who also happened to be the first-ever e-MTB Cross Country World Champion, having won the opening edition back in 2019, in Canada. At that debut race, there was a stonking field, made up of current, past, and rising stars of regular XCO racing – including Tom Pidcock.
Second to Hatherly that day was Frenchman Jerome Gilloux, who also won this year’s e-MTB title race, while former double Olympic Champ and multiple XCO World Champion Julien Absalon came in for bronze – followed by a whole bunch of other stars.
Also lining up with Alan at both the World Championship and the following World Cup round in Lenzerheide (but not at the 2019 eMTB race) was Nino Schruter, who is no stranger to e-MTB himself. Both of these recent races were won in fine style by Hatherly, while Schurter finished up his glorious World Cup XCO racing career at the same time.
At the 2019 World Championships, Nino also won the XCO title, and a while back, I also spoke with him about his own eMTB riding – this is what both had to say on their electric experiences.
ORCC: In 2019, you won the first-ever e-MTB XC World Championship, and you were up against some serious opposition. How did that experience and victory compare to your other world titles?
Alan Hatherly: It was a bit of a unique event. I had a really difficult season in 2019; I did my first and only Cape Epic that year, and got my balance of things wrong, and I was a bit too eager to get back into training. We went to a few altitude training camps too (that year), and I kind of overcooked it a bit there, too. It was a really big learning year, which definitely wasn’t going as planned.
The team and I came together and saw that it [eMTB Champs] was a nice opportunity to target something completely different. It was only one hour long, and we thought it was the perfect event to target for that year.
Based on how tough that year was, it actually meant more than people would imagine it did to me. It was a relief to save the season, in a way. Being the first eMTB Champ was also pretty cool.
ORCC: Had you done much eMTB before that, and did you have to put in any specific preparation?
AH: It definitely took a lot of specific training on the bike, I struggled with a few things; back then I was on 175mm cranks, and I think the eBike cranks were 160mm, and the bike fit was also really strange – having a bike that was really capable in downhill, and then you convert it to XC with 150mm travel. It was a bit of a weird concept, but I think it’s evolved a bit and found a better balance in the past couple of years. But back then, it was a full XC setup.
The race was a lot harder than I expected, because for the majority of the course we were riding over the speed limiter – that’s where the real difference was; fitness and power-wise it was the same, if not harder than a regular cross-country World Cup. With the race only being one hour, it was just riding at Vo2 max all the way around, and then where you might think you can recover on the downhill, with the suspension and the bike weighing around 20kg, it was much faster, and being a heavier machine, you had to pull it up and over a lot of obstacles.
It was definitely up there as one of the toughest races I’ve done, funnily enough.
Nino Schurter’s take on e-MTB
ORCC: Can you tell when you got into eMTB riding?
Nino Schurter: I started as soon as the first SCOTT eStrike bike was available in 2018.
ORCC: What’s your own reasoning and use case with eBikes?
NS: I live a bit further up from and above my hometown of Chur, and I use a city eBike to commute to the city. But I also use eBikes on the trails around my home, often to work on skills training without burning too much energy.
.jpg)
ORCC: Has riding eMTB helped to open up riding with you to other friends and family?
NS: This is indeed a very positive aspect of the eBike; for example, I love to go out on a fun ride with my father. That’s, these days, only possible when he rides his eBike.
ORCC: What’s your eMTB bike of choice?
NS: I’m riding a SCOTT Voltage, a SCOTT Lumen, and the SCOTT Silence at the moment. The Silence is the perfect bike for commuting and for grocery shopping. The Lumen is like a Spark but with some extra power. That’s really cool for training, to get as much time on the trails as possible. The Voltage is my newest eBike, which is equipped with Flight Attendant, which makes this bike the most fun eTrail bike I’ve ever had – and eMTB is fun.
ORCC: Would eMTB racing ever be a possibility for you?
NS: Never say never.
Where does it lead from here?
Over the past few years, the usage of eMTB in particular has become very popular with many pro riders, riders from numerous disciplines. In with this, several top downhill and gravity riders also spend a whole lot of their training time on eMTB, which allows them to cover a lot more ground, reach more remote and new trails, and also take in a whole lot more laps – and all without the need for uplifts, which is a boon in anyone’s books.
It sure will be interesting to see where eMTB goes over the next few years. EBikes are evolving fast, and race systems/structures are slowly falling into place. Maybe with the likes of these guys riding them, it will help the cause?
-1024x680.jpg "“Clear anti-cyclist bias”: Lawsuit filed against Toronto police after cop doored cyclist… before ticketing rider over incident")
