Downhill Blog Posts

By Mike Ferrentino

After winning two of the first three World Cups, Peat finished a disappointing 7th in Bromont. Maybe he was looking ahead to the World Championships. Photo: Sven Martin

It’s late in the afternoon on Sunday, September 6, 2009, just outside of Canberra, Australia. The weeklong mountain bike World Championships have just drawn to a close. The final event contested, as usual, was the elite men’s downhill race. The shadows are lengthening and the remaining sunlight is slanting deeply, with an almost cliché golden hue. Rick Clarkson, Steve Peat’s perennially stoic mechanic, is holding forth with uncharacteristic animation, his words cropped and shaped by his northern English accent: “Steve Peat, World Champion, well, nobody’s said it, ever,” he says with a broadening grin. “Steve Peat, World Champion, that’s all you need to know. That’s number one!” Then, breaking completely out of character, unable to restrain his pure ebullient joy, he begins hooting “Steve Peeeaaaat! Noombah One! Steeeeve Peeeeeaaaat!” Finger pointing skyward, head tilted back, full bellow, his chant is taken up by the surrounding crowd, a cacophony of horns and bells and noisemakers swelling the sound and carrying it far away into the cold and dry southern twilight.

Steve Peat’s 2009 World Championship victory was a sentimental slam dunk. It could not have been choreographed any better by Hollywood. The star of the show—Peaty—as the grizzled veteran who finally beats the odds and throws a long-clinging monkey from his back. At age 35, now a father of two, he has been competing at the elite level of downhill racing since it first became defined as a sport. He’s been nicknamed “Old School” by his young teammate, Josh Bryceland. His 16 years of World Cup racing have seen nearly all of his early peers go into retirement while he has retained an almost ageless grace and competitiveness. This, in a sport that has evolved so dramatically as to be unrecognizable when compared to its roots—the only common aspect held from past until present being that races are individual timed runs held on a downhill slope. In an impressive career arc, so often abruptly punctuated with other riders by injuries or burnout, he has won more World Cup races (17) than any other downhill racer in history. He has won the World Cup overall three times, and netted a phenomenal 50 career World Cup podiums. Along the way, he has carved out a reputation as a journeyman powerhouse, able to finesse the skill courses, but also capable of throwing down horsepower on the pedaling tracks. But until this September, he’d never won that single-day crapshoot, that amalgam of skill and strength and timing and luck known otherwise as the UCI Downhill World Championships.

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