[MUSIC PLAYING]
BENNO WILLEIT: After a couple of weeks
of national events, the team being split all over the place,
we finally coming together here.
And they are going again as a team for World Cup number four.
So we have two Austrians on the team,
and some others are based in Austria.
So some of us are already home.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
PETER FELBER: It's nice to be back here in Austria.
The racing is so-- so tight.
That's why I decide to go home with the truck.
Being home is something special.
A lot of people see me as just a bike mechanic.
But I have another life as well.
(SINGING) I was born up in the mountain,
raised by an old grizzly bear.
I'll sit by mother nature, and I breathe
fresh, clean, natural air.
BENNO WILLEIT: Yeah.
Peter really is a man of the land.
He actually has a farm at home.
He raises pigs.
He looks after horses.
And to top it off, he has a fish farm
big enough to feed the entire family of over 30 people.
And I haven't even started to talk about the bikes yet.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
PETER FELBER: I love my workshop.
I love to work out of this place, because every tool have
his place.
Everything is where I left it.
It makes me quite proud when I look around here
in my workshop, when I look up to the choices and numbers.
And medals what's hanging in here, some of the jerseys
was not so easy to catch.
And the feeling when the bike is done
and everything is running smooth how it should be, you feel it.
You hear it.
It's a really good feeling.
Leogang is my home race.
And I'm super excited to, yeah, rock that one here in Austria.
BENNO WILLEIT: So with the shorter drives,
easy logistics, local event, it allows
us to actually focus on the most important part,
and that's the raising.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
LAURA STIGGER: Living in the Austrian Alps
is, yeah, a privilege, actually.
Having a home World Cup here in Leogang is very special.
And that gives kind of extra motivation to push even harder.
Yeah, the Austrian Alps are just a magical place.
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
BENNO WILLEIT: So this is also the first double event
where cross-country and downhill finally gets together.
And it's a great opportunity for us
to unite the two teams and race under the Specialized flag.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JEROME ALIX: So here in Austria, in Leogang, the weather,
you can never trust it.
You can be one day raining and the other day sunshine,
and it's a different track.
So because of this, we need to check the weather all the time.
And we need to be more prepared for every condition
so we can react quickly if weather change.
PETER FELBER: Sometimes when it's super muddy,
we have a few things what we do on the bike
that mud is not sticking there.
We tape the backside of the lowers on the top here,
the little holes, that the mud cannot stick in that.
Then we tape the steering tube, the hole underneath,
so it's get not filled up with mud.
And when it's super, super, super muddy,
we also put on the down-tube tape on what the rider can
pull off during the race.
And yeah, the last one is during the race
in the feed zone we give the riders water bottles.
They can take the water bottle and spray it
on the drive train.
So yeah, it's for the gearing.
So now the bike is ready for the mud festival.
It's yeah, super slippery.
JEROME ALIX: Woo!
HALEY BATTEN: See, it's slippery.
JEROME ALIX: You better just go on the line.
You get before.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Today, it's track walk.
We're going to go up and look at some section that's probably
going to change depending on the weather.
So here we are on the first technical section
of the course.
After that long steep downhill, this
is the first, yeah, big tricky section.
When it's dry, it's not that, that bad.
But if it gets muddy, it's going to be completely crazy here.
HALEY BATTEN: Yeah.
You can see there's two lines, an a line and a b line.
This first line gets pretty slick and rutted out.
So it makes for a fast kind of risky descent.
The b line has a couple of corners to slow down.
But when there's a lot of people,
it's hard to tell which one's faster.
JEROME ALIX: Here it's another tricky section.
It's don't look that bad.
It's just a route.
It's not the most technical section.
But when it's going to get rain, all the routes
are going to get super slippery.
HALEY BATTEN: Yeah.
What's cool about this race here in Leogang
is that everything's really natural.
All these routes can become ice-slick when it's raining.
And they're very unpredictable.
JEROME ALIX: When the weather changes here,
this track can be a completely different monster.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JORDAN SARROU: It's a proper Leogang weather.
2020 was my title.
Yeah, it's a good memories here.
LAURA STIGGER: It's raining.
In the wet is probably the best you
could do, because you're prepared for everything.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
There is a change coming.
So we will see how the weather is for the race
and for the region.
BENNO WILLEIT: We don't know what
the weather is going to do.
We don't know where the cloud is going to be.
But you can be sure, we're going to be on the start line.
And we're going to be ready for it.
So buckle up, kids, because it's going to be a bumpy ride.
(SINGING) Here I am.
Back again in Leogang.
[TOOT]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[LAUGHTER]
[CHEERING]
MAN: The shoulder move is amazing.
[LAUGHTER]