(explosion)
- Just how fast is a cross-country pro racer?
Well, I've been invited by Shimano to come
to the south of France to race
a BMC pro Titouan Carod.
Titouan's young racer.
He won the under 23 overall World Cup championship twice.
His first year in elite, he finished sixth overall.
2018, he had a third at Mont-Sainte-Anne,
fifth at Stellenbosch, and seventh at world champs.
He's legit.
He's a new school cross-country racer riding
a new school cross-country bike.
(slow synthesizer music)
(moves into high energy music)
I walked by the bike.
For this task, we're both gonna be riding
exactly the same bike,
the BMC Fourstroke.
A pretty special bike and a leader in a new type
of cross-country race bike.
It takes influence from longer traveled machines
to be as fast as possible.
Up, down, and of course cross-country.
100 millimeters of travel, a relaxed head angle,
a six millimeter stem, and an integrated dropper seatpost.
The bike that Titouan races on the World Cup circuit.
We both have the same gears, Shimano XTR 1x12.
Although Titouan is pushing a 36 chain ring
on a 10-45 cassette compared to my 34
with the same cassette, and I am fine with that.
So Titouan, you are quite new really to cross-country.
You're a young rider, but it looks like the trails
nowadays are super gnarly.
Some very technical sections.
How hard are these tracks?
- Yeah, they are all in whole the part
in the uphill and the downwheel.
Now in the cross-country race,
the technical is a very important part.
- And the bikes, this is quite useful I would say,
you've got a really short stem on these Fourstroke BMCs.
That's 60 mill on one medium bike.
Got an integrated dropper post,
how much are you using the dropper post when you're riding?
- Always, in the cross-country race always.
Just for two meters or just for one meter sometimes.
Always, I use always.
- And we're running 1x12 today as well, so you've got
a pretty big chain on there.
That's a 36.
- 36, yeah.
- Be running the big set, so 12-speed.
What is that, it's a 10-51?
- Yeah.
- Do you change your chain at all during the year
or is that a 36 on constantly?
- No, it's 90 berth and 36, and maybe when we
have a flat race or we use 38,
but 90 persons is 36.
- And you don't miss having the front, back,
and two chainrings?
- No, no, no.
(slow dramatic music)
(moves to intense drum music)
(majestic music)
- [Neil] We're in the south of France,
at a special facility,
the French Federation's training facility built
to replicate the axial course at 2016 Rio Olympics.
It's got a challenging single track, manmade rock gardens,
short and long bursting climbs.
Only an elevation change of 150 meters,
but it's either up or down.
There's no place for a lazy downhiller to rest.
(relaxing music)
The case just slightly different to our normal race.
Rather than do a time trial, I'm gonna set off first.
It's gonna be a handicapped race.
Two minutes later, Titouan's gonna come after me,
chase me down, see how soon he can catch me.
And we'll see if I can actually make it
two laps of this track.
(flaps lips)
- [Titouan] Oh.
- [Neil] Hang on.
- Three, two,
one, go.
(Neil exhales)
(gravel crunches)
(upbeat music)
(grunting)
(very fast music)
(gravel crunches)
(heavy breathing)
(upbeat music)
(gravel crunches)
(exhales)
(laughs) Go.
- Wow, nice one, dude.
Well, that was one of the hardest things I've ever done.
(Titouan laughs heartily)
Wow, my foreword did great, 10 seconds downhill.
And it was pretty obvious you were faster
down there as well.
My riding just went completely out the window
when I was redlining, I just couldn't stay on.
- Oh, yeah.
- I couldn't pick a line, I was all over the place.
Oh, man, that was hard.
I did a lap and thought I wasn't going to make it
'round in the second lap.
(laughter)
I thought to just back it off.
I almost crashed on the last descent.
It's so hard to ride technical stuff when you're redlining.
- Yeah.
- Don't know how you do it, so consistently as well.
(exhales profusely) So I made it.
Titouan beat me by 00:5:40 back to here.
Never mind the two minutes at the start,
he caught me after 00:7:40 faster.
What, an 11k ride, so not a very big ride.
Let's go back to the shed, let's take a look at the data
and see the real raw deal.
How it turned out.
Okay, so how badly did I get beaten?
So I've used Strava to really pull apart these laps,
take a look at some segments.
Start with the first segment,
so it's an underlaying bit, the tacky downhill,
and a short climb.
Lap one, I did it 00:02:20.
Titouan did a 00:02:03 so pretty significantly faster.
And if you go into more detail
just on that short downhill part of that segment,
I did a 00:00:31, Titouan did a 00:00:30.
So faster even on the downhills and that was as close
as I got when every single segment,
it was about 12 segments to this lap,
and it was faster everywhere.
What about a short but tough climb that would be max effort
but with some technical riding and tight corners in it?
That one I did a 00:01:51, Titouan did a 00:01:25.
Not too disappointed with that actually.
I guess I'm not too bad.
But now, let's look at lap two because I absolutely
bombed on lap two.
I'm super insta-red on lap one.
And if you look at the overall times,
which we'll do in a second.
You'll see I was a lot slower on lap two.
So onto that segment, I did a 00:02:28 on lap two.
So eight seconds there, not too bad.
Titouan did a 00:02:13.
So he dropped 10 seconds, but it was still significantly
faster than me.
On the downhill section, I did a 00:00:37, so six seconds
slower than I was first lap.
Titouan did a 00:00:31, so pretty consistent.
Best time I did on the first lap.
And for that short, punchy climb, I went up to 00:01:57.
Titouan did a 00:01:25, exactly the same as he did
on his first lap.
So obviously super consistent.
And that was obviously a lot shorter than your
average axial race.
But if you could keep that pace up for those two laps,
pretty immaculate.
And what about total lap times?
My lap one was 20'23", lap two 22'37",
so a minute and a bit slower.
Add it up to 43'00" total.
Titouan did a 17'31" lap one.
Lap two, he did slow down to an 18'26".
His total was 35'57".
I think Titouan went super hard on that first lap
to make sure he did catch me and then maybe
relaxed a little bit.
But obviously his times are really, really consistent.
So obviously really, really fast these
pro cross-country racers everywhere.
I did try and stick with him on the downhills
and when I was tight, but it just wasn't happening.
So fair play.
Do I have any excuses?
Well, of course I do, I've gotta have some excuses.
I would say my finish is a bit average
even for my standards, but fair play Titouan,
this is off-season.
He's not been training.
He starts training in about two weeks time.
So even for him he's not in his peak form
and he still absolutely smoked me.
Well, thanks to Titouan.
That was really hard, but it was amazing to see
just how fast you guys are.
- Thank you, thank you.
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