Fabien Barel. Where do we start? After 17 hugely successful years of downhill racing including 2 world championship titles, he switches to enduro and continues where he left off, battling at the top. Then he suffered a horrendous, potentially life and career ending injury and comes back that same year for the last race of the season and wins it! Fabien announced his retirement from competitive racing earlier in the year and had a very emotional send off in Finale after smashing it to a 2nd place. Sporting success aside, what is the real Fabien like? The man in super driven, hugely intelligent and very professional yet is the first to crack a joke and have some fun. We caught up with Fabien in Finale Ligure before he took to the stages for the last time.
5 questions with Fabien:
So Fabien obviously your last race this weekend, what are your thoughts and feelings coming into it?
Just coming into it, the last race of my career after all that time is for sure a lot of emotion but it is also something I have been presetting for quite a long time. I have a lot of project for the future, I’ll still be on the bike and in the industry so it’s not like flying away from something it’s just a bridge that’s getting crossed but also to open a new one.
A long and successful career, could you give us you personal highlights and hardest moments?
Well the best highlights are for sure the wins, they are always the strongest emotions you can have but I also have the amazing moment when we have been running humanitarian action during trips with the urge events and also doing all type of sharing moment that we had with people so far sure there has been many of them. Winning the world championships in downhill in my own country was absolutely amazing, coming back last year from a broken back and winning Finale here was absolutely amazing for me in terms of emotion so I had a chance to add a lot of high and lows and many injuries I think my career and my character is definitely based on the fact that I’m capable of the worst as I am of the best.
You talk about your incredible comeback last year in Finale, did that injury play any part in you deciding to hang up your helmet?
No it didn’t really play and role, I had many injuries, that one was definitely one of the worst but I know it’s part of the game and its the rules of mountainbking, when you take risks you have sometimes the chance to crash and have injuries so it doesn’t have anything to do with my retirement. It was just when I signed the contract to get involved with enduro it was just for 3 years and I just stick to my commitment.
The future of enduro is a much talked about subject, in which direction would you like to see the sport heading in?
There is a lot of things happening obviously over the 3 years, obviously it has been different organisers, different locations, different people getting involved but the roots of the sports are still there and will stick there, and for me those roots are based on fun on the bike which means for me keeping a certain lucidity in your run and being able to focus and play when you are going down as much for the amateurs as it is for the pros. I think this balance needs to stay there and also the festive atmosphere and the conviviality that we have between elite and amateurs is something that is really important to keep because that is also a way to bring the sport, not as another cross country or downhill world cup which is really well managed by the uci and done in one way of the sport but enduro and the ews is something that is different and I think closer to the people and just based on growing through the industry needs and also through the customer needs in terms of practice, I do believe that those roots needs to be kept and I do know that the whole crew of the ews and enduro people around the world are trying to keep them safe.
Have you got any plans for the future?
I have been involved in many aspects of the industry for already quite a while and you know running part of the kona team back in the years and running the mondraker factory team for 5 years, and now getting involved with canyon in different levels of r and d and in management. I do love mountainbiking if this full aspect and obviously coming from racing which is my passion and all the way down to development and management, product communication. All those things are something I’m really interested in and really want to develop our sport’s access to people and in a fun way, in a safe way, and I do believe that the democratic side of the sport is something that can happen just like skiing is in the winter, mountain biking can be in in the summer and we can see that more generally cycling is growing in that direction. I definitely want to make sure that people have great bikes to ride, great terrain to ride and obviously the industry will be the most happy it can be to develop a great project on the event side and get it festive as we have it in the ews.
Words: Ross Bell Photos: Manne Schmitt/Ross Bell
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