MTB World Champion Kate Courtney’s Best Advice for New Shred Girls

Specialized and Red Bull athlete Kate Courtney is the new Mountain Bike World Champion — and a recent college graduate from Stanford. (That’s right, she’s only 22 years old!!) We got a chance to chat with the young racer and get some of her best advice for new mountain bikers on how to improve skills, get over nerves, and have more fun.

On Progress, Not Perfection

“One step at a time. I think it’s just about finding something that you l’ve doing and taking it step by step, working hard along the way.”

On Tackling Obstacles

“It’s really common to be terrified of obstacles! I’m still terrified of some. I think it’s so important to focus on developing skills. If you go out for a ride with someone who’s already great at skills, it can be intimidating and seem like they just naturally are good at it, and you think ’they can do it but I can’t.’ But if you take the steps to learn, OK how do I go off a drop? What do I need to do with my body? And find a good teacher, you start to take away that fear.”

On Dealing with Drops

“Drops are a great example: With Team USA we did a lot of skills camps and started with tiny drops in a parking lot and worked up from there. It took a couple of years to progress up: that’s what I love about the sport of mountain biking, there’s always some next level and challenge to take on.”

On Practicing Skillz

“You start to take away some of those skills and have more confidence in your ability. The best way to combat fear: prepare yourself.”

 

Loved Kate Courtney? You can listen to the whole Consummate Athlete Podcast episode with her here, and read more about her everyday and race day eating habits — and taco tips — in this article I wrote for Bicycling!

And… If you want to watch Kate and the world’s best mountain biking athletes, tune in to Red Bull TV to catch all the action!