See this article and others in Hurly Burly 2019.
Words: Aaron Bartlett || Photo: Sven Martin
‘Where’s Loïc?’
This is a question that was being thrown around a lot at the after-party in Vallnord at around 10pm on September 6, 2015. Having just witnessed my mate win his first senior World Championship title, I had got on the phone immediately to delay my flight home – so I could get absolutely ruined in celebration. I’d had a crêpe for dinner, was already multiple beers in and I had a plan to execute…
The man of the moment finally arrived to a chorus of cheers and hollers as he stepped into the throng of revellers, all who were waiting to shake his hand or pat him on the back. He had obviously put some effort into his outfit for the occasion, with what looked like a smart new Red Bull jacket, dinner shirt and chinos – didn’t he realise how quickly this was going to get messy?
I quickly snaked my way through the crowd to the outdoor bar. I was looking around frantically for Kevin Joly (Loris Vergier’s mechanic at the time), who I’d agreed to go halves with on a bottle of Moët to spray over Loic when he arrived. I couldn’t find Kevin anywhere, so I thought, ‘fuck it, I’ll buy it and get his half of the money from him afterwards’.
There aren’t many circumstances where buying a €50 bottle of champagne purely to spray over your mate at a party is justifiable, but if there was any time, it had to be now. Anyway, I was going 50/50 with Kevin so, in my head, that meant it was all good. As I clutched the weapon in hand and made my way back over towards the fringes, I clocked my victim and made a beeline for him. Loïc spotted my slightly crazed-looking facial expression coming at him through the crowd and looked down at the Moët, then back up at me with a somewhat pleading look in his eyes: ‘Mono, do not do what you are thinking.’
It was at that point that the cork flew up into the night sky, my thumb closed the gap on the rim of the bottle and almost the entirety of the most expensive bottle of booze I will ever buy was emptied onto a hopeless Frenchman in about 10 seconds. People ran, people cheered and Loïc got soaked. And then Kevin appeared out of nowhere with another bottle.
Needless to say, the crazed grin transferred from my face to Loïc’s as I fell victim to the inevitable. €100 pissed up the wall in about 30 seconds. Yolo?
Looking back on that night four years later, it would have been hard to imagine the meteoric rise of a man who should quite rightly be referred to as one of the greatest ever in the history of the sport at just 25 years old. The five-time World Champion added the 2019 World Cup overall title to his impressive CV in 2019 and, although in the early days we all expected that he’d figure out the winning recipe at some point, I don’t think anyone imagined he’d be sitting alone behind Nico Vouilloz in the men’s all-time World Champs win list by the turn of the decade. Add to that his now-unrelenting consistency and ability to fight and win in a series scenario and you wouldn’t bet against him adding more titles in the coming years.
Twenty-nineteen was an incredible year for elite men’s downhill and I can’t remember a World Cup series that was so tightly fought throughout the season. In recent years we’ve been treated to another great in Aaron Gwin wrapping up series after series whilst clocking up win after win as everyone else struggled to comprehend how he was doing it. Although he struggled with injury in the 2018-19 seasons, it seems like the rest of the pack has now started to figure out how to replicate his formula for raw speed and consistency. If you add a healthy Gwin to the mix for 2020, realistically we could have the potential for a five or even six-way fight for the title.
It’s the level of focus and consistency among the top five riders that makes Loïc’s 2019 season all the more impressive. To win both the World Cup series and World Championships in one season was an incredible achievement, even more so when you consider that the winner-takes-all, one-day event that is World Champs arrived one week before the World Cup final in Snowshoe. A distraction perhaps? For someone who had already won three senior World Champion titles (and one junior title) and was on the cusp of adding the World Cup overall after the best season of his career, you’d imagine he’d have approached Mont-Sainte-Anne with one eye firmly fixed on the following weekend. But even Troy Brosnan, who realistically had nothing to lose coming into MSA, couldn’t stop the World Champs-winning juggernaut from rolling on, adding number five to the trophy cabinet. To blank out the pressure while having the level of focus and commitment needed to win that particular race, at that particular time, with a whole season’s work on the line, was pretty remarkable. To then take the overall title a week later was nothing short of legendary.
It’s been such a privilege to have been a small part of the rollercoaster of results and emotions in the years since Loïc, then a 16-year-old eccentric French kid, burst onto the scene as a junior. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to look back on the difficult moments during Bruni’s career so far and contextualise them as important learning points, even if at the time they were difficult to take. It’s proof that if something is supposed to happen, it will, even if it takes a little longer than you originally expected.
Blenky put it so eloquently in Windham in 2014, as Loïc buried his face in the grass behind our tent, overcome with self-pity and emotion after a puncture in his race run – another opportunity for that first World Cup win up in flames yet again: ‘Don’t worry about it man, you’ll smoke these c***s one day.’
That day has come and gone. Now the question is, who’s going to stop him?
By Aaron ‘Mono’ Bartlett, filmmaker who follows the downhill World Cup circuit.
If you enjoy reading this, you should check out the Hurly Burly. It’s got many features like it, plus round-by-round accounts of the UCI Downhill World Cup and pore over hundreds of the best images of the season in Hurly Burly Book.
