“It’s the story of a man who descends the slopes of a volcano at more than 160 km/h on a mountain bike. The guy, as he descends, he repeats himself constantly to reassure himself: “So far so good, so far so good, so far so good. But the important thing, this n it’s not the descent, it’s the landing”. If we allow ourselves to plagiarize and adapt this mythical line from the film Hatred from Mathieu Kassovitz, to the story of Pierre Thévenard, who will try to beat the world land speed record on mountain bike between Friday and Sunday, it’s not for nothing. No, because for this 32-year-old carpenter, the stress was upstream of this somewhat crazy attempt.
A few days before taking off for Nicaragua, where his destiny as a crazy handlebar awaits him, he confided: “I feel pretty good, the stress is decreasing as the deadline approaches. In the end, the most stressful thing was the logistics, because I had to take care of everything. The day we’re going to land and we’ll have all our luggage, then I’ll be really relaxed. The rest is also stressful, of course, we say to ourselves that we are going to a volcano that has not been practiced for a long time, but that is fine”. Because to certify his possible world record, the Haut-Savoyard had to set up a whole team.
A surveyor, to validate the slope of Cerro Negro, the youngest volcano in Central America, nestled in the Maribios mountain range, dormant for twenty-three years, an official timekeeper, a mechanic and a team of cameramen to film the adventure. “For a semi-pro athlete, we are definitely on a pro project, he says proudly. To measure the slope of the volcano, there is a chart to respect for the Guinness Book, you should not have a slope of more than 50%. When you attack a record, it must be beaten under the same conditions. The record in question is that of the Austrian Markus Stockl and its 167.5 km/h, achieved in 2011 on another volcano, in Chile.
An outlaw on the slopes of Châtel
To understand how a father, a carpenter by profession, embarked on what he himself describes as a “crazy project”, we have to do a moonwalk on the arrow of time. Born into BMX before practicing cross-country, road cycling, slopestyle and downhill mountain biking, Pierre Thévenard also participates in mountain bike races on snow organized by Eric Barone, also holder of another record, that of the descent of Cerro Negro at 172.61 km/h, not with a production bike, like Thévenard and Stockl, but with a prototype which will break at the end of the course and which could have cost him his life. But we will come back to it. “Since snow biking was banned on the ski slopes, the only way to train was during the races. But I said to myself “you should get a head start on the others, buy yourself an electric bike and train at altitude before the slopes open””, he rewinds.
It is therefore in the shoes of an outlaw that Pierre Thévenard begins to hit crazy speeds on the “Linga” track in Châtel (Haute-Savoie), where he lives with his family. “The goal, when you train alone, is to beat yourself. I found it really fun to say to myself every day “come on, go faster than yesterday”, until the day when I exceeded 140 km/h and I started to tell myself that the record was playable… Like that t was Eric Barone who organized snow races, I started to find out about his life and his records. I then said to myself that if I managed to do 140 km/h hard, if it is, well prepared with serious training, I could do better. So I put together a case and went for it. »
After finding sponsors, gear and carrying out a whole battery of wind tunnel tests, he convinced the mayor of Châtel to follow him on this adventure. The latter then agrees to open a slope in the resort for him before the skiers arrive. Supervised by a team of trackers, Thévenard regularly pays for a descent at full speed in the early morning, on fine snow, the sensations of which are closest to what he will know on the land of Cerro Negro. Now equipped with a ski suit and a flying kilometer helmet offered by a speed skier, Thévenard is getting closer to his goal. “From 140 km/h in winter 2021, I reached 165 km/h in February 2022. There I said to myself “too good, I am only 2 km/h from the Austrian record !” »
No risk does not exist
And question feeling, what does it give? “When there is the phenomenon of acceleration, as soon as you exceed 150 km/h, it’s like being in a huge vacuum cleaner, you feel the bike accelerating, the body tells you that it’s going too fast, whereas you are here to go even faster. It’s a bit of an internal struggle, you have to go against your survival reflexes. But strangely, contrary to what one might think, at this speed, I really have the impression that time stands still and that I can think of lots of parameters, my braking, the wind, etc. And at the risk of falling. Because at such speeds, danger and risk are like a second skin on the track.
Especially since Pierre Thévenard still has in mind the violent fall of Eric Barone, whose prototype bike broke in half at the bottom of Cerro Negro. “I still regularly watch the video of his fall as if not to forget the risks we take in doing that,” he explains. At the end of the line, the miraculous said: “I lost four years of memory, two years before and two years after the accident. She came back over time, but it was a tough fight. It took me eight years to put my hands back on a gallows, and even then it was to go buy a piece of bread. So he has to be very careful. But what is reassuring with Pierre’s bike is that the risk of breakage does not exist. »
“Eric was on a made-from-scratch bike that had been welded, and it was the welds that broke. I’m on a standard mountain bike made in the factory especially for downhill, to take a lot of shocks, it’s almost unbreakable. Markus Stockl did his 165 km/h with a standard bike and he had no problem. I have confidence in my material. Honestly, if there is a fall, it’s pilot error, but it clearly won’t be a mechanical problem. »
See you from Friday to Sunday, depending on the weather, while keeping in mind that the important thing is not (only) the speed of descent, it is also to arrive in one piece. The Haut-Savoyard agrees: “When you are a father, you say to yourself that you should not play dumb either. I tell myself that once there, even if I’ve taken a lot of people on board for this adventure, if I think the risk is too great, I won’t take it”.