Technical Challenges, Women’s Adventure, June 2006
Wearing a pink sweater, slim-fit jeans, and a studded belt, Gina Grether matches the frivolous mood of the Steamboat Springs, Colorado, bar she´s seated in, but she fixes me with an unwavering, all-business gaze that surely serves her well when she´s rocketing downhill at 50 miles per hour. Even over a beer, she may as well have blinders on, focusing on me as she talks rather than at the handful of guys angling for her attention.
They know her not just as a local hottie, or as a 39-year-old mom with two teenaged boys, but as one of the world´s top female extreme mountain bikers who´s blown by them more than once on Steamboat´s trails. On weekends from March through September, however, Gina heads out of town to race in major downhill, observed-trials, and four-cross competitions—events that, essentially, test the limits of what´s possible on a bike.
"It´s all right here," she says, tapping her temple. "You have to have a quiet mind." Gina´s is quiet enough to calculate just how far to lean into a sandy curve and how much speed to clear a 25-foot chasm. You need a physicist´s brain, a skier´s strength and a yogi´s balance. You also need plenty of protective padding and an ironclad belief in yourself that nothing—not even cliff drops and rock gardens--can shatter.
Extreme mountain biking is like cross-country riding on steroids, with faster speeds, bigger obstacles and steeper consequences for messing up. Downhill biking is just that: roaring down rough trails at up to 60 miles per hour, so fast you´re constantly assaulted with technical challenges you´ve got mere milliseconds to evaluate and overcome. Trials events slow everything down but exaggerate the obstacle course to circus-stunt proportions: instead of rolling along on a dirt path, you use ultratechnical bike-handling skills and a keen sense of balance to hop your bike over cars or pedal across a 4-inch-wide plank suspended 20 feet above the ground. It´s scarier and harder to learn than cross-country riding, but success also yields a higher "Hell yeah!" factor--and that confidence-boosting sense of accomplishment is what keeps Gina hooked. It also helps her understand why her 15-year-old son, Elijah, is getting into extreme biking, too. They ride together now, but when her kids were younger, Gina had to put biking on the back burner to be a mom.
Her sons were just six months and 18 months old when Gina split from their dad at age 24, and the next few years as a single mom with young children forced Gina´s competitive aspirations into the background. She worked as a pastry chef at various restaurants and resorts, settling in Steamboat Springs in 1995 and running a health food store, where she baked artisan breads and desserts. She recalls how it was tough, "wanting to bike so bad and knowing I was the right age for it, yet wanting to do the right thing too." For Gina the right thing meant making Elijah and Jordan her top priority, so she fit in bike training wherever she could, pedaling up jeep roads, with the boys hitched behind her in a double Burley, or hopping rocks in the park while they played on the swings.
Her dad´s encouragement kept her seeking ways to fit in workouts. "He always told me: ´Train--maybe you´re not competing now, but keep at it as if you will,´" Gina remembers. Even in stolen 10-minute intervals, she was able to stay strong and prepare for the racing she knew she´d one day resume. "The small stuff adds up," she says. "Core strength is core strength, but there´s a lot you can do to get there if you really use the time."
Once the boys grew old enough to ride their own bikes, Gina took them out on local trails, which is where she met the riding buddies who inspired her to spice up her cross-country repertoire with more-extreme techniques. She learned to do a wheelie ("It took a long time," she recalls), and from there she mastered more-advanced bike maneuvers.
Her coaches were the six to 12 guys she still rides with, a circle of friends who challenge one another to try various stunts. They saw talent in Gina and made no excuses for her—not even as the posse´s only girl. "She´s got that real fire inside," says Chris Johns, a local bike shop owner and one of Gina´s cohorts, who describes her riding as a combination of finesse and aggressiveness. "It takes a really gutsy person to do downhill," Chris explains, "but Gina´s real feisty like that."
Most of the time, Gina feels it´s a benefit to ride with guys who encourage her to push her limits, but it can occasionally be frustrating too. "They´ll be like, ´You got it! You got it!´ but I won´t be feeling it." That´s when she backs off and gives it another go the next week. "It´s okay to say, ´Today´s not my day,´" she confides. She just doesn´t let herself believe that every day is not her day.
Gina´s boyfriend of seven years, Brian Deem, doesn´t let her believe it, either. A pro mountain biker before she was, Brian was one of Gina´s biking bros, who coached her and cheered her on. "She´s got a lot of perseverance," he says, adding, "She´s always trying new moves, always getting better."
The two still ride and race together, only now Brian is also her mechanic, prepping her bike for competition and making repairs between events. In seven years of pro racing, Gina´s experienced just two mechanical failures. "That´s almost unheard-of in this sport," she boasts on Brian´s behalf.
She also credits Brian and the rest of the posse with helping her chase her dream of getting back into racing. She was initially reluctant when they urged her to enter her first trials competition, where riders navigate high-stakes obstacle courses composed of boulders, cliffs, streams, and logs--all without touching a foot to the ground. She saw few other women paving the way for her: extreme mountain biking, especially trials, is overwhelmingly male dominated. Gina wasn´t sure she was up to the challenge, but with the guys assuring her she´d honed all the necessary skills during their group rides, Gina agreed to give it a shot. She tied for second place in the women´s division and surprised herself with what she could do. Soon she advanced to pro and started competing against the country´s top female trials bikers, winning national champion not once but three times.
That´s when her sponsor, Intense Cycles, suggested she try downhill mountain biking, and Gina faced uncertainty all over again. Sure, she´d danced her two wheels over plenty of intimidating features as a trials rider but not at high speeds. With downhilling, 40 miles per hour is merely the average. Speeding up meant staring down some fears.
"I was always a little afraid of downhilling, but it kind of excited me," she remembers. The equipment seemed unfamiliar and intimidating: with up to 8 inches of travel in both front and rear suspensions, downhill bikes look (and perform) more like motorcycles than bicycles. So Gina rode a cross-country rig in her first-ever downhill race, and even with the inadequate equipment she still managed to nab fifth place in the women´s division. After that Brian built her a titanium downhill bike, and with it she found she could cruise comfortably over all sorts of scary terrain. Her confidence grew, and soon she added four-cross (think downhill drag racing involving four bikers) to her bag of tricks.
Now she competes in all three events, placing as high as fifth in the women´s world championships--mountain biking´s biggest, most prestigious competitions. Gina´s goal for the upcoming season is a podium position in August at the 2006 Worlds in Rotorua, New Zealand, where once again she´ll face stiff competition from European riders who typically dominate the sport on an international level.
Despite her winning record, not everyone respects Gina´s accomplishments. Plenty of people assume she´s a fool to run the risks she does and that there´s little more to her sport than daredevil capers. "People can be quick to judge, to figure that I must be nuts," she says. She can see where they´re coming from because blind cliff drops and 30-foot trail gaps are scary--no two ways about it. "The sport demands respect," Gina observes. "It´s kind of a beast of its own. You have to be a little bit humbled by it, yet strongly so, or you get hurt. You can lose your life," she admits.
She also insists there´s more to extreme mountain biking than death-defying stunts. For one thing there´s the fitness level the sport requires. Mere seconds can make the difference between winning or not, so even downhillers have to pedal furiously for most of the race. Resting on the saddle is a luxury competitors can ill afford. Then there´s the understanding of physics necessary to effectively balance, steer and hop the bike over varied terrain. "You can´t be stupid and stay alive in this sport," she observes. Finally, and most important to Gina, there´s the paradox of adrenaline sports: because extreme mountain biking demands total focus, it has an oddly calming effect. Gina calls it her "meditation in action." "I´m completely ´in the zone´ when I do it," she explains. "It´s the one thing in life that sets me free."
Because biking has been such a positive force in Gina´s own life, she is supportive of her older son´s growing interest in the sport. Elijah started downhilling about a year and a half ago and has done well as a junior competitor. He was invited to participate on the Kona Junior Devo Team, but the family decided to pass on the opportunity so Elijah could focus on academics as it coincided with his starting high school. He still manages to do a fair amount of riding locally, and he sometimes travels with Gina to tougher, more distant bike courses that further challenge his skills.
Other racers not only inspire Elijah but also instruct him and offer mentoring and coaching in addition to just being great role models. Gina disputes the popular image of extreme bikers as rowdy, hell-raising adrenaline junkies—well, the adrenaline part may be true; but they´re dedicated athletes who summon a lot of belief in themselves to do what they do, and Gina feels that their example is a powerfully positive lesson for Elijah. According to him, Gina´s own example speaks the loudest. "She kicks butt," he boasts. "I don´t notice too many moms doing extreme sports like this. She´s getting older now and she´s still in top form; she still beats me down the mountain every time," he admits. "I think it´s really cool." And then there´s Brian, who has gone beyond mentoring to offer both boys dadlike love and guidance--only instead of heading outside for a game of catch, he´ll take Elijah mountain biking.
"It can be a little scary, knowing my son´s going to hit a 25-foot jump," Gina admits, grinning. "Sometimes I kinda have to look the other way." But just as it is for her, the possibility of Elijah getting hurt is just one part of biking´s total picture. Gina and Brian both stress the importance of wearing protective equipment, and they coach Elijah on technique, on what can go wrong and how to anticipate it. Still, riding has already cost him one broken arm. "Of course we don´t want him to get hurt, but one thing we both know is, if he does get hurt, he´s young. Kids bounce back," Gina states, a little wistfully. And somehow even broken bones seem like a reasonable price to pay for an activity that builds her son´s self-esteem. "It makes him feel good about himself," she concludes. "It builds personal confidence and strength that´s all his own."
For his part, Elijah says that biking is teaching him how to stick with things when they get tough. "No matter what, Mom always kept on trying," he recalls. "And she´s won a lot of races—a lot. I know if I keep on practicing and going hard, I can get really good. I just have to keep on going and not give up."
Other moms might prefer safer routes to accomplishment, and their view of Elijah and Gina´s sport ranges from total respect to critical judgment. "Oh, I occasionally hear stuff like, ´You´re not a kid anymore,´" Gina says. But when she was younger, she was being a mom. "So I just live what I feel and don´t focus on the Gregorian calendar. If I did that, I never would´ve started." Plus her example demonstrates values her kids need to believe in. It´s not so much the biking itself; it´s more the way she hopes to model how important it is to do what you love, no matter what. "That´s life´s one freedom," Gina insists. "As a single mom, the best thing I could do for Elijah is teach him self-reliance, self-trust. If you have that, there really isn´t much that can get in your way."
Gina´s proof positive of that. At 39 she´s one of the world´s top-ranked female extreme mountain bikers, particularly in trials. And even off-trail, her sassy fashion sense is an expression of self-assurance that also ranks as a kind of achievement. "I always looked respectable," Gina recalls, "but it took a while to realize I didn´t have to look like a guy." She hangs out with guys—mostly because there still aren´t huge numbers of gals willing to hurl themselves off cliffs—but when it comes to looks, Gina likes to remind herself she´s still a girl. Her long blond hair helps, but the high heels leave little doubt.
"People wonder why I wear these," Gina muses as she strides out of the bar on glossy black patent-leather platforms. She looks up at the stars, as if deciphering what they have in store for her this season. "I figure it´s good balance practice," she jokes. "If I can balance on 3-inch heels, trials riding seems easy."
