Asa Vermette vs An Average Rider How Much Faster is a DH Pro

Some people say experience is everything. It teaches you patience, gives you time to sharpen your skills, and makes you overall a better human being. Some even argue your peak aerobic fitness is reached at about 35 years old. Well, if we believe these theories, I should be at my prime and an absolute weapon at mountain biking. I am 33, relatively healthy, and I've been riding since I'm 3, giving me about 30 years of bike experience, meaning I've had 30 years to get good at mountain biking. Today we're going to test this theory because I will be racing against Asa Vermette, which is possibly the fastest 19-year-old on the planet. You think that's a true statement? I hope so. Asa is one of the most decorated young guns of the sport, with a Downhill Junior World Championship, multiple Red Bull Hardline and USA National Championships under his belt. He picked up a Red Bull helmet before he was 18 and is widely regarded as one of the future legends of the sport. Asa, so how do you approach a new track? Like let's say here in Medina, I don't think you've really ridden here before, you've only done the Hardline track. How do you get into a new track and how do you actually kind of like look at it and get faster and faster as the day goes on? I feel like I've been pretty good just through my riding career, just like going straight into a track I haven't really ridden. I don't know why, but just like going straight into something new, I've been pretty quick. I mean, it takes just a couple laps to get used to, and once you know like the quick lines, I followed Troy a couple of times. Yeah, do you think the trick to get faster is just to follow Troy into everything? No, I mean you gotta do it your own way for sure, but I mean just however you can get most comfortable on the track. I've just done it by like riding by myself really. If you had to design a track today, something that you'd be the fastest on or anyone else, what would it be? Probably something like turns and there's like fast off-camber sections into like really quick rock gardens, just where people are usually scared to go quick. For some reason, that's where I've usually been in time, so. Just in a different breed. Okay, so today we're going to race this Australian National Downhill Track. But I'm going to be cheating. Before we get racing, Asa is going to ride through a few of the tough lines from this national track and I will be following him in an attempt to steal his lines for the race. What a way to make a living! As Asa is floating over rocks effortlessly and blasting through dusty corners with no grips, popping into the next section with ease, carrying maximum speed, I painfully try to fight gravity and keep both wheels pointing down. This corner is deceptively off-camber and the entrance of the next section is a step, which requires a lot of commitment to pop into. Please excuse my underwear, that's all I had left after a week of filming hardline. In this section, Asa was three seconds faster than me, which makes him faster by a staggering 21%. In his second section, Asa goes in and gap into the rut. Doesn't look like much on video, but it's actually quite the pull. Rolling the rock is obviously slower and I seem to be missing the ability to carry speed and trap like the big dogs. My ego was a little bruised when I realised he put three seconds into me on a nine-second run. This section impresses me the most. Asa is able to go full tilt into a GR compression, hold it, then keep going with the fingers off the brake. I felt like I would fold like a lawn chair if I tried the Asa strategy, so I hit the brakes harder, but it makes for bigger compression due to the lack of speed. Honestly, at this point in the edit, I have lost the little hope I had to ever call myself a good bike rider. So I'll welcome the almost 30% slower speed on this section. Okay, so no comparison here, but I just wanted to show you how much crap I carry when I film episodes like this one. That might not be quite enough because the kid, it's fast even though I've been born longer than he's been riding, which is a little bit annoying, I'm not gonna lie. This will be good. See if we can catch him. Also, I'm riding a rental bike, which doesn't really help. Thank you. I don't know, it's giving me the direction here. 38, 39, 40. In the pocket. Zip up the pocket. All right, let's go. I don't know how long it's been, but I'm guessing something's been going by now, maybe. Oh, I'm f***ing that corner up already. Still don't see any dust. Okay, there's a low line here. I'm going, oh, I hit something. Sorry, Medina Bike Park. It's a bit of a rental bike. There's a few bomb holes here. I don't know which line he's going to take. Which you should see on the camera. Probably better lines than me, because he's been training on that and I'm kind of giving it all I got without trying to not eat absolute s***. It's quite dry here, actually. Unlike hard lines, I'm using all the lines he gave me, but I can't really hear them as well as he probably can. Okay, that's good. I still can't hear him. And we're nearing the bottom. It's starting to sound good to me. It's ripping off. Oh, and we got him. I think I can hear him already. Okay, thank you. That was sick. That was fun. Just at the end. That was good. I was just at the end. I was like, oh, you might not catch me. I just started hearing you. That was close. That was sick. Yeah, that was fun. Yeah, that was good. You push a little bit? A little bit, yeah. I kind of messed up a couple things with my first run. I was like, yeah, but it was good. Yeah, awesome. That was fun.