Myles and Willow Koerber were married in 2011.  Willow finished 3rd in Mont Sainte Anne, Quebec at the 2010 Worlds, and she will be racing for Team Trek in 2012 after the arrival of their daughter.  Myles is Trek’s Rider Liason, assisting team riders with their training, strategy and racing at the World Cups and Worlds.

Ian Hylands 2010

]]> http://www.mylesrockwell.com/team-rockwell/feed/ 0 http://www.mylesrockwell.com/its-a-girl/ http://www.mylesrockwell.com/its-a-girl/#comments Sun, 01 Jan 2012 02:59:15 +0000 admin http://www.mylesrockwell.com/?p=49

Raven Starr Rockwell

born 12/31/11 4:04pm, 7 lbs 3 oz.

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By Marcus Farley
BikeRadar.com

Myles Rockwell was one of the fastest and most flowing downhill racers of his day. He earned his place in mountain bike folklore by winning arguably the most talked about downhill race ever, the 1993 Reebok Eliminator. There, his titanic battle with Jason McRoy saw him pip the British rider by only three-tenths of a second to win the dual battle in front of a huge TV audience.

That same year he also won bronze in the UCI Downhill World Championships, an event which he eventually won in 2000 as the first person to stop Nico Vouilloz’s remarkable winning streak. But, by 2002 he had taken the decision to retire from competition, aged just 30. Since then, he’s more or less fallen off the radar, only surfacing once to take part in and win the 2006 Red Bull Downhill road race.

The breaking news is that he’s decided to come back out of retirement. He’s training hard to compete in a series of all-mountain and super enduro events, as well as offering his services as a coach. Marcus Farley talked to him about his recent return, his past glories and how he hopes to impart his will to win to the next generation of racers.

Racing again and coaching

Myles says his will to race has returned due, in part, to getting divorced. This has afforded him the time to sit and think about what he needs to do next in life to help support his five-year-old son. What’s more, his son has started taking interest in his dad’s famous past and Myles wants to show him that he’s still got it.

In fact, his son has contributed to helping him get back up to racing fitness, as he explains: “I drop my son off at the bottom of the ski slope by the chairlift for his regular skiing lessons. With time to kill, I started to ride out on my own on the mountain roads. It’s not only got me super-fit, but the time alone, up on remote mountain passes, has helped me get over the emotional road blocks that I needed to unblock in order to race again.”

Myles has restarted his website, www.mylesrockwell.net, and plans to race in some all-mountain and super-enduro events this year, including the Mega Avalanche and the Downieville Classic. He has yet to try to secure a sponsored ride, but is optimistic that he’ll manage to attract interest through his sheer will to win.

He’s also found a new lease of life as a coach. A skilled motocross (MX) rider as well as mountain biker, he’s teaching two local up-and-coming MX kids, as well as planning a series of mountain bike training days.

Myles says that although he intends to help his pupils to get physically and technically better, he believes it’s the mental will to win that is necessary to get on the podium. “It’s the will and hunger to succeed,” he says. “Without that, the skills and ability make you only as good as the next guy.” As an example, he mentions Steve Peat, who he respects greatly as a racer, “because he’s still out there to win, in every race he enters”.

The origins of his style

Myles was one of the most exciting racers to watch in the history of downhill. He has a distinctive style, sliding the back end of his bike around and through corners in a continuous flowing movement, leg outstretched where necessary for stability. It seems effortless, intuitive and relaxed, yet blisteringly fast.

Myles attributes this style to honing his skills where he grew up, in Marin County, California. Born in 1972, by 1984 the 12-year-old Myles was out on the trails learning his craft on his BMX.

He says: “This sliding style was the quickest way to descend the local loose gravel fireroads and dirt tracks. I’d learnt it from watching and following in the wheeltracks of the original Klunkerz/Repack riders, who slid their way sideways down the mountains.”

By 1990, aged 18, he saw some downhill videos and realised he was “capable of smoking the best of them, even the reigning king of the downhill scene, Greg Herbold”.

The will to win

But it wasn’t just Myles’s style that gave him this belief, it was his will to win. He describes this as like “watching from above, bearing witness to the achievement”, and adds: “I wanted to be impressed by myself, not just win the race.”

Fortunately for Myles, someone else also saw his potential – mountain bike legend and (at that time) Yeti Cycles owner John Parker hired him as a team rider, and the rest, as they say, is history.

True to his belief, Myles won the infamous Reebok Eliminator in 1993 as well as coming third in the UCI World Championships. The Reebok Eliminator is a race that is still talked about today, and Myles is modest in his description of the win. “I had the utmost respect and reverence for Jason McRoy and his dad, Jim. Jason was a truly phenomenal racer with an equal will to win, and what he and his dad achieved, racing against us big teams, was just awesome.”

Myles adds that: “It was a close run race. Jason was much better than me on the run. His style suited the course more than my sliding style and it was literally almost at the last corner that I managed to get past him. It stands as my greatest racing achievement.”

By 2000, aboard a Giant downhill sled, he finally realised his dream and became world champion at Sierra Nevada in Spain. “Winning the World’s was the best day as a competitor ever,” he says. “I always knew I was capable of it, but, until that day, I hadn’t realised how to get it out of me.” Being close to the end of his career was, he feels, a contributory factor, as it allowed him “the freedom to enjoy it and to do it my way – the fun way, careless and badass, with no stress!”

So, just what does it take to become world champion? Myles describes it thus: “Let the auto pilot click on and let the red light flash, that is the only way to describe it. Grit your teeth and pin it , yah!” This determination also saw him win the 2000 X Games snow downhill race.

The decision to retire

In 2002, at only 30 years old, Myles decided to stop racing. Unlike many competitors, Myles didn’t find it a hard decision. He explains: “I was spent mentally and physically. The invincibility of my youth had been slipping for a couple of years, and I was finding it harder and harder to carry on through a long list of injuries.” These included two broken wrists, two broken legs (from a motocross crash), two broken kneecaps and a broken shoulder.

“The first injury was the worst, psychologically speaking,” he says. “On race day I could no longer disengage my mind and as I had a mental sore spot, not just a physical one, I couldn’t help but question my mortality. As the injuries stacked up, I began thinking that I wanted to end it my way, not be forced into retiring through injury or worse.”

In addition, he says that “as my contemporaries were being replaced by the new, younger breed, I grew bored of the long travel and time away from home without my friends on the circuit”. In short, he felt “that the passion for racing had gone”.

The lowest point

Having retired from racing, Myles felt at a loss as to what to do next. Bike racing had been his job since he was 18. He’d made a good income from it, but his commitment to racing had been total and he had no backup plan. Unlike many of his peers, he had no interest in working in the bike industry.

But he isn’t resentful. In fact, he enjoyed spending a year lazing around. But then his wife became pregnant and he had a young son and wife to support. After a spell in motorcycle maintenance, he started working as a carpenter, which he continues to this day.

Growing up in San Francisco’s Bay Area, Myles, like many of the children of the hippie generation, liked smoking marijuana. In 2004, as a money saving exercise, he “decided to have a go at cultivating a private stash in a spare bedroom at home”. Unfortunately, the police didn’t see it as a hobby and he spent 30 nights in jail and had to attend a drug rehabilitation programme.

He describes it as his “lowest point”, and says: “I was working 60-hour weeks doing hard graft as a carpenter, struggling to raise my child, and I just wanted to save some money. But the jail time, especially being treated like a criminal, made me re-assess my life.”

The Red Bull Road Race

In 2006, Myles came out of retirement to race in the Red Bull Downhill road race. The organisers wanted the fastest road and mountain bike riders in the world to go against the clock, and Myles found himself taking a phone call from Giant’s Steve Beohmke, who offered him a plane ticket from Colorado to compete. It was a temptation too hard to resist, as not only was the prize money good, but the race was to be held on the twisty Californian mountain roads where Myles grew up.

Myles says: “I went there with the sole intention of winning. I wanted to prove that I could still smoke the best of them, rather than be in the news for being an ex-pot smoker!” Although his mindset was temporarily back in the zone, he is the first to admit his training for the race was pretty laidback, saying: “I did a few spin classes in the gym on top of my usual bike and motocross riding.”

In a bizarre twist of fate, he competed as an underdog privateer on his own bike, as Jason McRoy had done all those years ago. As he stood in the start gate, his “sheer will to win came back” to him, as if he had never retired.

He went on to beat the world’s best in the individual time trial, including road rider David McCook and mountain bike supremos Brian Lopes and Eric Carter, then went on to beat Carter, John Wike and Todd Tanner in the 4-UP Elimination. After wrapping up the wins, he happily slipped back into obscurity. That is, until now.

2009 diary

Myles expects to be racing at the following events, where he’ll also be running coaching sessions:

• The Sea Otter Classic – April 16th-19th.
• Angel Fire – May 23rd-25th.
• The Ashland, Oregon, Super G – June 13th-14th.
• The Downieville Classic – July 11th-12th
• Crankworx – August 6th -16th.

He’ll also be running the Myles Rockwell Mountain Bike Training Camp in his home town of Durango on 4-8 June.

For sponsorship and coaching, email myles@mylesrockwell.com.

Resting in the Start Gate

Myles lies on his bed, lounging like a leopard after lunch. If he had a tail it would twitch. Beneath his black Troy Lee sweats, his broken legs are mending by the minute. What’s coming next are Myles’ own words about the wreck from his personal journal, written before he could walk.

Goosebumps

“My day began in Hollister Hills, California -with my bro Chris, local moto honch. The smell of racing gas was giving me goosebumps as I warmed my bike, ready to hit the fresh loam left by the November rain. We covered the whole park by midday, assaulting every single track and technical hillside notch. We took a break, undressed, and went to town for a bite.

We were ready to call it a day-and I convinced myself to suit up and go for one more ride. We were ripping everything in sight…avoiding rangers because I had no spark arrester. Being banditos, we stayed on the outskirts of the park… practicing the downhills in neutral with the engine off. We ended up on a wide open fire road.

I compression-started my bike and I was off down the road…I’m in third…fourth…fifth…wide open. Wide smile. I let off and clicked down to fourth. My 250 had pulled away from Chris. I looked back to catch a glimpse of where he was, my ego soaring.

Sheer Hell

I began to enter a turn. Not really worried, I’m off the gas, coasting into the corner.. The turn gets tighter and tighter. I was drifting to the right as the road was bending to the left.

I was on the outside edge when I saw the tree, a small, scrawny scrub oak. My heels were resting lazily on the pegs-the back brake out of reach. When in doubt, gas it, and I did- right into the trunk with my forks. Just before impact, I bail. As I jump from the bike-Bang. My right side and leg hit the tree, snapping the femur.

My left boot sheered the clutch lever bolt right off as my leg caught the handlebars, hyper-extending my leg to the point of mass destruction. I ragdolled down the hill to a stop.

Chris immediately came to my aid. “Are you OK?” In that moment my brain drew a blank because I could not move my legs. I knew instantly my legs were badly broken. “I need you to go back for help.”

Soon after I went into a semi-mushroom like trip…Technicolor fall leaves crunching underneath. Waiting. Gripping an exposed root, listening to the distancing sound of Chris’ bike, knowing that I was soon going to face the reality of serious injuries. People trickled to the scene. Finally the rangers arrived. Ranger Mike immediately began cutting off my sweet new boots. Anything, just don’t move my legs.

Biting the Bullet

I hear the chopper approaching. For a moment I was almost happy. Once I was on the backboard I could relax. The medics asked me if I wanted something for the pain. Needless to say, I accepted. With pleasure.

Once airborne, my mushroom-like trip turned into a morphine cloud. I didn’t want to face the facts of being injured. I remember the instant we left the ground, I made a conscious decision that if the heli was going to crash it would be totally OK if I died.

We arrived at San Jose Medical Center. Wheeled in and diagnosed. Nightmare became reality. I was soo scared to let the doctor operate. Was this guy going to be able to put me back together? Could I hold out for an opinion from specialists? Fear and sadness mixed with my drug-induced state made it hard to make the decision to go ahead. I spoke to my mom on the phone and started to cry. It was urgent to get underway. My leg was the size of a balloon.

After answering a slew of questions, the anesthesiologist administered a dose that could have killed a horse. Lights out. Complete trust and faith were all I had.

Ice is Nice

Woke up in this dark hallway moving smooth and effortlessly along…the wall paneling zooming past me like blasting through some Babylonian, florescent tubing. Beeps and clicks and the drone of a PA system. I hear my father’s voice and feel the comfort of a loving touch. “You’re OK, you’re through with surgery”…11 hours worth. Hearing the words were almost insignificant to my mounting thirst and the pressure in my right butt cheek. My tongue glued to the roof of my mouth…all I can think of is water. My mother spoon fed me ice chips. It was relaxing and pure relief to my Sahara thirst. 4 AM. I am recovering.

After being in the hospital for nearly a week the real world almost doesn’t exist. Sitting there wacked on morphine gives you a fake sense of comfort. The day I was released, although I couldn’t wait to get out, I felt a frightening responsibility.

I now had to look after myself and protect the injuries from my own lack of ability. I chose to stop taking painkillers, any meds. The drugs are so bad, they’re insidious, giving you a false sense of security. I’ve learned that facing the brutality of being hurt, you can have a much better state of mind if you are clean. The brain can function.

Home is Where the Heart is

Arriving home I saw my family and friends really being there for me. My buddies faces are readable, sort of apprehensive, supportive, but truly bummed out. No one can be sure how I will handle being out of commission.

Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide

Being transformed from athlete and exercise freak to a wheelchair-dependent guy with two broken legs left me with nothing except my mind to entertain my thoughts and upward energy.

Until this point in my life, the activities that are truly fulfilling involve great risk. The sports I love are dangerous-commanding respect from participants and fans. The fascination is going higher, farther, faster, more intense. Risk is the danger one faces every time out.

I was angry at myself for putting my body at risk and losing the roll of the dice. Letting go of the resentment toward myself is a big step in recovery-accepting the loss and the responsibility and trying to let go of what I could have, should have, or didn’t do.

An accident like mine can be looked at as an accident or as a sign, possibly a signal to wake up to something. No one wants to admit that they self-destructed, but there is a certain sense of relief when you get to a place of perspective— where the clarity of life streams into your existence.”

I grew up in San Francisco. The hippies were frolicking all around town with peace love and dope. My little head squirted out early in the morning on August 19 in 72…that makes me pretty ancient by today’s standards. Believe me, I know the old guy is on his way. This little hippie kid named Myles wore tie-died undies and went to a fun little hippie school called Synergy. We learned about real things and practiced free speech at city hall chanting and calling for peace and love, free of nuclear war. The lessons were valuable.

There were points in my child hood of severe rebellion and freedom seeking from my little monster inside. I turned the energy into positivity and started to break dance at fisherman’s wharf and at pier 39 in the heart of the performers streets. They made it clear that we sucked and every time we left dreaming about being able to break and pop like the big boys. Yeah that was funny as a…

Yeah so any way I started to bike and skate daily, I always dreamed about being a rad skater or a black belt being able to show off and look cool seemed attractive. I was a decent skater by those old standards and my bmx skills were only a little bit better I was pretty sucky any way.

I never liked team sports because I hated to lose. My father always wanted me to play sports and was supportive about my biking. My mom always thought that I was the bomb and could do any thing so the love was there.

The first time I competed and enjoyed it, I was sixteen and my mountain bike buddy talked me into doing this cross-country race at Sears Point in Sonoma CA. I sucked and dropped out but I still loved it because I got to roost people in all the downhill sections. I was strictly into going downhill when it came to the bike. I always dreamed of being a motorcycle racer but had no support from dad about motocross. I always loved my parents to the max even through the hard times.

When I started racing pro I have to admit that I expected to make it and to excel. This determination proved to be an asset when it comes to overcoming the hard times. The real deal is I love being a pro racer and would not trade my experience for anything.