News just in, ladies and gents.
UK downhiller Manon Carpenter has announced her retirement from World Cup downhill.
Announced today in a press release by Radon Bikes, Manon will no longer race World Cup downhill.
The announcement says Manon made the decision after the World Cup at Lenzerheide and the UK National Champs and that she has been “struggling with her mind-set”.
The press release includes a quote from Manon which says:
“The decision for me to withdraw from racing has come about quickly, but the reasons have been there for a while. Over the races this year I’ve been finding it harder to face up to difficult situations – high consequence sections or changing conditions – and during National Champs weekend I came to the conclusion that I just didn’t want to take the risks involved with racing at 100% anymore.
Racing Downhill is gnarly and you have to have the confidence to commit to whatever is put in front of you, whereas I’ve become more aware of the consequences of crashing and, as much as I’ve tried to put this out of my head, it’s stopped me from enjoying racing as I would like to. I’ve had everything I needed to prepare myself as best I could for racing this year with a great bike, sponsors and support from Radon Factory DH Team.
Everyone has put their best efforts into helping me and I wanted to finish the season with Radon, as I know I made commitments to them, but quickly realised that World Cup racing isn’t something I should force myself into if my head isn’t in it.
Racing on the World Cup circuit has been an amazing and unexpected opportunity for me. After racing as a Junior years ago I set out to race in Elite for a year to see what I could do before starting Uni, but my first season showed promise and everything else went on hold. I wanted to race until I got as far as I could, or until I injured myself, so I’m happy to have made it this far relatively in one piece!
There have been some huge highlights and I feel like I’ve given as much as I had, now I’m looking forward to having time to enjoy riding at home and to see what else there is for me to do. I’m very grateful to everyone who has followed, supported and believed in me over the years of racing and to those who have been supportive of this decision so far.”
Everyone at Wideopen has loved watching Manon’s career unfold – and we’ve been stoked to ride with her, include her in our content and hang out with her at races. We’re sorry to see her go.
Good luck for the future Manon, hopefully we’ll see you at a few British races next year?
Manon Carpenter on the cover of Wideopen’s print mag back in 2012, by Jacob Gibbins.
