Here's a new teaser for a new series that sees expert pundit, Rob Warner, spend a short amount of time with Red Bull Hardline champ, Bernard Kerr. The pair briefly discusses Bernard's very different preparation that led to his two best race results of 2016.
Seems like a cool "kid". I know he's not a kid but from my perspective as a 50 something he's a kid. Really seems to have it together. What startles me is that the HQ for a WCDH team of a somewhat major bike brand is in a kitchen in Surrey. Obviously the house isn't even big enough to have a garage! Why the hell can't this sport become just a little more mainstream? Bernard is a person who's got athletic skills, and managerial skills, a good balance of maturity and a sense of fun. This is a person that deserves to get paid well enough to get out of his Mom's kitchen! I'm sorry but there aren't too many mainstream sport millionaires that can even hold a candle to the athletic ability and sheer toughness of even your average DH competitor let alone, the winner of Hardline! Let me see even one NFL player take a hit like Rogatkin did in the 2015 Rampage, get up "shake it off" and then do a back flip over an 80' canyon gap! But sadly the mainstream guys are the ones with all the accolades and glory, and our athletes work out of their kitchens! Makes me mad.
This just in.
Pro sports pay the biggest names the most money and the rest get bits and pieces and free gear. If you can't get to the very pinnacle in pro action sports to get big checks, then you are gonna move on professionally or you have rich parents.
I think he's just living life. He just spent the whole winter in New Zealand riding bikes and moto, as did past year. The rest of the time he's just travelling/racing so I guess it's fine the barely two months he stays at home do it in mom's kitchen.
It's about the market. People want to watch basketball and american football and soccer. I agree with you, but it's just not how the market works. It's up to us to grow our sport, but at the same time, I think we are doing ok. You make a run of it if you want to be one of the best, and then you take a "real" career afterwards, possibly greatly enabled by your success on the bike. Honestly it would be unfortunate if it became too "mainstream", because accessibility could go down; if the competition is super tight, it becomes a lot harder for some kid from Surrey or Ohio or Alberta to train his or her butt off and compete with the best. So, I think we have a nice mix of grassroots and actual pro level sport. Couldn't hurt to have a bit more money flowing through, though, of course.
completely agree. I am not sure about comparing the athletic skill of being a pro footballer/other mainstream athlete to a mountain biker, however I do think they have an insane amount of skill are not paid even a small fraction of what they should be for what they do. Hopefully as the sport grows we will see more cash in the industry that will fix this.
So Rob and a film crew went all the way to see Bernie, presumably spent all day with him (shots from kitchen in daytime and night time at the jumps) and came away with less than two minutes of footage? Did you run out of film? Ridiculous.
That's pretty weak when there's so much quality riding from this bloke, and you got excited by 2 seconds of film of a guy on a podium who literally got his ass whipped by Kerr.
Last year, there was one episode with Loic Bruni.
www.redbull.tv/video/AP-1ME1Z9JB12111/rob-meets-loic-bruni?playlist=AP-1ME1Z9JB12111
Fan boy much??