Being Cam McCaul’s younger brother wasn’t always easy for Tyler McCaul, “I used to get heckled by kids daily saying that the only reason I had sponsors was because I had a 'famous' brother.” But it’s been a long time since Tyler was in his older brother’s shadow – while Cam helped him to get his foot in the door with a lot of companies, it's been Tyler's own hard work and passion that has made his career what it is today.





Living next to mountain bike trails in Santa Cruz growing up, Tyler and Cam left a heap of broken bikes behind as they pursued their innate passion for riding. Some were BMX bikes their dad picked up at garage sales, others were ‘mountain bikes’ from Toys ‘R’ Us – “it seemed like every time we went off pavement the things would snap in half.” It wasn’t long before they realized that they needed 'legit' bikes that didn’t break in order to do what they were after. The boys sold mistletoe at Christmas and pillaged the bushes of a nearby golf course for used balls they could profit from. Every penny they earned went towards buying 'real’ bikes.’ – “to be fair, I'm pretty sure my parents helped us out with part of the purchase because you can only make so much money selling mistletoe and golf balls.” At 9 years old and no taller than Gary Coleman, Tyler’s first bike was a Specialized FSR Elite with 26" wheels and 6" of travel front and rear. He could barely reach the pedals, but didn't care. That bike was the start of something big for Tyler but in the moment, he and Cam were just happy that they could finally go into the woods without their bikes snapping in half.




From an early age it was clear that Tyler and Cam had different interests on bikes, at local races all Tyler cared about was going fast while Cam was busy doing heelclickers to get cheers from the crowd. With only three-and-a-half years between them, Tyler worked hard to differentiate himself from his brother, which lead to downhill racing. “I liked it because when I was at races I was just another kid having fun racing his bike, not being compared to my brother and whatever tricks he could do at the time. I was my own rider, and that's all I wanted to be.” Tyler wasn’t interested in doing tricks back then, but there was also a dwindling amount of downhill trails to ride in Santa Cruz and he found himself hanging out at the Post Office Jumps more and more. Eventually he found himself loosening up, realizing that tricks were sweet and getting sidetracked for a couple years. In 2007 when Tyler turned 18 he realized it was his last year eligible year as a junior and he set his sights back to racing. He trained, raced, and traveled as much as he could in order to qualify for the US Junior World’s Team. “I got to race World Champs in Fort William, Scotland and that is still to this day the coolest experience I've ever had.”



Tyler was looking forward to continuing racing DH in the elite class the following year, but with few trails left to train on in Santa Cruz, he inevitably ended up back at the jumps more often than not. When, in 2008, Specialized sent him to Schladming, Austria for a World Cup, the lack of time on his downhill bike was evident and his results weren’t great. Schladming became his final kick at the DH can and Tyler started riding contests and making a name for himself on the comp circuit immediately following it. By the next year, GT signed him as a ‘freerider’ and his focus was officially, even on paper, changed. Racing will always be in Tyler’s heart – he still misses it, but with the continual loss of his local downhill trails the change was inevitable. Luckily Tyler’s flexibility in biking disciplines and talent across the board has allowed him to continue his professional riding pursuits. “Every type of riding has its own appeal to me and every time I switch bikes it's like hitting the refresh button and doing a new sport.” Drawn to mountain biking for its diversity, the rest of the world has had a hard time pigeon-holing Tyler into one discipline because as he puts it, “I like it all.”



His sibling relationship with Cam changed along with his career focus, “once I got more into doing tricks and racing less, it was definitely an asset having Cam to help me learn tricks.” Now Tyler learns tricks on his own, but he still turns to his older brother for the occasional help – “it’s come full circle and I think we both help each other out nowadays.” An example of this change in sibling relations came in 2010, when at the age of 20, Tyler became the first person in the world to land a triple tailwhip on a mountain bike. Determination is a defining theme in Tyler’s career and he spent every day for months “eating shit” while trying to learn the trick - tailwhips were his favourite trick long before he could do them. Through his commitment he progressed as far as double whips and started thinking about triples, but he had never seen one done. At the time Cam was preparing to do the Nitro Circus tour. The event had a practice ramp set up in San Diego and, knowing that Tyler wanted to try a triple tailwhip, Cam invited him down to ride during a practice day. Changing his set up to make his bike as light as possible, Tyler hit the road, focused solely on the jump for the whole drive. He didn't even consider what it would mean to his career if he succeeded - it was just a trick he wanted to do. And even though he missed the pedals, he says it felt good to accomplish it.




With achieving only top ten results during the 2014 contest season, Tyler felt that he wasn’t living up to his full potential. He began to really focus all his energy on the upcoming season. He trained his "ass off" learning new tricks and filling holes in his runs where he was losing points. Unfortunately at the first competition of that year, the Colorado Freeride Fest, Tyler broke his leg. Although he was more prepared than ever, he just wasn't feeling it. Tyler explained that he found himself taking it too seriously, “I wasn’t having fun.” Following some bad crashes in practice, he had a great finals run – until he crashed on the last jump. He describes it as a “mellow crash,” but when he stood up he immediately realized that his leg was broken. After working so hard towards his goals, it was an all-time low for Tyler - “I had really high hopes for the season and just like that it was over.”



Through his recovery, Tyler realized that he had lost what he loved most about riding by overtraining, “I wasn’t riding downhill, I wasn’t riding trail bikes, I wasn’t hanging out with my friends, I was just training so much that it took all the fun out of it for me.” Tyler’s mentor Kirt Voreis has always provided a certain amount of influence on Tyler’s riding career; he even gave him his first hardtail when Tyler was a little kid. “Kirt has never taken riding too seriously to the point where it consumes his life and he’s not having fun anymore and I think that’s pretty damn important.” This was a lesson that resonated with Tyler after his Colorado Freeride Fest experience – and he's back to having fun now. It doesn't mean that Tyler isn't taking competition seriously, he's just found a balance so that it doesn't consume him.


Tyler took his new perspective into the 2015 season and came to a big realization when, after riding at Crankworx in New Zealand, he realized that slopestyle wasn't in his heart anymore. It was both a wake-up call and a relief for him to realize that slopestyle wasn't the answer anymore - at least not for right now. The rest of the season he devoted to learning new tricks, video projects, and just enjoying riding his bike again. His projects included a short film with Clay Porter to release his new signature product with Deity. The custom designed collaboration between Tyler and Eric Davies, Deity Co-Founder, was the result of Tyler being unable to find a pedal that really suited him. Through an organic process with many discussions about key features, possibilities, limitations, and overall goals, Eric sat down and started designing it. “Many companies do signature products by just throwing a rider signature on an existing part, changing up the colour, and making a new graphic,” says Eric. “We do not release anything unless it is perfect and exactly what the rider wants his/her name on – a true signature product.” And so the TMAC was born – it’s truly concave, large, has a load distribution system to prevent bearing blowout from side impacts, multiple sealed bearing and DU bushing, and has “badass” detailing. “I’m so excited for people to get their hands on this,” says Tyler. His sponsors have been receptive to the change in his focus, especially since he is producing more content now that he's back to having fun!





Tyler came up against disappointment and injury again at the end of 2015 when he suffered a bad concussion and pulmonary contusion (bleeding lungs) at Rampage. Taking fifth place two years in a row and then sitting out 2014 due to injury, was a huge source of motivation for Tyler going into the event. “Basically the concept of Rampage is that you dig as hard as you've possibly dug in your entire life from sunrise to sunset for a week straight, and then you ride the heaviest line of your life, and try to look good going do it.” Tyler admits that he bit off more than he could chew this year when he and his team built one of the most anticipated lines of the event.


With an extremely dedicated team, including his long time friend, Alex Reveles, they dug right up to qualifying. Although Alex kept telling Tyler to take a break, motivated by potential for what they were creating, Tyler couldn’t pull himself away. After qualifying third without tricking the line, he intended to rest the following day, but organizers announced a change in schedule when a potential weather front forced them to move finals up a day. So instead of taking a break Tyler went back to work. More exhausted than ever he continued to dig on sections that they wanted to improve on and that night he had one big thing left to guinea pig. "It was a big triple after the biggest feature on my line. I had to slow down in qualies and hit a little step down after the big one, and I didn't want to do that. I wanted to go fast all the way down. We finished the jump right at dusk, finals were the next day, and it was my only chance to hit it. I took a couple run-ins and wasn't feeling it. It was just a weird one. Long gap, stepdown, slight hip, with a short landing. If I came up short I knew I'd get bucked to flat, but if I over-jumped it I would've exploded and tumbled off the next cliff band, which is what I was the most scared of. Alex told me not to do it because we both had a bad feeling about it, but it was getting dark and I was running out of time, so I went for it anyways and came up a couple feet short. I should've been able to muscle through it but I was just so tired that I think I gave up. I got catapulted over to the flat bottom straight to my dome. It was just a classic case of being rushed and exhausted, and only caring about finals so much that I got myself into a situation I wasn't ready for. I never rush into anything, especially when it comes to guinea pigging big jumps, but I was so focused on just making my line the best it could possibly be for finals the next day that I let my guard down, and I got thumped for it.”




Tyler is happy to report that he is back to feeling like himself again,“concussions are scary, and they're definitely my least favourite thing that I have to deal with in this sport. They change you, and the only people who see it are the ones closest to you.” Even though he had some bad luck last year, he is already excitedly anticipating this year’s competition.“Rampage has always been something different for me in the sense that even though it's terrifying, an insane amount of work, and an overall mind-f*ck all together, it's still one of the things I most look forward to throughout the year.”




You can look for Tyler competing at all three Crankworx stops this year in the Speed and Style and Whip-Off events – he might dabble in a couple DH and Slalom races as well. Between competitions Tyler will be working on two different projects with Freeride Entertainment this year - “anytime Freeride does something, they do it 100% and I'm grateful to be a part of both of these projects.” And the rest of his schedule will be filled with video and photo shoots as they come up.




Over the last decade, Tyler has been fortunate in experiencing much that he never thought would happen. With support from GT, Fox Head, Deity, Shimano, Marzocchi, Maxxis, Gamut, DZR, OK4WD, and Aptos St. BBQ, – he has been able to make the most of the opportunities he's sought out. "These are companies that make it possible for me to do what I love and I couldn’t be more grateful for every single one of them.” Tyler plans on riding bikes for as long as he can and won’t be slowing down anytime soon. “I'm not rich by any means, but I get to ride my bike for a living and travel the globe with my best friends. I have a rad family, an awesome girlfriend, a sweet truck, and I live in Santa Cruz. Hard to ask for much more than that!”

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MENTIONS: @GTBicycles / @Fox-Head-Inc / @deityusa / @shimano / @Maxxis

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