If you don’t know the name Caleb Holonko, you should, and you likely will soon. Caleb is one of the rising stars in the world of freeride, and he’s taken the North Shore by storm, building some incredible moves that are not only massive in scale but also clever, creative and beautiful to look at. And he rides them with heaps of style and incredible…

Unless you’ve met him at a race or listened to him on another podcast, you may not have heard of Mark Fitzsimmons, or Fitzy as he’s known to friends. He’s one of the unsung heroes of the mountain bike world. Fitzy is famous to a certain sort of person though: World Cup racers. He’s helped riders like Greg Minnaar, Aaron Gwin and Steve Peat go even …

For our first Podcast with Mike Ferrentino, he was home on the acreage where he lives, inland from the coast up the Carmel Valley. Mike lives in a barn filled with bikes and motorcycles, the latter in various stages of decomposition. He's a decent distance from civilization, and from the internet. Mike's connectivity relies on tethering to his phon…

Here’s part one of my conversation with Mike, where he talks about growing up barefoot in New Zealand, learning to fix motorcycles and bikes, moving to America, racing bikes and motos, working in shops, beginning to write about mountain biking, and getting his start at Bike Magazine.

Our guest for the latest NSMB Podcast and the first of our Coming of Age series is Kasper Woolley, a young and fast EWS athlete now racing for the Yeti/OneUp Pro EWS team who hails from Squamish, B.C. Kasper first caught the eye of brands as a young junior, after his stage results at a local race were faster than the pro men. Since then, Kasper has…

Our guest for the latest NSMB Podcast is Ben Arnott, a World Cup downhill mechanic, engineer, and small business owner. Ben spent several years working as the head mechanic for Trek World Racing and the YT Mob and the stories from his time following the circus provide a fascinating look into the World Cup. For six of his years with the teams, Ben w…

Chris Porter joins A.J. Barlas for another episode of the NSMB Podcast and once again, it's a brain-tickler. Our first conversation shared stories of Chris's background, giving a better understanding of the man behind the ideas having a resounding impact on the sport. With Chris’s blessing, part two has been labelled Big Mouth Strikes Again. He see…

Mountain bikes have evolved tremendously in the last five years but before then, media and marketing had already nudged the term longer, lower, slacker beyond the edge of being a cliché. The alarmingly incremental progress made to bike shapes is at least partly to blame for the term being worn thin. During this time one person, in particular, estab…

But none of those lessons could prepare her for the latest challenge faced at the end of 2020. After a messed-up year, thanks mostly to the world turning on its head, Katy found herself without support to continue her career as a professional E.W.S. athlete. The lessons learned during her prior low were no match for the uncertainty and lack of dire…

What actions will inspire someone to make a better life for themselves? Those of our childhood heroes, our friends and parents, or a complete stranger can have a lasting impact but how about a video game? Growing up, Kyle Warner dealt with many daily challenges. As a teenager, he was looking after his clinically depressed mother, they lost their ho…

For every rider frothing about their new bike with a steeper seat tube angle, there are plenty who feel things are going too far. Claims of poor power and efficiency accompany complaints of sore hands, knees and backside but what if the seat angle alone isn’t the cause? With many happy to see steeper seat tube angles on modern mountain bikes, the c…

For flat pedal riders after the most grip possible, FiveTen has really been the only option. Year after year, new shoe releases have left us to question, why is it so hard for others to achieve similar grip? With the release of their new 2FO DH shoes and now the Rime, A.J. Barlas wanted to know more about Specialized’s shoe development process. Did…

For many of us, riding bikes begins as a childhood activity, belting around the local neighbourhood, learning to wheelie and launching off gutters. But in some parts of the world, it goes beyond an after school activity. Neighbourhoods riddled with kids outdoing each other on the bike can build into pushing for national titles. These hotbeds of tal…

Bryson Martin has been involved in the industry for longer than most of you would imagine. From racing in the 80s to starting his own suspension manufacturing company, DVO, he’s seen the evolution of our sport from its early beginnings. We're excited to present the first NSMB Podcast ever recorded, we just had a little delay in publishing it. AJ an…

Over the last 20 years, we’ve watched Geoff Gulevich evolve and grow from a fresh-faced 13-year-old grom into one of the most recognized freeriders in our sport. His career started about the same time that riding on the North Shore achieved worldwide renown and the two have grown together. From cedar skinnies up in the sky to the today's modern, fl…

Autor: NSMB / North Shore Mountain Biking

On a short trip to New Zealand in 2019, I thought there might be a chance to record a podcast with Sven and Anka Martin. When I arrived in Nelson, I learned that my two podcast targets had planned and were running the Santa Cruz media event that had brought me to their adopted homeland. Sven is a former pro skateboarder and World Cup downhiller who…

In the second episode of the NSMB Podcast, A.J. Barlas chats with Nico Vink about his childhood and how growing up in Belgium influenced his riding today. Nico opens up about the struggles he's faced as a result of pursuing his passion – chancing it on more than one occasion to get to an event with only enough money to fuel his car to get there. Ho…

This week, in the first ever episode of the NSMB Podcast, Cam McRae talks to Sterling Lorence about how he got his start as a rider and photographer and how he went from being a mountain biker with a desire to document the trails and riders on the North Shore into one of the most respected photographers in mountain biking. Topics discussed: Sterlin…