THE BUZZ INSPIRATION
Fresh from winning gold at the Worlds, Charlie Hatton tells us about growing up in the Forest of Dean, racing alongside Andreas Kolb, and why he’s on a liquid diet
mbr Congratulations Charlie! It’s nearly a week after winning the Worlds at Fort William, has it sunk in yet?
Charlie Hatton Yes, it’s definitely changed things a lot for me. It’s been a crazy, crazy few days. I finally got back yesterday, but it’s been amazing and I’m trying to let it soak in still, I guess.
mbr World champion is a long way from the Forest of Dean (when we first met you as a kid, sessioning the jumps on the GBU trail).
CH Yeah, I must have been six, seven, eight, something like that! I grew up in the Forest of Dean, riding with my brothers after school and the friends that lived in that village, and my uncle and cousins rode too. It was quite a big mountain bike family.
I also used to play other sports, I played rugby, cricket, football… but then at the weekends it was getting a bit hectic. So I’d be playing football on the Saturday, then I’d ride my bike and then I played rugby on the Sunday and it was getting a bit too much. I was like, right, I need to make a choice here and I love mountain biking.
mbr So glad you made that choice. Were you amazing on the bike straight away, did you win your first race?
CH No, definitely not, there were a few other guys I was racing against that would regularly beat me. I remember going into my first ever National race as a juvenile, I got second, which I thought was mint! But the guy who beat me did it by 16 seconds. I remember saying to my dad on the way home, I’m never going to beat that kid.
mbr There’s a lot of pressure to do well as a junior, but I guess you’ve proved that you don’t need to win at every level to make it to the top?
CH I think it varies massively in different people. I went down the generic path – from a really young age I raced as soon as I could, made my way up through the ranks and then now I guess I’m here.
Whereas my team-mate Andy [Kolb], he didn’t start riding bikes till he was 16 or 17, instead he was skiing and doing winter sports, then he started really focusing on the mountain biking. He was there at the World Cups as a privateer.
mbr Did having Andy win the World Cup at Leogang help you and the team at Fort William?
CH Yeah, 100%. Our team is awesome. The vibe and the atmosphere in our pits is great and quite different. We all meet up and go out for food, and we’re good friends outside of racing, which is brilliant. You travel around the world with some of your best friends and in that environment that’s where you can do well. Everyone really wants to be there and the Leogang win elevated everyone’s performance.
Me and Andy, we get on reall
