Chris Panozzo - preparing to take on the world
All photos by Damian Breach
All photos by Damian Breach
After claiming the first Gravity Enduro National Title that MTBA put on offer in 2015, Chris Panozzo is now set for a return to international racing. He’s been at home in Albury, training, preparing, planning, testing – all with a strong focus on performance at the EWS (Enduro World Series) this year.
We caught up with Chris soon after the first round of the 2016 National Series in Bright, where he had finished 3rd. I was curious to find out how the scene was developing in Australia. While #enduro is a pretty big buzz – are riders actually racing – which is at the heart of the discipline – or just labelling their riding style? Panozzo was quick to point out that it is clearly still in a growth phase, but there was a real core of riders who were at almost every event.
“There is a core group, guys like Ben Cory who are mega quick on all types of terrain, plus you will have top downhillers coming across and doing different events. It’s a great competitive environment that helps you develop your riding across the board”
Given the age of the racing discipline in Australia, Panozzo believes that the sport will evolve – along with the riders. He says that he already sees plenty of older riders there who like the fitness involved, and the chance to really push their skills.
“You need a year or two of decent fitness to be at the pointy end of the races. It also takes time to learn how to approach stage racing, it’s a fair bit different to all out downhill and it requires a bit of time to understand how to develop your skills and fitness to match.”
Panozzo’s Victorian Base
Since the Gravity Enduro Champs in Cairns, Panozzo has done a lot of training over summer. First with a lot of long days on the road bike, plus some criteriums, but also riding his mountain bike a lot more recently. The National Round in Bright was his first race of the year.
Panozzo is counting down the days until he leaves for Chile, for the first round of the EWS (Enduro World Series), backing up with the Argentinian round the following weekend.
Living in Albury, Panozzo has ready access to growing meccas for enduro racing in Australia: Mt Beauty, Falls Creek, Bright… he’s been using the terrain on offer to test out what kit he’s taking over to South America. We’ve already taken a look at some of the setup on his Trek Remedy, but I was interested to see what exactly Chris was playing with.
“I’m mainly testing two frame options, switching between a Remedy with an alloy chainstay and a carbon one. It’s important to validate how the ride difference feels with some real numbers against the clock.”
With so much climbing in the liaison stages in Chile, there’s a reported 3800m of it over 2 days, the need to keep the bike efficient is high. Chris is also playing with fork travel, and a little in the cockpit setup.
“I’ve been working down from 800mm handlebars, which are great for high speed stability, all the way down to 740mm. I’m currently at 750mm however the courses in Australia feature so many close trees, with American and European tracks more open I still have a little more testing to go.”
With two weekends of racing, the need for supplies and spares is high. While Panozzo will be taking a bike bag and two full gear bags, he still needs to run things pretty tight.
“I’ll take a full set of spare wheels, and thankfully I have factory support from Shimano which helps a lot. But tyres are the big one, they take up a lot of room.”
The two races are pretty different in their demands, and Panozzo even admits that ideally he would have two bikes, “a shorter travel bike for Chile with all the climbing, and something bigger for Argentina.”
Beyond just the mechanical spares, it’s the race food and supplements that add up, as Panozzo wants to make sure his race diet overseas is exactly what it would be at home.
Aspirations and expectations on the road
The goal? To have a bunch of fun and show what potential is there to Factory teams. While Panozzo does have generous support from Shimano, Trek, Fox, Lusty Industries and more here in Australia – it’s not the same as having a factory ride with the support of a team manager, your own mechanic and support network that come along with it. More than that, away from race day the benefit is being able to wholly focus on your training and most importantly your recovery – not having to fit training around work, then try to recover while dealing with the stresses of doing your day job.
The benefits of being in a factory team go further. Panozzo explained that as there is only so much time to do sighting runs on some of the stages, having a team where riders can focus on one or two stages each and share their helmet cam footage is invaluable – especially compared to a privateer who might be looking after their own repairs, meals and travel while they need to be studying the route and terrain.
“I’m not really looking at overall results,” states Panozzo, when asked about what he is aiming for in South America. “I really want to show promise on individual stages, to show what my potential is.”
With many stages across many mountains, I pushed Panozzo on how he would know what to target, “It’s a decision I’ll have to make at the time, as stages aren’t released until the week before, it will be a balance of understanding where I think I can apply my strengths the best. With the amount of climbing proposed in Chile, I might have to wait until the 2nd round in Argentina with chair lift assistance and a round under my belt to be a bit more comfortable and push a bit more.”
Chris Panozzo leaves Australia on 17th March, but follow him on social media to keep up with his results in South America.
