Is Elise Empey the new queen of Australian Downhill?

In the year 2020, the Australian Mountain Biking National Championships were held in the iconic cycling town of Bright on the weekend prior to Australia’s Covid shut down.

With a race time of 4:53.68, Elise Empey took out the under 17 category by 30 seconds, a time that would have placed her 4th in the Elite field. With that time Elise had turned heads and had cemented herself as someone to watch out for.

A few years later, Elise has finished school, weathered the pandemic and is now on her third overseas world cup campaign as a 20 year old, second year Elite. 

We caught up with her after her career best 7th place at the Whoop UCI Downhill World Cup in Loudenvielle, France to discuss her past few years; from freaking out during track walk, to singing and dancing her way to top 10’s at World Champs and the World Cup.

Hello, where are you? You look like you’re freezing!

Elise Empey: We are in Morzine at the minute…it’s a bit chilly…We are here for another week and a half, we are at Verbier on the weekend for an IXS then we will head to the states to race Mont Ste Anne and then the US Open.

(Ed note: Empey went on to Win the Verbier IXS round)

Congrats on the weekend, this is huge. It looks like you’ve had a really massive upshoot in performance and results this year. I remember you from COVID Nationals at Bright and you were the really fast under 17. Last year was obviously a big year for you overseas, and then this year you’re on another level. Can you talk me through that trajectory from a little fast 17 year old to now?

Elise Empey: Because we weren’t allowed to come over here (to the World Cups) in Covid we stayed at home, and then I came over as a second year junior and did about four races at the World Cups that year, but I think with school that year and I had come off a shoulder injury, I was just a bit ‘iffy’ it was just like finding your feet a bit, seeing what it’s like. It was fun…but a bit of a shock to the system I am not going to lie.

But then I came over again for the full season (last year) but I think I did a pretty good job on my shoulder again just before I came over so I was kind of trying to deal with injury the whole season.

In that first year where you were second year U19 how was it to step up from our little tiny national series to the world cup?

Elise Empey: It was a bit of a shock to the system, you never know where you’re going to sit before the first race, you can guess the times or whatnot, but you have no idea where you sit. The first race is just see where you’re going and then just try and improve off that. Just the tracks and everything…our tracks (in Australia) have one rock garden and the tracks over there are one long rock garden!

So it’s a big step up in the technical challenge and the length and physical demands of the track?

Yeah I think so, and also just the environment. You’re with the big dogs who you have looked up to for years, and you’re just like ‘oh my god!’.

By the end of the season (last year) I was staring to find my feet a bit, but like that was kind of like just the last two or three races. Which was good but, like, it wasn’t quite what I needed. I only qualified at one race.

I think I was pretty lucky, I spent the whole summer down at Maydena between last season and this season, just working and riding down there, so that was a pretty good off season and time on bike. And coming into this season I felt a lot better. Obviously qualifying in Poland (second round of the Wold Cup) it was a big goal.

And you finished in 16th in Poland?

Yeah! 

And then the week after Poland I put my brake lever through my leg.

Oh no, what happened?

I was just riding in Schladming and I slipped out in the corner and next minute the brake lever was right through my leg (Empey laughs). Yeah they had to surgically remove it. I was in the hospital for about a week.

So you’ve learned a lot about managing injury?

Yeah it’s not what I wanted, but lucky it wasn’t Worlds!

And this year from Poland, it’s been just on the up and up. Is there anything that has helped specifically this year.

We have been travelling around since April, May. There was a point in the middle there where we stopped racing and I was like ‘yeah I’m getting pretty homesick’.

But we went to Whistler between races, and I think that helped with bike skill and time on the bike. And I don’t know why it worked, I was just so happy and enjoying the riding and I feel like I just took the pressure off myself and thought ‘I’ll just have fun these rounds’.

At Les Gets and Val di Sole I battled a fair bit with anxiety with the leg and other stuff, and these last few rounds I was just like…yeah…I found the flow and enjoyed it.

Managing anxiety and performance is such a huge part of downhill racing, do you have anyone who you like to talk to to help manage this?

I kind of just started talking to Tracey (Hannah) a bit recently, this season. From April to now. But before that never! It was much more just fend for yourself, train by yourself. 

It is good to have a bit of structure to everything and when ‘arggghh I am feeling this’… there is someone who offers bit of guidance, it’s been really nice.

She’ll also talk to me about racing, staying calm. It’s nice to have someone in your corner there to say ‘alright breathe…go out there and do your best’.

Support is pretty vital for an athlete, aside from Tracey who else is in your crew?

For the last two rounds I have been with my brother and his mate, it’s been nice seeing someone related. For the first part of the season my dad was over. 

I have been pretty lucky, like Wyn Masters gave me a heap of support on the weekend (Loudenville) and even AusCycling the week before at Worlds (Andorra), just for mechanical stuff having that all sorted was just dreamy.

What did it feel like at Worlds it like having three Aussies in the hot-seat at one stage at Worlds?

It was a pretty sick feeling the whole crowd was like ‘Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi’ it was so much fun and everybody was stoked. The weather was so nice, we thought it may rain. But we got lucky.

And worlds: a big breakthrough ride to 9th, how was that?

It was pretty gnarly in Andorra qualifying, my brakes didn’t work I had front brake only.

How did you go in the run?

I think I qualified 9th, so maybe I was better. Maybe I need to take my brakes off all my bikes! (Empey laughed. She backed up this 9th in Qualifying with a 9th in the finals at World Champs).

Where do you want to go next year, what are your hopes and dreams?

Yeah for sure it would be unreal to get a deal with a team, but at the same time we will see where it goes. We have Mont Ste Anne so we will see how we go there. I’d love to race….but there are a lot of rumours up in the air for next year…about the world cup circuit and things getting cut, so we will see how we go.

It’s a super fun track, it’s quite long, it’s quite fun an it’s a bit flatter than some other rounds so I like it a bit more. 

A bit more ‘Australian spec’?

Yeah literally! I’ve always loved the track so I’m excited.

Have you found over the past few years having exposure to many of the same tracks in racing has assisted with your year in year progression?

I think even just re-riding the tracks from the first year, like on the track walk I got so overwhelmed, so I got psyched out on the track walks for the first lap of practice so I had to build up the confidence. And now I do the track walks and you’re like every time ‘hoooollllyyyy’ you forget how gnarly it is but I feel like you can approach it more realistically like ‘alright yeah I can ride that section, I just need to do this and that’ as opposed to ‘oh my god I’m going to die!’.

It’s always a worry when you do a track walk and you can’t walk down it…

Yeah even on the weekend we had so much rain in Loudenville and in practice we were like ‘oh my god, how am I going to race this track? I am just surviving now. Racing’s going to be so funny’.

We were lucky, the track dried up a heap for the quali’s. And due to a few things in the quali’s run I got a rerun, and that went pretty well. It sucked for the girls that didn’t get a rerun because obviously the track was dry for the rerun…but it worked out well for me!

Sounds like maybe shifting your mindset and having fun with it all has really helped?

I just need to have fun really. Try and make myself laugh before my run. I need to put some fun music on and dance before I drop in. I was so nervous on the weekend I was like ‘hey Matthew we are dancing and we are singing’.

With Maydena being your main home away from home over the offseason, how much riding did you do over the summer?

Most days I was on the bike, which was pretty unreal. I have never had that before. I worked the morning or the afternoon, so could ride most days. It’s a really good work-life balance. At Maydena you can use half your day to go on big rides.

You’ve had epic support from your dad and bother while you’ve been on your World Cup, is that how you got started? Are you from a mad cycling family?

Yeah my whole family rides, it’s pretty sick I and am pretty lucky. Dad always had us on bikes. He started racing mountain bikes back when it was pretty new in Australia. So I was always on a bike. I thought I wanted to do XC but then I tried enduro and I was like ‘this is too much fun’ and then I tried downhill and I was like ‘actually, I am not pedalling anymore dad!’ And that was it.

Speaking of pedalling, you did crack out an EDR race last year as well in France, is more Enduro in your future?

I think I would have to do a bit more training for it, we did it at the end of a block of racing and apparently it was a round with less pedalling and I was like ‘this is hard’!

Oh yeah…the tip is eating lots of snacks…so many snacks!

Yeah we were so underprepared, we had a few Nutella wraps for the whole day.

Favourite place to ride: I actually love Andorra, it’s so sick and it’s always dusty there. Its’ such a fun track to race and ride. We also got to spend some time in Whistler and Canada and I feel like that was unreal, they had like every sort of riding it was actually insane, it was so much fun.

If you had to summarise what works for you in racing, what would it be?

I’ve just got to stay smiling, stay happy.

Elise Empey’s Quick Stats:

Favourite post race meal: Maybe like a good bowl of pasta or something, a big bowl of carbs.

Offseason goals: Move back down to Tassie, work and train in the offseason. Then come and race  National champs.

Favourite track: We have a few sneaky ones up behind our house. I always love riding there, I think there is something special about your home track.

Shout outs: Shout out to my parents and family.