Confessions of Sam Pilgrim

2014 sucked! OK, maybe that's an over exaggeration, I mean, I do get to ride bikes everyday and I get to ‘’live the dream’’, but in terms of contests, it really was a bad year. I came from 2013 as a world champion and I never thought it would be that hard, but coming into a new season as the guy everyone wants to beat is a lot of pressure, too much, as I found out...


The start of 2014 was pretty good, I went to South Africa for a Monster Energy trip in February and my riding felt OK, but for some reason, not exactly the same as the past year. I didn’t think about it and before I knew it, the trip had come to an end. Next up was the annual California road trip. Every year for the last 5 years I've been making the trip across the pond to the USA to get some pre-season training in, unfortunately this year was different. There were less riding spots and definitely less enthusiasm than in previous years. Then, I bloody crashed! I was knocked out pretty bad and woke up in the hospital, the doctor said "don’t ride for 2 - 3 weeks" and I only had two weeks left of the trip and hadn't even learnt any new tricks. So, the trip that always boosted my confidence had actually made it way worse...


I got back from California and felt awful on my bike, great start to the season! Vienna Air King was up next and I didn’t even feel that comfortable doing tricks at my own jumps. I felt a little like I was kinda lost in the air, so for the first time in my career, I took the difficult decision of missing my first contest. The following week was Swatch Rocket Air, so I rode my jumps a lot and managed to build up enough confidence to compete and I ended up getting 2nd, which was a good confidence boost, but really noticed the pressure from the last year's win. The following events didn’t go well, I didn’t qualify at FISE, then I didn’t qualify at 26Trix - the same events that the previous year I had won! This dropped my confidence so much, I was shit and I couldn't stop thinking about it. Unfortunately, I was all booked up to go to Crankworx Europe, so off I went, trying furiously to forget the start of the season. Practise was fine, the course wasn't my favourite, but I was doing some good tricks and having fun, but once again, as the contest got closer I didn’t feel good, something was wrong. And when you're flying through the air doing dangerous tricks on a bike and you don’t feel right, you should stop. So, I backed out of my second event! What was happening?


I wanted to quit contests right there back then, but at the end of 2013 I picked up SWATCH as a sponsor, which was amazing, but they were the title sponsor of the SWATCH Prime Line event in Munich and I was contracted to go. I almost didn’t qualify, but I did and in the finals I seemed to forget everything and walked away with second place. I was stoked, but I was a little too stoked and ignored my plan to quit contests and booked my flight to Canada. Idiot! I arrived in the MTB paradise town of Whistler for the Crankworx and what a bad idea that was. All the thoughts rushed back and I just felt so shit on my bike, I rode the course in practise, but the days leading up to the events got to me. I couldn't handle the pressure I’d created and I booked a flight home before the event even started. That was it - my year was done. I decided not to attend the last FMB stops, my own head had beaten me and I'd lost so much confidence, it was really the worst feeling ever. Then I started worrying; What would my fans say? What would my sponsors say? So much to think about. I never thought that I would experience something like this, I didn’t know it could actually happen to me, but obviously it could and it did! Fortunately for me, all of my sponsors were super supportive and could really understand why I missed out on the events. This was amazing to hear, I told my fans in my Facebook posts and answered their questions about why I didn’t ride and they too were very understanding. This made life easier for sure!


While all the bad luck was happening, I came up with a plan, an insane plan! I wanted to buy a huge bus and make a road trip series much like Road Fools or Drop-in TV, I wanted to take awesome riders around Europe, session sick places and document it. Then I came up with the name ‘’SAM PILGRIM's BANGERS TOUR’’ and in November 2014 my dream came true! I found a perfect bus on eBay and had to buy it. Two weeks later my huge bus was delivered to my place and it was so much bigger than I thought ha ha. It was so big that I needed to get a new license to be allowed behind the wheel. I focused my time on the test and passed first go, this is when I knew my plan was gonna become reality. F*CK YEAH! I got in contact with my sponsors who all agreed the idea was great, so they have supported me with some funding to make the series come to life. My dad has been helping me renovate the bus and my start date for the trip was February 15th. The idea of the trip is to visit loads of sick riding spots with an awesome crew of people and make a sick series, there will be riding of course along with other sports like surfing, go karting, etc! I really can’t find words to say how excited I am about the series and I really hope that the people that watch the episodes love it too. As well as being excited, I’m also a little bit nervous about driving such a huge vehicle all the way across Europe! Keep your eyes peeled!


After an awful contest season in 2014, I’m actually feeling excited for this year, I feel great on my bike again and the fire is burning inside me again. I’m ready for a good year and I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders, because I won’t be starting this year as a the current world tour champion. I’m kind of starting from the bottom again, which feels good, no one will expect me to win and I can replace the nervous and pressured feeling with happiness and excitement like the previous years! I can’t wait to hang out with everyone again and have some fun.

Check out Episode 1 of the Bangers Tour here.

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MENTIONS: @sampilgrim / @ns-bikes / @GoPro / @MarzocchiMTB / @ContinentalMTB / @IONbike

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