Pete Scullion talks fun, work and sleep with the multidisciplinary bike racing dynamo.
Words & Photography Pete Scullion
Despite being a classic mountain biking destination, I’d never once stopped in Great Malvern. I’d certainly seen the signs from the A50 on numerous outings to South Wales over the years, but Great Malvern and the Malvern Hills had eluded me. I would finally visit this corner of the world to play catch-up with yet another name added to the list of phenomenal talent that has come out of this area. Another rider who’s been taken under the wing of the UK’s most outstanding talents, one Tracy Moseley. The rider in question today is one Hattie Harnden.
Sorry, not sorry
It’s fair to say that Hattie’s rise to stardom has been nothing short of meteoric, certainly when it comes to the gravity end of her repertoire, coming swinging straight out of the U21 category at the Enduro World Series and straight into the fight for race wins and the overall title. On top of that, she’s also currently your reigning British National Cross Country Champion in U23, plus she’s not shy of a World Cup cyclocross race or two either.
I find Hattie in the middle of her four week ‘off season’, sandwiched between the last Enduro World Series in the Tweed Valley and a trip to the US for more cyclocross. Almost the first thing Hattie said to me that morning as I was getting my things in a tidy pile was ‘sorry’. That would set the tone for the rest of the day. More than once I’d have to threaten her with a sorry jar, to which she’d apologise…
We don’t spend too much time hanging around and quickly head into the woods that used to form the old Herefordshire-Worcestershire boundary. This long ridge of a hill is complete with what looks to be a defensive rampart looking into Worcestershire. Now I’m used to lack of traction, but this coppice has a very unique set-up where the dirt is pretty spectacular, and the roots, even with the bark on, are lethal. So late into the autumn, these sniper roots are hidden by a carpet of leaves, and while it all looks lovely, we both have to pay attention to stay off our teeth.
I’d had a good lesson in not underestimating small hills the day before on a ride out with James Richards (Mr Tracy Moseley), and the second lap of this circuit is a reminder I didn’t really need. Winch and plummet is what I’d call it, except the winch in front of me has a bigger engine…
Train hard, race happy
Once the ground levels off and the cadence gets a little more friendly, we start talking shop. Hattie always seems to be having a lot of fun while out racing the best at the Enduro World Series, and experience has taught me that for many people, this is a mask to hide the seriousness of racing. It doesn’t seem that way with Hattie. She’s adamant that you get serious in the gym, and when you’re testing, that’s when the hard work and knuckling down needs to happen. “Once you’re racing you may as well enjoy it,” Hattie insists.
Testing sets the baseline and Hattie’s fairly confident that the set-up that they dial in then will do the job for the rest of the season. Tyre choice might change, for example in the Dolomites because of the amount of sharp rocks. Light tyres might be fast but you need air in your tyres to win races. Other than that, the set-up is the set-up.
Training wise, Hattie has access to the gym in the old dairy that did the job for Tracy Moseley on her quest for World Cup downhill and Enduro World Series glory, so the facilities are both convenient and produce World Championship titles when used correctly. I wonder out loud how you go about training for a full year of EWS, World Cup cross-country and cyclocross. “You just get really strong in the gym,” is the response. I hope there’s more to it than that…
By now, we’re approaching the northern end of the Malvern Hills and the cloud has come to us. The normally cracking view east across the Severn Valley and the Cotswolds beyond is hidden from us, as is most of the trail ahead. As the trail steepens towards the low pass ahead we chat about how we both got into riding bikes. Hattie mentions that she wasn’t particularly sporty at school and that she only found bikes once her mum sent her and her brothers to local mountain bike races through the summer in an effort to tire them out.
“I came dead last in my first race,” Hattie explains. That race was in the wood behind Tracy’s house where their cross-country training lap is now. She kept at it though, and a gift of one of Tracy’s old bikes and a follow of her wheel later, it transpired that Hattie could quite happily charge behind the former World Champ without too much difficulty on the downs. The rest, as they say, is history.
Fish on a bike?
It doesn’t take long before I’m witness to the descending speed Hattie can muster. Off the top of the Malverns we follow a thin strip of dirt down through the darkening bracken. It’s fast, it’s loose and the ruts are in abundance. It feels like I’ve lost twenty seconds on a thirty-second trail. Gone, just gone. So quiet is the bike that she just glides off into the distance. As I round the corner and plop myself onto the fire road, now with a better view of Great Malvern, I get the obligatory ‘sorry…’ before I cast her a disapproving glance, followed by a chuckle.
As we start our homeward lap, Hattie reveals that she has a superpower. That superpower is sleeping. Anywhere. Anytime. So powerful is her talent that her teammates make fun of her for it. That, and apparently, she looks like a fish when she’s riding her bike. Lord only knows what goes on in the mind of young bicycle riders, but I never saw any evidence of the latter. We immediately start scheming revenge. The kind of revenge produced by parents on 18th birthdays or best men at weddings. Hattie seems very keen and I fear all I have done is be a bad influence.
She’s confident that the team is a solid one though, and a massive part of being successful as a racer is finding a group of people who are comfortable living in each other’s pockets all year, so it’s all part of the fun.
All apologies
From the fast, open hillsides of the Malverns, we return to the cooler, darker woods where autumn is still in full effect. We both have to recalibrate to roots again, as even the pine roots here offer next to no grip. Just as Hattie is reminding me to watch out for the roots, she hits an off-camber root fan and had it not been for some press-ups last winter, she’d have been taking a real good look at the pine needles.
Luckily with already a fair bit of wind between us, there was no imminent pile-up and I’m left just slightly closer than I was before. That doesn’t last long as a series of switchback berms approach and Hattie drops a shoulder into the first left, shouts a warning about the jump ahead before putting me out of sight yet again. With the grip levels coming and going, I’m happy to just ride my own ride at this point, knowing that Hattie will likely apologise once I’ve caught up.
This turn of speed is not entirely surprising given the year that she’s had, but what is a surprise is that the stellar year she’s enjoyed, certainly in an Enduro World Series context, was not entirely planned for. The goal, Hattie explains, was a podium. One single podium at any round in the 2021 Enduro World Series. She would end up on a total of five Enduro World Series podiums in 2021. Two of those would be victories, and crucially, she’d not have to try to lift the curse of winning her home round before going on to win elsewhere.
Loudenvielle and La Thuile pose very different challenges, and when I ask her about whether she prefers it steep and technical or mellow and easy, she shrugs her shoulders and seems pretty content with wheels rolling on dirt. While a lot of people seem to chase fun on a bike, and maybe transmit that to others to cover up nerves, Hattie really is just all about having fun on a bike.
That said, the smile that had almost been permanently fixed on her face since we set off dropped slightly when we discussed Tweed Valley… One wrong move on the final stage lost her the win, and maybe also leapfrogging the legend that is Isabeau Courdurier into third place in the overall.
Hattie doesn’t seem too hung up on it though, she’s quick to note that after her win, she’d come sixth at the following race and she seems bewildered that people would be offering their condolences. Not many realised that she’d already ticked the one box that needed to be ticked at the EWS that year, and it was a gold tick too. Few riders kept up the pace across the entire double-header weekend as well. First and a sixth was just dandy for Hattie.
Sorcerer’s apprentice
A quick dart across a very busy A-road and we’re into the final wood of the day, and this one comes with a very different vibe. Berms and jumps. The two things I know I’m terrible at. Hattie mentions that she’s usually chasing Tracy around here on the e-bike as we shove our bikes upwards through the tall Scots Pines. I’m thankful for the rest at this point. We’re on the lookout for some real loamy turns that James and I rode the previous day, but this hill is like a rabbit’s warren. “We need a James,” Hattie insists, looking a little lost.
With that, we just pick a trail and get to work. Some bits seem familiar, others very foreign. The constant is the pastel blue Bontrager kit getting harder and harder to spot as the gap opens up once more. It’s only now I notice the complete lack of fuss in Hattie’s riding. Whether it’s climbing or descending, there’s a quiet determination behind her forward momentum. Our bikes feel awfully quiet here as the dirt and pine needles combine to form a wonderful carpet of loam that deadens the sounds of our tyres.
That there’s little fuss around Hattie isn’t entirely unsurprising though, given that she is one of Tracy Moseley’s understudies. Having kicked this ‘Pete’s Pros’ series off with the now legendary rider, lack of fuss is something of a trademark of hers. How much of that has been passed on from sorcerer to apprentice is unknown.
What you see is what you get with Tracy and it appears there’s much the same to be said about Hattie too. When she tells you her life pretty much revolves around bikes and she’s having fun riding and racing, you can believe it.
As we roll back to the start point, weirdly dry and clean for a lap in late November, we start to chat about what’s coming up, and Hattie’s eyes light up when she starts to chat trips away for ride camps and World Cup cyclocross races. Racing is clearly high on Hattie’s to-do list and it seems way beyond work for her. I have to ask her though, racing three different disciplines at world level, just how many of them she did in 2021. After some quick number crunching, she reckons 30. A few of those were EWS double-headers but even then, that’s more than half the year’s weekends gone to just the world level events. Add the British National cross-country rounds and the odd PMBA enduro and you have a serious racing diary on your hands. That’s likely where the sleep-anywhere superpower and low fuss really starts to pay off. You’re going to spend most of your time living out of a suitcase and in other people’s pockets.
The future is bright for Hattie Harnden. She came out swinging in her first elite year and made people stand up and take notice, something she’d probably apologise for. Expect to see her in the mix for the overall at the Enduro World Series races and series title every weekend in 2022. If she can sustain that as well as cross-country and cyclocross World Cups, then maybe that’s her superpower – the sleep is just a necessity for such a packed schedule.
