If you think cross-country is just tight lycra and fast laps around a field, think again. It’s a discipline that requires insane fitness, intense focus and outrageous bike handling skills.

So you’ve heard of cross-country, but what actually is it?

Cross-country mountain biking is a combination of phenomenal fitness, super-human strength and some pretty impressive skills to boot. It’s mud, blood, sweat, gears and tears. It’s physical exertion and exhaustion, grit and determination, tactics and dramatics.

The descents in a cross-country course call on a similar skill set that downhillers employ and today’s most successful racers are those with bike-handling credentials any gravity rider would be impressed by. Of course, the downhill discipline is bigger and burlier when it comes to the technical terrain, but it should be noted that cross-country races are now won and lost on the ability to gap doubles, take stupidly steep inside lines and pilot 100mm of travel through rock gardens.