A story of resilience, curiosity, and the pursuit of mastery in the world of elite XC racing.
Piper Albrecht
For a coach so integral to many of the performances at the head of the World Cup XC peloton – from Jenny Rissveds’ resurgence to Kate Courtney’s XC marathon world championship title – Barry Austin remains one of the sport’s quietest masterminds.
Austin’s path to becoming one of cross-country mountain biking’s most respected coaches began far from the European racing scene. He grew up in rural South Africa, seemingly destined for a conventional career – engineering, medicine, or farming – but his fascination with sport and human performance pulled him elsewhere.
That passion eventually took him to Europe to pursue a racing career. But a serious accident back home – when a taxi driver struck him – cut that career short. During his recovery, he began coaching a local club and quickly found his calling. His engineering background soon proved invaluable; when power meters started to enter the sport, Austin recognised their potential before most, applying data analysis and systems thinking to performance coaching.
“I just kept asking questions,” he says. His transition moved from data-driven analysis to a holistic approach, one that considers the rider, terrain, and environment as a single system. That mindset eventually led him to work with multiple world champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot in 2017. From this point, Austin dedicated himself fully to coaching; he wanted to understand, as he puts it, ‘the most difficult discipline to master – cross-country.”
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