Marc Willers:

"It's Not Rocket Science"

Marc Willers started in BMX when his dad brought him to the local track because he kept crashing his bike in the street and his dad felt the track would be a safer place to practice. That was back in New Zealand, and Marc was four years old at the time. Two years later, his older sister caught the BMX bug as well, and to this day she still competes locally and the Willers family is considered one of the premier BMX families in New Zealand. Meanwhile, Marc's career has taken off like a rocket.

"Not exactly like a rocket, mate," says Marc, "because it's been up and down, with dismal failures and big wins, followed by worse failures and bigger wins. It's more like the history of rocket launching-with disasters and successes alternating in a distressing way."

Even as a kid, Marc's single-minded goal was to devote his life to BMX racing. He quit school at 16 because, as he put it, "How can I learn to ride a bike from school?" He painted cars for three years until 2005. That was the year he made the finals and came in sixth in the BMX World Championships in Paris. It was also the first year of BMX as an Olympic sport, and to encourage international competition, the New Zealand government started a program to fund the top sixteen racers headed toward the Olympics. Boosted by this financial support, Marc realized that BMX just might be feasible as a way to make a living...and he's never looked back since. "BMX racing," Marc says, "is a hard life because of all the travel."

In 2006 and 2007, Marc took first or second place in three UCI Oceanic Continental events, came in first at the UCI Supercross in France and second in the one in Spain.

He went on to compete in the 2008 Olympics in China. Disaster! Marc calls it the worst day of riding in his life. Toward the end of 2008 he moved to the U.S., where he still lives. In 2009, he badly dislocated his shoulder and, after ignoring it for six months, went home to New Zealand for surgery. After the surgery and another six months of physical therapy, Marc feels it still lacks some range of motion but his former strength is all there and the shoulder is as good as it's going to get.

He resumed competition in May 2010, and since then has missed making only three mains. His biggest win came a year later-last May-when he won the first-ever UCI Supercross World Cup in the Netherlands. Asked what he attributes this success to, Marc said, "I owe it all to two things: my motivation that day and my new Speed bike. My motivation goes up and down from event to event. When it's high, I feel it and I do well; when it's low, I know my performance is going to be disappointing. My career so far has been one of extremes; it seems I either make it to the podium or I wind up dead last.

"But the hardware component is bit more consistent than my own state of mind. I've said it before, the only thing I changed this year from last was the bike. I really do think it's been big part of my success this year. I'm really liking the 20-Mil fork and front hub. It's a huge improvement over regular axles. It's stiffer and straighter. On the gate, I noticed that it's easier to balance because there's less twisting. There's a corner at the Perris track that I used to have to touch my brakes to get through. With the 20-millimeter forks, I can just pedal through it. When I lean over, the front end doesn't try to wash out. Since there are lots of falls in the corners on a BMX track, that's when control is most important.

"Since I quit school when I was 16, my only knowledge of Newton's Law of Action and Reaction came from my track experience. Everything that has flex has to have an equal and opposite reaction, so when you push, it tries to slide out from under you but also pushes back toward you. All these movements tend to get cancelled out with the new thicker, more solid, one-piece axle...because it doesn't flex. It's not rocket science. I can't wait to get the rear 20-Mil hubs dialed in. For me, a bike can't be too stiff and, I really like the way the 20-Mil hubs stiffen up the bike," Marc said.