RIDE LIKE A GIRL.
STRAIGHT INTO IT.
Harriet Burbidge-Smith was born and raised in Canberra, where she started BMX racing when she was four years old. Her Dad was a competitive mountain bike rider and brought her along when he was out on the trails. Today, Harriet aka Haz, is Women’s Elite Rider and 2 times World Champion.
2 times BMX World Champion Harriet Burbidge-Smith
She started visiting the local BMX club when she was only 4 years old and went after her first world title by the time she was eight. The competition happened to be in Australia, which made it easy for her parents to organise a trip. She scored the 8th place, which made Harriet realise she had a chance at being pretty good as a BMX racing athlete and decided that’s what she liked doing.
In following competitions, she scored 2nd place, 5th place and from then on vaguely remembers all the many competitions of her childhood. In fact, she doesn’t have much other memories of her childhood other than riding bikes. Inside activities aren’t her thing and it gets frustrating being away from the bikes for too long.
THIS iS An EVERYBODY’S WORLD.
The young athlete competed in a man’s world, often riding against the older boys. At a later stage of her career however, she decided that competing against stronger and more experiences guys was always her better practise as she saw it as her personal preparation to compete internationally and a harder practise. She says it’s taught her a lot about losing and how to get back up, especially at a point where she was used to winning. She was already internationally fighting for the 4th or 5th place in her age category.
Jumps in Canberra is where Haz feels at home.
The Freerider is very happy to see the increase in females being interested in her sport, her local club having brought many girls into riding. When she was young, there were 2-3 girls, all being older than her. It’s a great development in her community to see more girls on the field.
Riding with other women over the past years has shown her how much fun is in supporting one another and celebrating their successes as well as learning that their success doesn’t take away from yours. She finds herself getting more and more impressed with the other women in the sport, sharing the same passion.
OUTRACING THE WORLD.
Harriet won her first overseas title in the Netherlands, winning second place in the Internationals. The year after, she went to Paris for the world cup and from then onward, went every year after, competing in BMX racing. In her age category, the athlete repeatedly qualified in the nationals outracing everyone else.
Today, Haz lost interest in BMX racing and is fully committed to mountain biking. She enjoys it more than ever and connects with the lifestyle and people in it. It gives her broader opportunities to grow into various directions with more room for creativity.
RIDE LIKE A GIRL.
Downhill Racing At It’s Best (Bike: TREK)
Harriet has faced many challenges in the male-dominated biking world. One limitation was a barrier in mindset. The language used around her, however, didn’t limit, but rather fuelled her to challenge herself even more. Quotes like “women aren’t doing these lines” or “women aren’t jumping these big gaps” were common. “Women were being put down for no reason. There’s no reason in why a woman couldn’t do these things.” Once a father of a friend she rode with at the BMX track, said to his son “stop riding like a girl” standing right next to Harriet.
OUTGROW YOUR MIND.
Haz mindset is incredibly resilient. What she has done in the last years to manage her own growth are the following things:
Surround herself only with people who would challenge and push her to grow outside her comfort zone
She would trust in her own ability and that her community always has her back
She asks herself if she is holding back because of any gender bias she perceives only in her mind
These steps allow her to try out everything new, even jumps that are outside of her league beyond the 15meter mark. She takes on new jumps slowly and carefully, and won’t get frustrated not being able to hit them right away. Coming into new bike parks and riding new jumps, she goes for a sight-seeing, rolling into new loops and looking at it, before riding it. Being in her shoes, she can feel an increased pressure of having to hit jumps every single time. And people being observant and judging if she fails at hitting them. But that’s where Haz’ mind doesn’t go. She allows herself to be vulnerable to recognise that true athletes are failing over and over again until they are really good at something. And this principle lets her enjoy the progress of getting better at something new, rather than making herself feel bad for not succeeding right away.
“I don’t’ give myself the chance to think about it. Thinking about it for 10 mins isn’t going to help me at all. In fact, thinking about it at all isn’t going to help me at all.”
Don’t Let Your thOUGHTS GET IN THE WAY OF RIDING.
Harriet is incredibly connected with her body on her bike and her mind follows the momentum. She has truly come to understand how she works. And she works best when taking her brain out of the equation. Hence, she doesn’t allow her thoughts to get in the way of riding.
In the past years Harriet seems to have overcome self-doubts through many high-value and supportive affirmations. Her words are incredibly resilient and powerful, which inevitably put Harriet into a true success environment and mindset. Instead of questioning or doubting herself, she has come to truly trust her abilities and strength. It’s a state which allows her to appear to her riding grounds with a laser-sharp focus, knowing her movement and kinesthetics in space and time. This allows her to look at jumps and being able to make a judgement call whether she has the skills to hit a jump or not. Her routine for reaching this level, is having trained herself over years to being comfortable with the uncomfortable.
A LEAP WITH FAITH.
Free Flying at Majurassic Park in Canberra.
Her excellence came to a test just recently, when she was asked to perform one of her biggest jumps for a video clip. She was scared about the leap and was convinced she would not want to run this jump more than once. This meant, she would not train for it or do any test-runs prior to it.
The filming crew met in the morning at 6am sharp. The cameras were set up, she got to the top, and she knew she had to make it at first go. Her thoughts racing “either in 5mins I’m going to be celebrating or I’m going to the hospital” through her head.
But that’s not what happened. The Elite Rider took a deep breath and reminded herself she wouldn’t put herself in this situation if she didn’t think she was able to actually pull it off. “It’s a very calming thought to know you’re here, you put yourself in it and you know you are going to do it!” And then she did.
Her experience is captivating because we all can learn from it. She says, your mind wouldn’t be assessing a situation unless it already knows there is a possibility of making it. If you weren’t ready, your mind would signalise it right away. Hence, she has been looking at jumps before where she said no straight away and was able to let it go immediately. It’s been a learning curve for Haz to understand how her mind works in this way this principle helps her every single time she gets nervous.
SOMETIMES, YOU FALL TO GROW.
Haz loves to share her passion for mountain biking with others.
In 2019 in the Czech Republic, the young rider had a crash where she lost her memory. Earlier in the month, she broke her ankle and still wanted to ride the competition. She cut off her cast to compete and only remembers waking up in hospital again. She damaged her kidneys and spleen and hit her head so hard, that she never recovered her memory from that day of the crash. Not many people spoke English and because of two deep vein thrombosis from the crash, she wasn’t allowed to fly home. Her parents flew over and she ended up being stuck in hospital for over a month!
However, she says, it was after that recovery that she hit one of her biggest jumps yet. It’s weird how it works but the crash has made her reconcile and find a new direction of growth, performing better than ever.
WHAT SHE LEARNED FROM RIDING WITH OTHER WOMEN.
Being a riding woman, she can see the emotional stress-response difference to men. “Men would take things out on the field and let it go, but women take it out on themselves”. Haz however, turned these thoughts into the opportunity of taking 100% responsibility for the outcome. She sees it all as a learning, where she knows better for the next time. It’s a sport and if you don’t win you can still enjoy the happiness with the person who won.
If you would like to get in contact with HAZ and her TEam, please FOLLOW @HAZNATIONBIKES on INSTAGRAM & visit HAZ.BIKE
We hope you enjoyed this article.
Stay true to yourself, dare & care.
X
Lara