There’s a excessive chance that even when you’ve by no means heard of the identify Safa Brian, you’ve got seen him experience a motorcycle. His daring using fashion sees him sort out descents the world over at breakneck velocity in a bid to remind his viewers not simply of biking’s uncooked magnificence but additionally that much less is nearly actually extra.
Brian Wagner, higher often called ‘Safa Brian’, has been formed by a life that has revolved round bikes, even when he was practically 30 by the point he clipped into the pedals of a street bike for the primary time.
Spending 18 years as a motorcycle messenger offered the South African with abilities that few WorldTour professionals may ever write on their résumés. Sydney, London, Mexico City, Glasgow, and New York – their enterprise districts, his playground.
Now primarily based in Los Angeles, the bike owner’s YouTube channel has over half 1,000,000 subscribers. His earliest add from 2013, titled Less Law – Mexico City Fixed Gear Legends, is a promotional video for the next yr’s Cycle Messenger World Championships. It would depart even the very best bike handlers within the WorldTour bunch feeling nauseous as he cuts by site visitors within the Central American capital, arcing his physique at precarious angles as he skirts round lorries, buses, and pedestrians.
Yet when that way of life finally started to put on skinny, Brian discovered himself searching for an escape. “I began using outdoors of town to get away from all of the site visitors. I wished to get away from automobiles and site visitors, automotive tradition will get actually poisonous after that lengthy, you simply burn out on it. So I fell in love with climbing, however extra to search out peace than adrenaline,” he tells Cyclingnews throughout our sit-down chat at November’s Rouleur Live occasion.
Cycling uphill will be thought of a formulaic problem – even for newbie cyclists. The skilled peloton, or at the very least on the Grand Tours, has been consumed by the calls for of climbing mountains as quick as doable for greater than a century. The first summit end of a Tour de France stage dates again to 1910, with the race recognising the very best climbers by the King of the Mountains classification since 1933.
Skip ahead to the trendy day, and altitude coaching, energy knowledge, light-weight bikes, and even, sadly, doping attest to biking’s unrelenting want and obsession with climbing quicker and quicker.
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However, descending those self same mountains and peaks is an altogether totally different beast. For Brian, no different a part of biking can examine.
Cycling’s final mystique
“I feel descending is the final little bit of street biking that has any form of thriller and mystique left. Everything else is boiled all the way down to the quantity, feeding on the excellent time, and it is all science actually.
“You can actually get misplaced in [the descent] and really feel a particular form of manner,” he defined.
Some descents may not set the world alight by way of their nature, whereas others require the utmost focus and no room for error, however any stresses rapidly fade as soon as the pink gentle is flashing and the gradient goes downhill for the South African.
“Maybe you are stressed on the prime realizing you are going to go and movie this. You do get nervous. You do get careworn. But as quickly as you hit file and also you drop in, all of it form of simply clicks away. There’s a change you possibly can flick.”
Having hit speeds of 110km/h throughout descents up to now, the query of whether or not Brian has reached his restrict is one he responded to with an sincere self-assessment.
“I’m at all times getting higher, now I discover myself taking even safer strains than earlier than. The older you get, the extra risk-averse you grow to be. It’s simply human nature.”
Safer would not essentially imply slower, although, as Brian factors out. “But I’m really getting barely quicker on descents that I’ve executed a number of occasions, though I really feel prefer it’s safer, I feel that simply means I’ve grow to be a greater rider, and my approach is healthier.”
Balancing security and hazard is a problem Brian has confronted for his total life, stemming from his childhood in South Africa.
“We grew up in South Africa, it is a fairly harmful place at occasions, after which the job I ended up doing and loving was a reasonably harmful job. My entire life has form of been coping with hazard and never shedding your cool.
Having lived additional out of city than the remainder of his mates throughout his childhood, Brian noticed his bike as his “primary companion.”
From using his bike to fulfill up together with his mates, to ferociously pedalling by site visitors in bustling capital cities, it is formed the South African’s using fashion.
“What I can do on the street now, with the high-speed stuff, a number of it’s extra psychological than the rest. Just being in site visitors all day, and having all these conditions pop up, having to cope with them, to actually keep alive, made a huge effect on what I do immediately,” he confessed.
A style of the WorldTour
“People assume I’ve executed this without end,” Brian reveals, so effortlessly cool does his method to descending look. The often-used phrase ‘at one with the bike’ would not be ill-placed to explain his rides down the Passo Sella within the Dolomites or Switzerland’s iconic Furka Pass.
However, he is fast so as to add that this assumption that he is been descending mountain passes since he may first pedal a motorcycle in anger simply is not the case, stating: “I solely picked up a street bike at 27, or 28 years previous. So I nonetheless had loads to be taught. I’m nonetheless studying.”
Even if he defines himself as a piece in progress, although, there is no denying that his skillset is uncommon.
At the beginning of his latest film Trust, created in collaboration with helmet model KASK, Brian acknowledges: “It’s form of like a superpower having the ability to go this quick. If lots of people may do what I do, I feel they’d.”
That could also be why the South African has gained WorldTour consideration lately. In immediately’s digital age, entry to the game’s prime professionals has grow to be extra guarded, but Brian has managed to interrupt down these obstacles, thanks partially, by having the ability to sustain.
Alongside a component of luck and being in the precise place on the proper time, he places it all the way down to the professionals having a stronger understanding of his technical capacity than an everyday viewer may.
“People see the movies, and so they go ‘that is loopy’, however I feel a number of the professionals see it and determine with it. That’s how they experience, they do not go and be taught to get quick in a race. They need to follow on open roads too. So to them, I feel it seems extra sane than most individuals, and so they can belief that I can deal with myself near them.”
Being capable of be on par with the professionals has helped Brian to lift his profile within the sport, with each Scott and KASK presently sponsoring him and his endeavours across the globe.
“I feel there are a number of biking manufacturers which can be struggling to search out an avenue in addition to racing, and it is actually arduous to work with the professional groups to create content material. I’m one of many few folks going on the identical velocity and pushing the bike as arduous.
“Obviously, I’m not doing the identical energy as Pogačar on the climb, however I’m going by a nook at 80km/h and testing stuff displaying that it’s quick and it is dependable. So I feel it is a good match.”
The likes of Tom Pidcock, Matteo Jorgenson, Romain Bardet (and most of DSM-firmenich PostNL), Fabian Cancellara, and Vincenzo Nibali have all hit the street with the South African and his digital camera.
Unsurprisingly although, it was his film with Pidcock, multi-discipline star and one of many WorldTour’s most famous descenders, on LA’s Tuna Canyon descent that really captured the eye of the biking world. Even if Brian described the expertise as “a extremely nerve-racking day” on the mountain go he is descended as many as 200 occasions.
“Tuna is actually intense each time, there’s enormous drop-offs and there is a wall the entire manner down the opposite aspect, so there’s zero margin for error. There’s no runoff and it is actually steep.
“I did not need something to go mistaken for him. I took him down there a few occasions, him following me so we may be taught the strains loads faster. The entire day I used to be simply telling myself, ‘he is a professional, it is not a giant deal for him. He’s not going to ship it that arduous.’
“As quickly as we began going, I’m like, ‘he is not holding something again.'”
Even when the Briton’s again wheel skids out on a patch of oil – inflicting the hearts of Brian and all 2.6 million of the movie’s viewers to leap – it did not deter him from attacking the remainder of the descent and pushing his limits.
According to Strava, he accomplished the phase simply eight seconds slower than the KoM, set by none aside from – and nonetheless held by – Safa Brian.
The fantastic thing about the descent
Pidcock and Brian share the identical adrenaline-inducing method to descending, with their movie collectively solely echoing this. It was Pidcock’s breathtaking descent of the Col du Galibier that arrange an iconic stage win atop Alpe d’Huez, the Queen stage of the 2023 Tour de France.
In this social media age, you possibly can’t go two weeks with out the video of his nerve-wracking, hairpin-hugging descent within the Alps hitting your cellphone display. “It’s lovely to look at a assured descender,” remarked ex-pro Dan Lloyd whereas commentating on Eurosport.
Brian’s descending abilities are equally mesmerising to the attention. His minimalistic cinematic fashion creates an nearly therapeutic impact inside his movies: simply Brian, the bike, and the encircling surroundings.
In the South African’s eyes, the landscapes that type the backdrops of his movies are sometimes simply as necessary because the rides themselves – if not the movie’s sole function every so often, he admits.
“Half the time I feel it is actually the placement that’s doing the heavy lifting for me, and biking is only a lovely factor to do.
“There’s a lot content material on the market with folks speaking for greater than they’re using within the movies. And I used to be at all times skipping ahead and searching for the bits the place they’re really using the bikes.
“I began out filming stuff that I wished to movie, only for no different cause than I assumed it seemed cool and I wished to movie it,” he added.
There’s no query that biking at knowledgeable stage will proceed to advance its obsession with knowledge, numbers, and information. It’s finally what retains these on the prime of the game hungry.
Yet, on this data-driven age, the South African stands as a stark reminder that not all the sport is in regards to the formulation, the feeding plans, and the science. Whether or not it’s the unquantifiable feeling that comes from descending or simply the sheer pleasure of using your bike to discover extra of the world, Brian highlights these parts of biking that are not so simply outlined.