Markus
Stöckl
Austria
·
MTB
Date of birth | 9 July 1974 |
|---|---|
Place of birth | Oberndorf |
Age | 51 |
Nationality | Austria |
Career start | 1992 |
Disciplines | Mountainbike Downhill |
Markus 'Max' Stöckl has been setting downhill mountain bike speed records for over 20 years, so it's fair to say that the Austrian is driven by a need for speed.
Hailing from the Oberndorf area of Tirol, Stöckl took up riding in 1992 and set his first world speed record in 1999, descending Les Arcs in Savoie, France at 187kph.
His next record came in 2007, when he smashed that record on a ski slope in La Parva, Chile by clocking a speed of 210.4kph on a regular production Intense M6 mountain bike.
Stöckl had to overcome numerous problems to land that record: not least that warm weather had led to the snow melting away, making testing difficult, and that he had to hold his breath in the record run due to his helmet fogging up.
In 2011, Stöckl headed to the Cerro Negro volcano in Nicaragua, where he set about breaking the world speed record on gravel – again on a production bike – hitting 164.95kph and breaking the previous record by almost 2kph.
He was at it again in 2017, when he arrived in Chile’s Atacama Desert on the country’s Pacific Coast for the V-Max project – the aim of which was to break the gravel record that he himself set six years earlier.
For this he chose a mountain slope in the desert that had a summit of 3,972m altitude, a 45-degree slope at the start area and a run-off that was 1,200m from top-to-bottom.
To make the speed attempt as safe as possible, Stöckl wore a special suit, an airbag, similar to the ones ski racers and jumpers use. The helmet that was used was self-made. The mountain bike he used of course couldn't be anything but a Mondraker downhill bike (Stöckl is general manager of the World Cup-winning MS-Racing Mondraker MTB Team). Nothing was added or changed on the bike to make it go faster.
The actual run clocked a speed of 167.6kph, thus beating his previous record. It took Stöckl 11 seconds and 650m to reach his top speed. Not bad for someone who isn't considered a professional athlete.
Next, in 2018, just days before the 78th running of the iconic Hahnenkamm, in Kitzbuhel, Stöckl decided that it was time to take on a challenge on snow.
Once again on a production bike (but with the addition of 15mm-long spikes and a carbon-fibre mudguard) Stöckl was successful in his attempt and became the first man to complete a run of the famous Streif on two wheels, clocking a time of 3m 6s and a top speed of 103kph in the process.
Where next for Markus 'Max' Stöckl? We can’t wait to find out.