Asa Vermette Interview | Downhill MTB Rider

There’s an adage that says one should never meet their heroes. There’s not much guidance regarding besting one’s heroes at the very thing that made them heroic. There’s even less instruction on how to handle that when you’re still too young to sign legal documents. Take that scenario and place it behind the goggles and full-face helmet of a wildly talented and humble teenager and you have a rough idea of what it’s like to be junior downhill world champion Asa Vermette.

Vermette, who turned 18 in January, is the most exciting downhill racer to emerge from the United States since Aaron Gwin—who first reached the World Cup podium in 2009 at age 21 (and went on to win the World Cup overall title five times between 2011 and 2017).

“I’m probably better at biking than I am at walking,” he laughs while discussing a life spent on two wheels. Self-effacing humor comes naturally for Vermette, who speaks of his generational talent with a blend of humility and poised confidence. He comes across as a warm, hardworking kid who loves what he’s doing but also can’t believe his good fortune. He’s paid to travel around the world and race his mountain bike, and he’s competing against guys he’s followed online since he was 12. Of course he’s stoked.

Vermette’s rise to prominence has been at once incremental and swift. Perhaps his most jaw-dropping result came this past February at Red Bull Hardline Tasmania, where he deftly handled the course’s full-speed massive drops to lay down the fastest seeding run. And on finals day, he narrowly missed out on the win, finishing just 0.233 seconds behind 21-year-old Canadian phenom Jackson Goldstone. And while much was made of Goldstone’s victory after a torn ACL that ended his previous season, the Tasmania event was also Vermette’s first since he had fractured his T6 vertebra in September.

Across 11 elite men’s downhill national championships held between 2009 and 2019, only two riders, Aaron Gwin and Neko Mulally, earned the stars-and-stripes jersey. In 2022, when he was just 15, Vermette posted faster times than both men at the U.S. Open of Mountain Biking Downhill at Killington Resort in Vermont. It was there that Vermette first gained national acclaim, finishing in third place, also faster than Goldstone and four-time downhill world champion Greg Minnaar. Images from that podium presentation show a fresh-faced kid holding a biggie check among seasoned professionals, looking very much like a teenager who had photobombed the celebration.

And it was there that Vermette met first Mulally, who asked if Vermette would like to try riding one of Mulally’s prototype Frameworks downhill bikes. They gelled instantly, and Vermette has worn a Frameworks logo since the start of the 2023 season, competing on Mulally’s small-batch hand-built aluminum frames while Mulally serves as Vermette’s primary sponsor and mentor. Helmed by legendary Australian MTB team manager Martin Whitely, the Frameworks Racing team is a small operation, yet it regularly outperforms major manufacturers’ factory teams at the sport’s highest level.

“I really love the [Frameworks] bike—honestly it’s perfect for me,” Vermette says. “It’s really good for jumping. It’s super stuck to the ground. And that’s not the biggest part, which is having Neko as more of a friend than anything. Going to Europe on a big team—I’ve never had it, so I don’t know—but having a smaller family-type thing, and being able to help design the bike, I don’t think I’d have that on a bigger team.”

The only child of a split marriage, Vermette grew up playing soccer, skiing, riding dirt bikes and racing BMX. His father, Josh, works as a contractor; his mother, Jonelle Morrison, is a traveling nurse. He began regularly riding the chairlifts to tackle downhill runs at Purgatory when he was 12. His first “real” downhill race was in 2021, at the junior 13-14 national championship. Though he was competing on an enduro bike (rather than a downhill bike) and snapped his chain during his run, he managed to win by six seconds. The following year, at the junior 15-16 national championship, his seeding time was one-tenth of a second faster than Gwin’s.

Vermette again shocked the gravity community at age 16 by taking the 2023 national enduro title ahead of three-time Enduro World Series champion Richie Rude, 12 years his senior. Just off winning the Big Mountain Enduro event at Purgatory, Vermette had entered the enduro national championship on a whim, at Mulally’s suggestion, simply because his downhill race schedule allowed it. Later in the 2023 season Vermette took second at the U.S. Open of Mountain Biking Downhill in Killington, leading through every split before he was edged out by Dakotah Norton at the finish. Again, Vermette had finished ahead of distinguished names such as Minnaar and Goldstone.

It’s fair to wonder if it might be intimidating, competing against legends of the sport—or if it gets awkward, when he beats them. Not really, Vermette says, noting that riders like Gwin, who is 19 years older than Vermette, and Minnaar, who is 25 years older, have been gracious and welcoming, offering hugs and words of encouragement.

“For Hardline, when I first got there, everyone was super nice,” he says. “When I qualified first, everyone was like, ‘Oh … OK.’ They definitely talked to me more after that. When I won the world championship, Loïc [Bruni] came up to me and gave me a big hug, which is insane, because I have looked up to Loïc for as long as I can remember. To be a part of it now, it’s insane.”

Vermette cites cornering and sprinting among his strengths, as well as navigating technical, rocky terrain. He’s also got an uncanny ability to visualize a downhill track after just a few runs, buoyed by his meticulous studying of GoPro footage. However, it’s his calm and collected mindset that truly sets him apart. He doesn’t just cope with pressure of downhill racing; he embraces it.

Lessons learned the hard way

The 2024 season validated the hype that had been growing around the phenom from Durango. He was finally old enough for junior World Cup events, but how would he fare on the steeper, gnarlier European courses? How might the kid from dry and dusty Colorado handle racing in mud? How would the young American cope with the culture shock of training and racing in Europe?

Vermette answered those questions with a results sheet that could only be deemed a success, though it came with some hard lessons.

Coming directly off a fractured hip at an early-season event in Tennessee—an injury that required him to use a walker for weeks—Vermette aced his first World Cup test, winning by six seconds at Fort William, Scotland. In the days that followed, the Frameworks Racing team van was stolen, along with the race bikes inside, requiring Mulally to immediately fly back to the States and scramble to assemble new bikes. He returned in time for the second World Cup, held two weeks after Fort William in the rain at Bielsko-Biala, Poland. Vermette won again, this time by nearly four seconds, in slick, muddy conditions.

Crashes and mishaps followed at subsequent World Cup stops, first in Leogang, Austria, and then again in Val di Sole, Italy, where Vermette fractured a collarbone slamming into a tree stump just prior to his qualifying run; he still managed a second-place finish in the finals.

What followed was an incredible seven-week span that demonstrated Vermette’s true talent and resiliency. He returned to the top step at the World Cup in Les Gets, France, awarded the win from his qualifying time after the junior race was canceled due to weather. He returned to the U.S. to win the elite downhill national championship, held at the Ride Rock Creek venue in North Carolina. Vermette finished faster than Austin Dooley and Gwin to win the elite national title from the junior 17-18 category, which required an age exception from USA Cycling.

Though he couldn’t have known it, Andorra would be the end of his charmed run. At Loudenvielle, his first World Cup event competing in the rainbow jersey, Vermette spent the night before finals battling food poisoning. Exhausted and weak, and nursing two sore shoulders, he chose to compete. And though he could have played it conservatively and raced for the podium, Vermette didn’t hold back. He crashed heavily in a corner, flipping over the handlebar; once back in the U.S. he would learn that he’d fractured his T6 vertebra. His 2024 season was over.

Vermette heads into the 2025 World Cup season a different rider than he was a year earlier. He’s learned lessons about patience and restraint. He’s got a year of World Cup experience under his belt; he knows the tracks, the venues and his competitors. He wears the rainbow jersey and, as of October, he also sports a coveted Red Bull helmet, ceremoniously awarded to him by American freerider Jaxson Riddle at Red Bull Rampage. Rampage is an event Vermette is familiar with—he’s spectated with his father for the past six years—and he hopes to compete in it soon.

“I would love to do Rampage,” Vermette says, adding that if he were to secure the World Cup overall title prior to the series finale at Mont-Sainte-Anne, he could possibly make his debut at freeriding’s marquee event in the fall. “I’ve always loved the event. I love the freeriding side of biking. I don’t want to just be a racer dude. I love flipping, and big whips. It seems like a super cool event, building your own line and riding it however you want.”

This July, Vermette clinched the title of Red Bull Hardline in the U.K., becoming the youngest rider to do so. In September, he’ll also aim to make the most of his final World Cup season in the junior category, with the goal of defending his rainbow jersey in Champéry, Switzerland. To that end he will be competing in a new aerodynamic skinsuit and, with Mulally’s guidance, applying data from wind-tunnel testing to small details such as positioning for his GoPro, number-plate mounts, rotor guards and fenders.

More than anything, however, Vermette will continue focusing on the stoke of it all. “It’s a challenge, but making sure I’m having fun is what I have always tried to do,” he says. “Having fun was the thing that brought me to racing. If it’s too forced, or you’re thinking about it too much, I don’t think you’re going to have as good of a run as if you’re just doing what you love. That’s what I try to do every time I hop into a gate—just think about all the good times I’ve had on a bike.”