From the javelin thrower to the most successful German downhiller – to this day
in the downhillThe 25-year-old has made a rocket start in mountain biking: she has only been riding since 2015 downhill-Racing after giving up javelin throwing career due to an elbow injury. Since 2018, she has been the standard winner at German championships anyway.
In 2020 she won her first World Cup in Maribor and finished in the top three in the overall World Cup. This makes Nina the most successful German athlete in this discipline for over 20 years: “I’ve heard so many comments: ‘Oh finally a German is driving in front again. I’m looking at the women now too!’ In a way, that puts pressure on me“, she says in the documentary.
In 1993, when the first ever World Cup was held in the Downhill discipline, two Germans, Jürgen Beneke and Regina Stiefel, were still at the top of the podium. But since the mid-1990s, Germany has no longer played a decisive role in this sport. The top field was dominated by the English, French and Americans. Until Nina came.
With your own team to international success
Nina organizes and finances herself almost entirely herself, because for niche disciplines such as downhill the official subsidies are manageable. She even had her own team “Nina Hoffmann” to take part in the World Cup racing pen” founded because their dream team “Santa Cruz Syndicate” – one of the most renowned teams ever – did not (yet) want to record them in 2019. The risk that Nina Hoffmann was not a star but just a shooting star was too great for them.
Since the start of the 2022 season, Nina has been the first woman on the Syndicate team – but until then she was on her own with her team manager and coach Sven Heitmann: “We built it all together. I was always the man in the background, the daddy for everything outside: training, registering the team, contacts with sponsors and so on“, says Sven in the documentary.
Motocross training turns downhill bikes into “toys”
Together with him, Nina also discovered motocross, which she uses as a strength-endurance training method: The movement sequences in this risky motor sport are similar to mountain biking, as Nina explains in the film: “It makes you a bit calmer, more relaxed and more self-confident when you know you have the power for the first race. When you’ve ridden a hundred-kilo motorcycle, then a bike is a toy.”
Difficult start to the season – is the winning streak breaking?
But in addition to all the training and organizational stuff, Sven is also Nina’s biggest mental support: “When he says: ‘Now you go up there again and roll out of the gate up there.’ When he pushes me, even though everything is hurting and I don’t feel like driving anymore. It gives me a lot of self-confidence”says Nina with tears in her eyes.
Her start to the new season was anything but easy. Right at the beginning, Nina had to put up with severe setbacks: Two jumps were her undoing – both physically and mentally. Will Nina overcome the shock? Can she get her nerves under control again?
Generation F accompanies Nina very closely in her fight back to the top, because that is definitely her goal: “Why shouldn’t a woman be able to drive as fast as a man? Yes, I never say it out loud, but actually my goal is to go to the top. First place.“