Welcome to Vital MTB's The Inside line, a podcast about the personalities in our great sport of mountain biking. We're excited to kick things off with an episode featuring American downhill racer, Eliot Jackson. On December 1st, we met up with Eliot in a quiet, distraction-free house near Santa Barbara, California. He was staying there to focus on training for the 2017 World Cup season. I learned that Eliot happens to be a podcast fan and to my surprise really loves road riding. We discuss growing up racing motocross at a near-professional level with the likes of Ryan Villopoto, how he dropped out of full-time school in 7th grade to pursue racing, the fact he considers himself a nerd who loves reading, problem solving and statistics, his transition from the Pivot Cycles World Cup DH team to

Giant Factory Racing for 2017 and just what makes calculated crusher tick. We hope you enjoy getting to know Eliot through this interview as much as we did.