At the beginning of December, Santa Cruz announced that after 16 years, Greg Minnaar, the winningest rider in World Cup downhill racing history, would no longer ride for the brand. For weeks, the rumor mill was rife with speculation on where the greatest downhill racer of all time would be landing. The answer, finally, was Norco.
On January 9, Norco announced the new partnership on their Instagram page with an image of Minnaar in a Norco hat. “Hello, Greg. The new captain of the Norco Factory Team and mentor to our junior development program,” the caption read.
We sat down with Minnaar to hear his plans for the 2024 race season and to learn more out about his move from Santa Cruz after more than 15 years with the brand.
A new role at Norco
In many ways, Norco has handed Minnaar the keys to the race team, allowing him to make it his own. He’s already hired a slew of support staff and made some sponsor changes. One of the more significant changes was Norco’s switch to Fox Suspension, the brand Minnaar rode during his Santa Cruz tenure.
“[Norco told me], ‘We want to have the fastest team in the world with the fastest bike. So, can you set this up for us? Can you give us what you would see as an ideal dream team, how you would want to set it up, the staff, implementation of input from trackside, and everything else?’” Minnaar said.
And he was happy to oblige. The plan is to push forward with current Norco racers, Gracey Hemstreet and Lucas Cruz, with the addition of one more Norco employee, engineer Kirk McDowall.
“We’ve got Kirk, who’s the fastest engineer in the world. From a team side, we can definitely lean on him for a lot of the bike suspension,” Minnaar said, recognizing the potential advantage of having an engineer who is able to race at World Cup levels. “He does a lot of testing with our suspension guru Colin Ryan. So, yeah, it’s pretty exciting.”
Not only is Minnaar looking to the upcoming race season, but he is also looking to establish the future of Norco racing. This future starts with Minnaar and his current teammates, Hemstreet and Cruz, and bleeds into the junior team they are building.
With one contract ending and another beginning, Minnaar mentioned that things are still solidifying with the junior team. “We’ve got quite a few juniors that we’ve scouted,” Minnaar shared. “I imagine we’re going to bring all these riders into a Norco team camp where we will be able to share knowledge from the pro riders, not only myself but [Hemstreet] and [Cruz] as well.”
Minnaar is excited to provide these young riders a platform to race at the highest level. “It gives kids a chance to join the company in the early stages and grow with the brand. Then, hopefully, one day, have them racing the World Cup on the factory team. I mean, that’s the dream, right? And if we can do that, then that’s really cool.”
The next step for Minnaar and the Norco team is to get more riding time. “The short-term goal is to get this team ready for Fort William. We’ve got some testing. We’ve got some team setup to get ready,” Minnaar said.
And while he recognized that he hadn’t spent an incredible amount of time testing his new Norco, Minnaar sang the bike’s praises. “It’s only been a couple of days on the bike, [but it] just worked really well. The bike was incredible. You know, they’ve got an incredible bunch of engineers that have built this bike. And so I feel like this is a good chance to really excel.”
So, going into 2024 with Norco, Minnaar is wearing a few different hats. Team developer and team captain. Leader and mentor. Plus nobody is counting the 42-year-old out when it comes to racing. After all, he’s no stranger to the World Cup podium.
Coming out of pre-retirement
Minnaar ended the 2008 season, his first with Santa Cruz Syndicate, as the downhill World Cup overall winner, a feat he had accomplished twice before (‘01 and ‘05). Though he hasn’t finished as the World Cup points leader since 2008, “Minnaar” is a common name on the leaderboard, including World Championships. He has been on the World Championship podium 11 times, including four gold medals, three of which were earned while he was on Santa Cruz Syndicate. In fact, Minnaar was on a Santa Cruz bike for seven out of his 11 World Championship podiums.
A win at Lenzerheide, Switzerland, in 2015 gave Minnaar the record for most downhill racing World Cup career wins. So what led to Minnaar ending his time at Santa Cruz and throwing his leg over a Norco?
Initially, Minnaar planned to retire from World Cup racing at the end of the 2023 season. But, with the race season not going how he had hoped, Minnaar wasn’t ready to call it quits.
“I was feeling pretty tight and pretty burnt out. And so I felt like it was a good time to retire,” Minnaar said about going into the 2023 race season.
After Fort William, his plans were beginning to change. “If I retire on a year like this, it doesn’t bring a lot of joy,” he said. “It hasn’t been fun.”
The 2023 World Championships at Fort William is now, perhaps, the culminating story of a challenging year of racing for Minnaar. The Santa Cruz V10 had been a familiar platform for him, but some updates to the bike didn’t add up to confident riding.
“It was a new bike. [Santa Cruz] launched a new bike for the season,” Minnaar told us. His teammates, Jackson Goldstone and Laurie Greenland, ran this new version of the V10 in a mixed-wheel setup and seemed to get along fine. On the other hand, Minnaar rode the full 29er, which was “basically a completely different bike,” as he said.
It was a bike that Minnaar didn’t get as much time on. “I was also injured in the preseason. So I just came back from a broken neck, and then I had an operation on my wrist to fix a tendon in my thumb. So, I missed a bit of pre-season testing,” Minnaar said. “I need to be getting on a test track and really figuring this [bike] out, and that never really happened.”
It wasn’t until the start of the 2023 race season that Minnaar was finally finding a feel for the new version of the V10. Fast forward to Fort William later in the season, and things still weren’t really working for Minnaar, which was evident by the absence of his bike at the start gate and then a blown tire during his run
“I was still in the start gate with no bike, just staring down the track, waiting for my bike to be passed to me. There were three guys trying to borrow tools and borrow parts to get my bike to me. They basically gave my bike to me probably like 20-30 seconds before the start,” Minnaar told us. “That’s definitely no way to start a World Championship, especially when you feel like it is a race where you can [win].”
Minnaar’s Fort William race results show “DNF.” It was not the result he’d hoped for.
From Santa Cruz to Norco
Minnaar’s switch from Santa Cruz to Norco left many asking, “Why?”.
There is much that Minnaar is not allowed to talk about surrounding his final days with Santa Cruz due to confidentiality agreements. However, he shared that he found out the relationship was coming to an end on relatively short notice in mid to late October last year.
“We finished the race season on the 16th. I guess it was the week after,” Minnaar said. This would leave little time to find a new sponsor and get adjusted. Minnaar said that athletes typically know six months or so before the end of a contract, allowing the rider time to talk with and negotiate arrangements with new sponsors. It was especially surprising given that the downhiller had the option to sign for a few more years. “I had a contract going through to the end of, what would have been for, probably ‘27,” Minnaar said.
Given the option for an extension, why did the relationship with Santa Cruz end? Minnaar stated: “The goalpost had been moved; it was just different. Things changed, which kind of shocked me a bit.”
As far as what it meant that “things changed,” Minnaar wouldn’t elaborate more on the topic. It is clear, however, that he is excited about his new role at Norco and is looking forward to sharing his wealth of knowledge and experience as team leader—and having the freedom to do so.
“I think it’s hard when you race for so long; you build up so much experience. You can see things happen. But, once you’re in a big corporate system, you’re put in your box, and you get told, clearly, to stay in your lane,” Minnaar said. “And that’s hard when you can see things that could improve, things that could be run differently and better. And now I’ve got the opportunity to implement it.”
Minnaar went on to say: “I have a say now. I can use these years of experience. It’s a great thing being able to know that you can pass your years of experience and knowledge over to the other riders because that’s your position. Prior to that, I was just a rider, and that was it. So it’s really exciting. I’m ready for this change.”
