Haley Smith on becoming a privateer in 2026 while doing her PhD

With Pace

Payson McElveen

Photography, Interviews, Adventure, Basketball, Mountain Biking, Outdoors, Entrepreneur, Athletes, Culture, Current Events, Inspirational, Health & Fitness, Society & Culture, Sports, Gravel Biking, Gravel Cycling, Celebrities, Cycling

4.8 • 767 Ratings

🗓️ 25 January 2026

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Haley Smith has been on one factory team or another since she was in her teens. In that time, she spent a decade as a World Cup XC racer, went to the 2021 Olympics, and won the inaugural round of the Life Time Grand Prix. But this year, she’s embarking on a new chapter as a privateer. She’s also doing it while completing her PhD. Haley caught up with Payson in Girona this week to talk about the challenges and opportunities of privateering, including why it was the best way forward for h...

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm Pace McElvin and this is the WithPace podcast.
0:11.8	I find in gravel a lot of the time, that dream quality of our goals is missing.
0:18.3	It's very consumer driven.
0:20.2	It's very contract driven. It's very contract driven.
0:21.6	And I wither in that environment.
0:25.1	Being a privateer, I have the freedom to pick events that make me feel like the greenest kid
0:32.3	that's just going after something that makes her heart sing.
0:36.2	And I was losing that where I was in gravel for the last few years.
0:42.7	Hello, everyone. Welcome back.
0:45.1	Haley returns today after joining us not too long ago from Gravelburn.
0:50.3	She helped with one of our post-stage recaps last late October. But she's here in
0:56.3	Gerona right now for a little three-week training camp, also to pre-ride the Traca
1:02.2	course, I think. And she's got quite the transition year going on. A lot of change. And so I wanted
1:08.7	to get her back on the podcast to discuss some of it.
1:12.4	She, of course, has been part of the Lifetime Grand Prix the last four years, won the inaugural
1:16.3	year in 2022 after a really incredibly successful World Cup career that included some World Cup
1:23.9	podiums, of course, being a part of the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo.
1:31.0	But she's transitioning now to her first privateer program, the first in her entire career,
1:38.1	which I was very curious about.
1:40.1	And also is changing up her training a lot and kind of enlisting the help of a bit of a VIP
1:47.5	coach, I would say.
1:48.9	It was really fun learning about that, really cool that she was willing to be open about that.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Payson McElveen, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Payson McElveen and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.