Martha Gill & Janelle Soukup On Pioneering Women's MTB While Keeping It Fun
The Ride Companion
TRC Media House
4.9 • 533 Ratings
🗓️ 6 May 2026
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Martha Gill and Janelle Soukup join The Ride Companion for a powerful conversation about the progression of women's mountain biking, freeride, racing, mentorship and what it takes to build a career in the sport.
During this episode Martha Gill, the 2024 Queen of Crankworx and long time Marin Bikes athlete, shares her journey from cross-country racing and Olympic hopeful to enduro, Crankworx, Lucid and helping support the next generation of riders.
Janelle Soukup talks through her rapid rise into freeride mountain biking, from selling her ATV to buy her first mountain bike, discovering events like Hannah Bergemann's Hangtime, earning a place at Natural Selection, becoming Whip-Off World Champion and receiving the invite to Red Bull Rampage.
Together, Martha and Janelle discuss the pressure of Rampage, fear, progression, sponsorship, the state of women's mountain biking, the importance of opportunity and why the next generation of female riders is pushing the sport further than ever before. This is a proper insight into two women helping shape the future of mountain biking... Of course, BIG thanks to the Marin Bikes team for helping make this episode happen!
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Edited By: Doug Tucker, onlyflightdispatch.com & TRC Media House
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | No one ever asked you than like the most nervous you've ever been, you can say this moment now. Like Rampage, it's a top one with a toss up between Rampage and Rast and Pendent. Well, the top of Rampage was so funny, everyone was so locked it and I was just like, at least you've already know you've written your line. No, here we haven't, we haven't, we haven't chatted the shit so we don't. Yeah, I don't know. It's going to go. |
| 0:24.0 | It's actually a lot more uncertainty with a podcast than the homepage. You don't know where it could go. Yeah, I built my line, you know. Yeah, you, we did not build this podcast. It would actually be funny if we did it that way. you get used to set all the questions yeah and then |
| 0:38.5 | you ask me so how long have you been podcasting it's a great question about the same as you've been on |
| 0:44.8 | marin wow there you go we've got our little anniversary's going on all right we can leave that in |
| 0:50.2 | anyway can't we yeah we're all good right we'll do it the intro yeah we'll do an official intro here |
| 0:53.8 | though we might leave that bit in, but who knows? |
| 0:56.0 | Wait, quick question. |
| 0:57.0 | Are we really like you? |
| 0:58.0 | Yeah. |
| 0:59.0 | Okay. What were you going to say? Add words. Okay, go. Just maybe leave. That's how you want to be depicted by the... I would like to not use them, but I just didn't know if you'd be like, |
| 1:07.3 | E-E- or anyways. |
| 1:08.5 | No, you're all right. |
| 1:09.3 | You can say it you want. |
| 1:10.3 | Bigot. |
| 1:10.7 | You know, if you've got like a hard, you know, F-bomb you want to- |
| 1:13.2 | If you just nudge me, e-k, anyways. No, you're all right. You can say what you want. You know, if you got like a hard, you know, F-bomb, you want to joke. |
| 1:12.6 | If you just nudge me, I can beat for you. |
| 1:15.6 | Okay. |
| 1:16.6 | Okay, let's get going. |
| 1:18.6 | You guys are hilarious together. |
| 1:19.6 | It's going to be fun. |
| 1:20.6 | Oh, no. |
... |
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