Let's Chat With Eric Brunner About His Historic Day at World Cup Fayetteville
We chatted with the U.S. National Champ about the best-ever World Cup finish for a North American male
Eric Brunner had one of the best-ever results for a North American male at World Cup Waterloo, finishing 11th, when all was said and done. And yet despite that accomplishment, Brunner left Wisconsin wanting more.
After Sunday’s 4th-place finish at World Cup Fayetteville, it turns out he wanted a whole lot more.
Brunner successfully navigated the chaos and tactics of the large lead selection on Sunday as it got whittled down to about 8 riders with a few laps to go. When Eli Iserbyt attacked and drew out Laurens Sweeck and Michael Vanthourenhout, Brunner was still left in a small group riding for 4th.
Brunner attacked the group going into the penultimate lap and then nearly caught the lead trio before taking home a 4th-place finish that was the best-ever World Cup result for a North American male in an Elite race.
I chatted with Brunner about his memorable day while he was driving back to Boulder on Monday. I asked him about the race and the meaning of a North American male nearly breaking through onto a World Cup podium.
Eric Brunner Interview: 2022 World Cup Fayetteville
Zach Schuster: It's Monday, you're sitting in a car somewhere in Oklahoma, you had a race yesterday. I heard it went pretty well. How are you feeling about what you accomplished?
Eric Brunner: I'm really happy with my ride yesterday. My teammates were saying, "Oh you don't seem that excited," after the race, but it was so, not unexpected, but new that I don't feel like I did anything a whole lot different than any other race. This was my second World Cup of the season, and I had a little bit of bad luck in the last one, which didn't feel quite so different. It just came together a little bit better yesterday.
Then I started thinking, wow, it's cool to get on the tv interview and have so many people talking to me and messaging me. I got an email from someone at Het Nieuwsblad asking when I am coming to Belgium. That part of it is really exciting.
Zach Schuster: In the tv interview, it was interesting because it was the typical Dutch commentator asking a question that's kind of awkwardly worded, and you were like, "Yeah, I'm not surprised." Did you see something like this happening this soon, this season?
Eric Brunner: Honestly, no, I didn't see it. I thought the top 10 was very possible in this race. A successful race for me yesterday would have been a top 10 and 6th or 7th would have been quite good. But 4th, I'm really really happy with.
Part of being able to do that was being able to use the group dynamic of the race to my advantage. I was able to attack the group I was in, and then they were kind of looking at each other. I think I was still the strongest in the group, not that I got lucky or anything. It was a fun race, and 4th was a huge confidence boost. After yesterday, I can see myself getting a podium in a World Cup in the next couple of years.
Zach Schuster: I wanted to ask specifically about the race. We've seen situations before where there's been a North American male up in a lead group of 10 or 12 in a tactical-style race, but you survived. As things got whittled down, what were some of the keys for you as it progressed from 20 to 15 to 12 to just a handful of dudes?
Eric Brunner: I think you needed to be both strong and tactically savvy in that race. For the first little bit, there were a dozen guys who were kind of chopping each other and trying to be in that first half of the group going into the descent. That was the key place where everyone was fighting for position, at the end of the start/finish straight. But nobody wanted to pull on the pavement, of course.
As the race went on, I had to close a couple of pretty big gaps just because somebody in front of me opened it up or maybe I opened it up once or twice too. Rather than just looking at the people around me and kind of letting them do it or just racing for that group, I knew I was strong enough to race with the guys ahead of me. I was able to gamble and try to close the gaps and maybe end up towing people around.
That was another key to it for me, looking ahead. Racing for a really good placing rather than an adequate one. I wasn't really thinking about the podium even deep into the race, so I just stayed patient and stayed up in that group while trying to not do too much. About the halfway point of the race, I knew it was going to go at some point. So from there, I was just trying to be as far forward as I could when that happened.
Zach Schuster: I think for fans watching, it was probably exciting, "Oh Eric's there in the top 10," and I think if you stayed in the top 10, everyone would have been like, "Man, that's an amazing ride!" Did you ever get to the point where you were like, "Oh shit, this is going better than expected? I might actually pull of something people will remember."
Eric Brunner: Definitely. There weren't a ton of fans there, but it was a pretty good crowd. The ones who were there were cheering loudly, and it was nice to hear people cheering for me. But then once I attacked out of the group with two to go, it got that much louder. I was pretty pleased once the group got going and we dropped enough people. I was like, "Okay, I basically have the top 10 locked up if I don't have any problems." That was kind of the first time I could take a breather and say, "This race is going really well and it's late enough in the race for it to mean something."
It was great to make the front group in the first few laps, but there were still 15 guys within 8 seconds or something. Just doing that was not enough.
4th is just kind of unbelievable. I didn't even know it was the best World Cup finish by an American male. I just figured Jonathan Page would have done that at some point. But I guess his Worlds result--I don't want to call it a fluke or a one-off--but that was his best by a decent margin.
Zach Schuster: Backing up a step, after your 11th-place at Waterloo, one of our readers said we should have made a bigger deal of Brunner finishing 11th, and I was like, "Eh, I don't know. He did pretty well. I think he could have done better."
Eric Brunner: I do think I could have done better. It was a solid 11th for me. It wasn't like I just won the group for 11th through 15th, I was in the top 10 for much of the race. I was happy with that personally. I don't think you or anybody else gave it an unfair treatment. Stephen and Gage and Jeremy have each had like one or two results that were better than that, so I already knew I was up there with those guys.
Zach Schuster: To complete my thought, I remember when Hyde finished I think 10th at Jingle Cross in 2016, and it was exciting at that time! I was newer and was not fully jaded as a journalist, but it was like, "Wow! That's really awesome!" You finished 11th, and I was like, "Eh, that's cool, but I feel like he can do better."
I was at a local race on Sunday and saw the results before the race, and I was like, "Okay, now this is worthy of being excited about." How excited should we be about this? Or should we take a Zach approach and say, "I still expect better?"
Eric Brunner: I take that as a compliment, but I think 4th is something I'm really happy with, and hopefully other people are impressed. I think if you look at the history of American riders, people should be impressed. I would certainly like to back it up with some more World Cup results in Europe, particularly when there are bigger fields. When Wout or Mathieu or Pidcock are racing.
But I also think I have shown in the World Cups that I can do well in a stacked field. Maybe the flip side of that is I've had a hard time in tactical races that play out slowly with fewer riders.
Zach Schuster: I would imagine it's huge for you. Hearing you talk about it, you're saying, "I was in this group with Thibau Nys, Vandebosch, Daan Soete, and you know what, I'm stronger than all of these guys." And then you really stuck it to them with that attack. I feel like that has to give you some confidence, being able to say, "I can do this, and I did this."
Eric Brunner: Most definitely. A lot of those guys I had never even ridden on their wheels before. Some of them I had, but not for an entire race. But it's not a new situation, it's just a bigger race with bigger names. I've been in races like that many times, so I know what to do. It's more just not letting yourself get too excited because of who's around you or how big the race is. It's just doing things that I know how to do, there are just more people watching.
Zach Schuster: The one other thing related to the race that I wanted to ask about was your attack on the chase group. We didn't necessarily see it on camera, so where did you go and how did you attack that group?
Eric Brunner: I mean, they clearly should have shown a replay of that. Selfishly, at least.
Let's see, on the 7th lap, our group of 8 or so split into a front group of Eli, Michael, and Sweeck, and then there was my group of 5, I think. We rode together for a lap and half, and then I attacked going onto the pavement with two to go. I was at the back of the group and just wound it up from the top of the grass on stonehenge and got a good run on the downhill. I hoped that they were just going to sit up and look around because it seemed like the podium had gone away and we were just kind of on our own. And that was what happened. I got a pretty good gap quickly, and I was like, "Wow, this is really working."
Zach Schuster: I don't know, maybe 4th didn't matter as much to them as it did to you?
Eric Brunner: They were just racing for 4th rather than for 2nd or 3rd.
Zach Schuster: You made a good dent in that lead. You were chasing like 30 seconds, and I think you cut it down to like 7 seconds going into the last lap. Could you see them up ahead, and were you like, "Maybe I can pull this off?"
Eric Brunner: When I got to the climb with one and a half laps to go and there was a long straightaway from the base of the climb, then I could see them and was like, "Oh wow, alright." I was just time trialing, so it didn't really change my mentality too much, but it was motivating to see I was closing the gap down. It definitely helped me mentally.
I think I was 7 seconds crossing the line with 1 to go, but I was within like 3 or 4 seconds going onto the pavement. But then again, they were looking back, I could see them looking back, but I was just time-trialing. I didn't have the ability to accelerate like they did, and I certainly had been riding harder the previous lap.
Zach Schuster: You could definitely see Eli was like, "Okay, I need to start going." In some capacity, you've got to feel a little bit of respect, right? Eli Iserbyt didn't want you to join their little Belgie group.
Eric Brunner: Oh yeah. I think that shows more respect than being like, oh, I don't care if this guy catches us because we're just going to beat him anyway. It will be cool to race against some of these guys again because now I know that they know me. Maybe it will be a little bit easier to ride with them.
Zach Schuster: Hyde somehow became friends with Wout, and I think he was kind of on peoples' radar. Who do you want to be friends with? Which of the Euros are you going to try to buddy up with to go on Spanish vacations?
Eric Brunner: I don't know. I've found that everyone I talk to is very friendly. Multiple guys came up to congratulate me after my ride. Neils Vandeputte had some nice words for me. Tom Meeusen. I was lined up between them on Friday, and Meeusen said I was his favorite for that day. I didn't follow up on that, but that was super cool. He's a guy I've known about and looked up to. I remember seeing those guys training with the Telenet team in Boulder when I was like a freshman in high school. So to be getting some respect from him years later is pretty insane.
Zach Schuster: That is pretty cool. Ellen Noble had some nice European results, and I remember one of them she was on a podium with Marianne Vos, or at least on the U23 podium at the same time as Marianne Vos, and she talked about having Marianne Vos tell her she had a nice race. That's super cool.
Eric Brunner: Same feeling for me for sure.
Zach Schuster: So you're going to dodge on which one you're going to try to be friends with.
Eric Brunner: I mean, I have to get to know them a little bit first.
Zach Schuster: I guess final takeaway, what's your final takeaway on Eric's 4th-place finish at World Cup Fayetteville?
Eric Brunner: I'd say it's very validating for me to see the training I'm doing and all the preparation is working. It's also going to be very motivating for me to go home for a couple of weeks and rest and train and come into Pan-Ams and Nationals with a lot of confidence. I'm going to Europe in December as well, so it shows me I can be on that level. On some of those courses and with that many more guys in the races, it's going to be a lot harder, but I definitely know now that I can ride at the front of those races.
Zach Schuster: And as fans, you think folks should be excited?
Eric Brunner: Yeah. Hopefully we got some new fans, and I know I heard from a lot of people who were really excited, so I'm happy I could put on a little show and make the American fans proud. I think there were a lot of people from other countries who are excited to see an American do well, also.
Zach Schuster: What's up next for you? You have Pan-Ams and Really Rad. Are you going to race again before Nationals?
Eric Brunner: Really Rad is the next one, and then I am going to stay the week and race Northampton. And then Nationals. We're rounding out the domestic season pretty quickly here. It's gone by fast.
Zach Schuster: Like I said on the podcast, it's been a pretty sick season. Even with Vinnie, you guys gave him everything he could handle. The Elite Men's racing is on a super high level, and I am personally excited we get to watch all of this. It's so good.
Eric Brunner: It's great to have all the stuff on tv. I'm a little bummed that I didn't really show my best form in those first few races, but at the same time, you prioritize, and yesterday made up for it.
Zach Schuster: Cool man. Enjoy your time back in Boulder, and we'll see you in Falmouth. You've got a jersey to defend.
Eric Brunner: Yeah man.
Zach Schuster: Having Vinnie over was great, I think he probably helped contribute to you racing how you did at these World Cups, but I'm excited to see the North Americans throw down with one another. I want to see you and Curtis go head to head.
Eric Brunner: I am looking forward to that too. Like you said, there are positives to both sides, but it will be fun to just have the North American show here for a couple of weeks.
Zach Schuster: Cool man. Drive safe.
Eric Brunner: Thanks Zach. See ya.
Stoked for you, Eric, that was so thrilling to watch! Great interview, thanks so much, can't wait for Nat's and Europe.
And how cool would it be to see Brunner do that in Europe with the National Champs jersey and not that fugly continental kit? Have to think given a choice he would rather repeat at Nats than PanAms. And good call out on Eli looking back and seeing EB charging…..you could almost see him thinking “oh shit where did he come from!”