Davo's 20years Of MTB (Warning - Inlcudes bad haircuts)

I realised to my surprise and delight the other day that this year marks 20 years of me mountainbiking.

It led me to reminisce and gaze skyward with an ever-growing smile as the memories of adventures, friends, races and my bikes came flooding back. So I thought I'd write a short blog about it.

My first bike was a Specialized Hardrock Comp with Suntour running gear. Little did I know that one day I would own the bike of my dreams - The out of reach S-Works! I would never have imagined that if i ever owned such a bike, that my mates would heckle me for having the worst bike in the pack.

It was 1988. I was the youngest of the dudes in my neighbourhood who had mtbs. The other boys were all 1-3 years older than me so I had to keep up. We used to go out on long epics around the South downs in Sussex. We went out for hours but rarely covered huge kms. We used to stop for ages in old quarries and steep forests to test ourselves riding the steep chutes and slopes, and try and do jumps. We were obviously being watched by today's event organisers as our rides were undoubtedly the forerunners of the Red Bull Rampage.

These were the days before Shimano had invented the SPD pedal and Rock Shox RS1's were still in R&D, but close to making it into the MTB mags. We used to get hideously lost and without fail my mate Rich (Stallion) would have to call home from a phone box to get his folks to do his paper round! We'd be crossing farmland, throwing our bikes across drainage streams and taking ambitious running jumps to follow them - hoping we'd find a track or somewhere we knew. There were no mtb parks like we are spoiled with today. So you had to link bits of singletrack together with hauls across farms and country roads, to get a good ride in.



All these capers got us pretty fit and handy on the bikes, so when we saw a local XC race advertised we were keen to give it a crack. And I was onto my third bike, the first Orange Aluminium-O, resplendent in full Deore DX and not long after, was rocking one of mtbing's best inventions - SPD pedals!







I so wish I still had that rad Overend-esque Specialized Jersey.

I won my first race in the Junior class. It was almost flat and consisted of hammering around a field, then doing a spaghetti of wooded singletrack, then repeat about 6 times. I belted round and beat most of the grown-ups in the process. I thought I could get right into this.


I loved it and went on to do a lot of races over the next few years including some rounds of the Southern and National Series', cyclocross races and allsorts. My mates and I all got fairly handy and were riding for shops and clubs and getting flashier bikes. It was a great time and on good weekends we were blessed with wins.

Here Carpethead and Stallion threaten me with the beats after snatching a win from them...


I started racing the 'Sport' class (19+) when I was nearly 18 as I was not getting a competitive enough ride at local races against the other Juniors. My Orange had snapped due to my outrageous hucks and I managed to scrape the pingers together for a nice ride.


I was now riding a budget-blowing Dave Yates custom with all the trimmings including early prototype U.S.E stuff, XTR and even an XTR seatpost that I really wish I still had. It had rigids on of course. Shocks at this stage were still mostly for "gaylords". I ran awesome Diacompe 986 cantilever brakes with the XTR Servowave levers. This combo meant the blocks could be run further from the rims which was great for clearance on the typical muddy 'parcours'. The frame started off in boring black and white but subsequently got resprayed in the team colours of M&J Cycles who I started riding for.


I managed to win a couple of series'. My favourite was the 'Gorrick Winter Series'. It was always muddy and frickin' cold. I moved up to 'Expert' class eventually and never got any wins, but got top 3 a couple of times. The extra laps led me to get a shock and become an official gaylord, although everyone was doing it so I didn't feel too bad. I had an AMP Research fork. A truly shit fork, but with good hype behind it. I blew out the damper every outing and had a steady stream of replacement parts being delivered under warranty. I eventually got a Marz' XC500 at the same time Rune Hoydahl was giving everyone the good news in the Grundig World Cup on the same fork. I looked like the bollocks on my super factory custom bike. It even had my name on the top tube. What an arrogant wanker I must have been.


I was finding it harder to get any better against some strong fellas and I'd also started to have enough of it. I never 'knew what I wanted to be when I grew up' but had always wanted to travel. I took a job as a mountainbike guide in the U.S, down in North Carolina, guiding teenagers and some adult groups around the Blue Ridge Mountains. The fancy mtb got sold for a song, the day before I flew out and the meagre pingers helped buy a crap car, of which I burned the engine out driving up to high trail heads for climbing trips. Shame.

I did the guiding for 3 seasons, 3 years in a row and did hardly any races in the that time. There were even times when I didn't own a bike. I was rockclimbing a lot more and long road trips featuring hiking and climbing were the norm. The riding in the Blue Ridge was the best I have ever done, and was all on a stock Giant Sedona rigid with STX. Its not the bike that makes great riding. The rides we did were amazing and would regularly have a dozen epic river crossings, huge waterfalls and large Black Rat snakes to toy with and encourage people to bunny hop. The climbs were long and the downhills lasted ages. Was the time of my life on the bike. Can't find my pics. If I do I will pop a couple on here.

I moved to NZ for a while to work and travel and met my now wife, Amie, in Tauranga. I got a cheap bike and got back into the riding. I even did a couple of races including something in Rotorua. But I was still mainly rockclimbing.

Amie and I moved back to the UK and I used my cheap old Marin Indian Fire Trail to great effect, scouring the local trails around Bristol and the new MTB parks in Wales, which had sprung up whilst I was abroad. The riding was mint and it was great to get out with my mates who I started riding with many years earlier. Their bikes were flasher. Mine had gone downhill as I was a lowly student, having decided at age 24 that what I wanted to be when I grew up, was an accountant. Ooops.

I did a bunch of the huge MTB 100km Enduros in the Welsh mountains. These events were mint. The best i did was a 17th from a field of over 1000. These were big events and they made me want to get back into racing. Amie and I did some great bike tours in Europe in this time too. We'd love to do it again one day. It is amazing moving around new countries with all your gear, not relying on anyone and doing whatever you want.

Before we had Ella, I realised that I needed to 'stock up' on toys as once she was born we'd be in the poor house and saving for a home. I got an S-Works hardtail frame off Ebay and built it up.

Amazing bike. I've run it geared, SS and its even won some races. It is still my geared bike and I can't imagine selling it. I'd always lusted after one since I had my hands on my first ever bike catalogue when I brought my Hardrock all those years before.

I moved back to NZ with Amie and our daughter, Ella, who we had in the UK. I immediately started enjoying the riding around Wellington's trails and got into a couple of PNP races, then some more races, met some really good cobbers, and the Bushlove Racing Team started. And there we go.



See y'all on those awesome trails!