more than 20 years in the game..

I started out mtbing back in the late 80's and hit my first race in the winter of 89, i got third and was picked up to ride for local shop team No Sweat, for the next 4 years i stayed loyal and stayed on the team picking up help from powerbar and a few others along the way, in the 4 year stretch i would race 2/3 times a month and never finished outside the top 3 in 4 years of racing uphill,xc and dh.. by time i was in my my last year as a junior, i was slaying it, taking back to back wins @ the ride for life event in north devon on a sat and taking woodbury on the sunday, after that race i quit.. cars and partys took over for a while before i picked up a local news paper and read about a local guy taking a win.. I was pissed, i trained for the next few months and returned to racing xc in sport and then expert class xc and hitting the odd dh event. I soon found myself riding nationals and racing on the road and doing tt's. Soon the tech sections i loved were gone in xc and the singletrack had turned in to wideopen power sections, It was time to move on.. In the winter i had took up snowboarding and this was now where i got my buzz in the mid to late 90's, I spotted a USA mtb magazine on some guy free-riding and it looked like snowboarding on a bike.. still racing xc now in europe i would head to the quarry and hills and ride with the dh boys and started building freeride trails, By late 98 i did my last race and took the south west series in experts and 7th in the nps in sport, some top 40 results in europe and had started to do shoots with MBUK magazine.. I was now doing more freeride than xc and by 2000 had found trails, dirt jumping was such a cool feeling, all about being tech with your lines and having flow, just my style, for the next few years i would ride trails most days and by the mid 2000's i was in my prime, going big in the quarrys and the new fad of shore riding was just like tight tech singletrack that were in my roots, still doing magazine shoots and road trips i did the shore tour, first time out on the new transition bike and had a blast for 7 days, By the end of it i had showed i was one of the best shore style riders in the UK, add this to a 30 foot huck i had done on a hardtail i had shown my big line skills as well, talk of more shoots in the mags sounded cool but for me i wanted to get back to my riding, just killing it in the hills away from the posers and the glamour that had took over the freeride world in the uk.. soon after i went a little off the rails with news of my dad having cancer the night i got back from the shore tour and burnt some bridges and quit some sponsorship deals and did things my way.. few years later and now im back, still killing it in the hills and having fun, got some cool sponsors that want to be apart of what i am and help with R&D and other areas away from just magazine shoots, This year i have hit up a 4x and made the main along with doing the exmoor enduro event. For the rest of the year and for 2010 i only see things on the up and its not the last for the free-wheeling punk rocker. i still love the sport, love helping promo it and my sponsors and love riding what ever type of riding it is..