Nothing more character building than a spot of derny at 4 years old…
Cool
One of the best mtb videos I’ve seen, love that first sunset on to of the mountain and some of the shots through the singletrack… makes me want to ride!
Positioned as “some exclusive, private shots of Irina Kalentieva before the Race Day of the Cross-Country Mountain bike World cup Offenburg 2010.” this video is pretty good at capturing some of the focus you feel on the day of a race. I like the editing of the course and bringing it together with the shots of Irina, but I wouldn’t really say it was exclusive or private, maybe a bit cheeky though.
Nothing to do with cycling on this one, but just… well… you’ll see.
Thanks to Nick @nicholasflood for the video, just brilliant.
I’ve been meaning to do this post for a while now, at least a year, when Kabush brought up the subject while watching some old video footage. It got brought back to me recently when Dave Arthur, editor of bikemagic.com went to meet him and test some of the bike range. So what I have is…
A signed number from my race at the Plymouth round of the world cup from back in ’95, along with a couple of photos I took. I was riding in the support race which was going on at the same time as Johnny T doing an autograph session on the day prior to the main event, he was only doing it for a short time frame so as soon as the race was finished I rode straight over and got the number signed, as I didn’t want to miss the chance!
Going back even further in time, I received a reply to a letter I had sent, just before he won the world title over in Italy in ’91. I was racing as a junior back then and we all used to love seeing a good old Tomac attack! Inside the package, which made my day, two signed postcards from the man himself.
The first one is from his Motorola days, which had written on it “Neil, Stay on your Mt. Bike, Johnny T”. I’m guessing, and reading into it a little, that he didn’t really like what he saw on the pro road side of things and it wasn’t long after that that he and Motorola parted company.
The other card had “To Neil, Big hills, big gears! Shred til your dead! Happy trails, John Tomac.” I was dead shuffed! Completely made my day and it was really inspiring for me.
As a bit of a side note, watching Ralph Naef racing up in Dalby reminded me of him a little, in terms of liking to lead a race from the front and general positioning on the bike.
One of the defining memories I have from Dalby is of Naef leading the first group down Medusas drop on the opening lap, visibly faster than the other racers. Which is similar to one I have of Tomac from Plymouth, going balls out straight down the middle, carving it up, dust flying everywhere, while all the others seemed to pick and creep their way down in comparison. Other pro riders where heard asking in the days leading up to the race “What line is he taking?” “That pipeline man, I don’t know – you know, how is Tomac doing it?”
One of the other defining memories from that race was of Steve Tilford, but we won’t go into that one!
(Updated Friday 30th April)Here is some photos from last weekends world cup race in Dalby. Should have some video snippets, and some racing photos up at the weekend too.
Ok, so it’s not quite the challenge that I’m attempting but pretty cool stuff all the same.
This one follows the Atherton brothers on what looks to be the same course…
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