WILD

Al Bond, the feral landscapes of the North Wales landscape.

Which kind of nicely drops us at the foot of the north face of the future. Of which Al Bond is an exemplary figure – the South Walian who went north – the man tarred with the same brush as the great rugby union stars of the seventies and eighties. You haven’t really Al, and you did a marvellous job of winning the national series a year back. Sad that us, the media, didn’t make more of it, but hey, let’s make up for lost time. Al Bond. One of the most stylish riders in the world (to be continued).

There’s the variety of riding that you have within a relatively small area. You can go out and smash out a loop at any of a number of amazing trail centres. Or if you’re feeling adventurous, there’s epic wilderness moorland singletracks, which can easily take up your whole day if you forget spare tubes! You can ride DH on a bunch of great tracks, Llangollen, Llangynog, Betws y Coed, Blaenau Ffestiniog for starters. With secret tracks as well, there really are tracks all over the place! But for me probably the most important factor is having a good bunch of mates to ride with that are close by. The MTB scene up here isn’t massive, but it’s a good, pretty tight–knit bunch of dudes that are always keen to ride.

Well I went from pretty much an unknown at races, to winning the series in the space of two years. So not having much media attention is not new to me. To really make a name for yourself in this sport you have to perform at World Cup level. You get your average DH MTB fan and they’re only interested in who’s top five on the results sheet.

I reckon that if you asked any racer they would want the media attention. Maybe a few of the top pro’s would say they don’t want the hassle, but they’re probably lying!

Yeah I have struggled a bit so far when it comes to World Cups. I had put it down slightly to lack of experience (I only raced three years of World Cups). But then you look at the top junior racers who are first year and they’re getting great results. So then I thought maybe it was a mental thing. Why could I beat some dudes at nationals then get smoked by them at World Cups? But in the end it was simpler. I have always suffered with arm pump, I crashed in my first ever race from it and I crashed in the last World Cup from it. I tried training different ways to sort it, tried every potion, supplement and old wives tail. Nothing worked, so two months ago I got in contact with a surgeon who is the boy in the UK for arm pump surgery. He invited me up to do some tests and two weeks later I had the operation.

I think that was the case up until a couple of years ago. But now with everyone training harder, I think it’s become a more level playing field. You have 80 guys who are all pinned and times are close. There are the consistent top ten racers who seem like they’re kind of ahead of the rest slightly. I’m not sure there’s an easy answer to how you break into those consistent top ten results. Experience, persistence, adaptive training, more hours on the bike, confidence? I think it’s a bit of all of those.

When you look at a calendar and you see four months of racing it looks quite a short timeframe. But then you add in two months of national races, three to four months solid training pre–season and you’re only left with three months off. It still ends up being quite full–on. That said though, I still think they could put a few more races into the schedule, back to back. You look at the SX dudes and they’re racing week in week out for like three months.>>