Share

Features

The ten biggest mountain biking celebrities

Underneath a full face helmet and goggles you can be whoever you want to be, leave the rigours of your life behind and just enjoy shredding the trail. Having said that, the following people are so famous we think it would be impossible to not to notice them on the uplift:

George Bush

“The problem with the French is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur”

“Reading is the basics for all learning”

“Fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.”

There’s a lot of things President George Bush got wrong during his two terms in office, but one thing he didn’t get wrong was his choice of sport. Bush now organizes the annual Warrior race for wounded verteans.

Harrison Ford

No doubt wanting to recapture the feeling of speeder bikes on the forest moon of Endor, Harrison Ford has been photographed with his Ibis Ripley (that you certainly couldn’t describe as a “hunk of junk”) on multiple occasions – although surely a Santa Cruz 5010 would suit him better.

Orlando Bloom

What’s this our elf eyes see? Only Legolas and swashbuckling Will Turner himself, Orlando Bloom. In between a hectic filming schedule Bloom relaxes on all forms of bikes.

Ben Stiller

Another of Hollywood’s elite, Ben Stiller, may not be a regular mountain biker but he can tell a tall tale about a ride just as much as the rest of us. Here he narrates his first (and presumably only) night mountain bike ride. If you take nothing away from this, just remember one thing: “don’t fight the mountain.”

Guy Martin

Guy Martin is so keen on mountain biking that it could be offensive to call him a motorbiker nowadays. He’s been in riding videos with Danny Hart and Steve Peat and this year swerved the Isle of Man TT to ride in the Great Divide race in America – supposedly the hardest mountain bike race in the world.

George North

At 6ft 4in tall and weighing 17st, Welsh rugby union centre and winger George North needs a big bike, and they don’t come much bigger than the Nicolai Geometron. He’s certainly no stranger to a bit of mud and probably one of very few people who scares the rocks he rides over.

Mark Webber

How do you keep up that adrenaline rush and sense of speed form a career in F1? It seems mountain biking is the answer for Mark Webber at least.

Mountain biking hasn’t always been kind to Webber though, in 2010 he crashed and broke his shoulder, a fact he had to keep secret from his team boss, which many people speculate caused him to lose the title that year.

Duff McKagan

Duff McKagan went from being one of the most debauched rockstars in the world to an everyday accountant. And what do accountants do on the weekend? Mountain biking, of course.

Except, as this picture has proved, McKagan has been keeping it real on bikes since he was in his prime. He went on to use it as absolution from his drinking problem and still rides to this day.

Jon Bon Jovi

A hair-metal compatriot of McKagan, Jon Bon Jovi is so invested in mountain biking he even sponsored a team in the early noughties. The BonJovi/West Virginia team had a mix of elite and aspiring riders and toured the national scene with the support of the coiffured rockstar.

Grayson Perry

The Turner Prize winning artist was a keen cross country racer at the Hackney Beastway series in the nineties and actually claims to have invented mountain biking when he was 14.

Newsletter Terms & Conditions

Please enter your email so we can keep you updated with news, features and the latest offers. If you are not interested you can unsubscribe at any time. We will never sell your data and you'll only get messages from us and our partners whose products and services we think you'll enjoy.

Read our full Privacy Policy as well as Terms & Conditions.

production