Title: Dr

Name: Peat, Steve

Nickname: Peaty

Age: 35

PoB: England

Team: Santa Cruz Syndicate

2008 World Cup overall: 4

Career highlights: 3 x World Cup Champion

Favourite food: Fish & Chips

Steve Peat, aka ‘Oldschool’, perhaps in reference to his mature years, perhaps in reference to his balls out, no fear attitude. Peaty was consistently in the top five last year, taking podiums in all but one World Cup, and let’s be honest, Canberra wasn’t much of a World Cup.

With this year’s season being drawn out, and including one more race than in 2008, consistency will again prove to be key. And if experience breeds consistency, then you won’t find a more likely winner than Peaty, with an almighty 46 World Cup podium finishes. Getting on in age, will the extended season take its toll, or will the big man from Sheffield show the young guns exactly why he is considered one of the greatest riders of all time?

At 35 years old, and with a wife and child back in Sheffield, Peaty will openly admit he’s finding it harder to leave his family for the bright lights and late nights of the World Cup circuit, and yet he keeps coming back and showing the world he’s still on it. Will the patter of a second pair of tiny feet perhaps prove too much of a distraction?

Perhaps the stable family life is the perfect platform to launch yet another assault on the World Cup, and let’s not forget the World Champs. For those that might doubt the man’s commitment you need only have seen the look on his face in Val Di Sole as fellow countryman Gee Atherton pipped him at the last to take the gold in 2008.

Training in his beloved Wharncliffe Woods, through rain, sleet and snow does not make for a man who will back down in a fight, and with Gee getting faster by the minute, and Greg and Sam looking to rekindle their battle of 2008, a fight he will have.dr-steve-peat