I raced for one year when I was 13yrs old at Bexhill Burners on a Mk1 Raleigh Night Burner (thanks for knitting the jumper Mum!):
I stopped after a couple of nasty falls and took up white water slalom canoeing where I made the British junior team and travelled most of Europe.
At the start of this year I had a mid life crisis and became interested in new school racing after taking my 4yr old to Bexhill Burner BMX track and then our new local track at Mitcham. After more than two hours of non stop riding I struggled to get Daniel off each time, so he clearly loved it and I got a few arm punches followed by comments of "I love you Dad" having rolled around the track with him.
Daniel was riding his Mongoose pitcrew and I was using my Mongoose Californian. Not the best track bikes, so we tried a few of the club bikes and then started to look for our own race machines. A guy called Terry Smith was selling a Redline proline mini which I though would be good for Daniel, and he had a rather special pro bike for sale too which I just had to buy when I saw it as it's a piece of living history.
Here is Daniel's Redline when we bought it:
and now with Answer carbon forks, carbon bars, Shimano DXR brake lever and Uni fire seat:
But here is the bike I got for myself to learn the ways of new school BMX and get some track riding under my belt:
Dale Holmes Free Agent Team Limo 2012!
As you'll probably know, Dale is a multiple World Champion and now manages the Free Agent Team.
Great Britain
24-time British Champion
16-time UK Nat'l #1
2-time U.S. National Champion
2-time European Champion
2-time ABA World Champion
1-time World Cup Champion
5-time UCI World Champion
The 2012 FA Team Limo was done in gold to due to Maris Stromberg winning his 2nd Olympic Gold at London 2012. The Free Agent Team free up large chunks of their time to provide Free Agent Coaching Clinics around the US and support a rider development programme. Having emailed FA, there are medium term plans to role out a similar rider development programme in the UK via FA stockists. Anyway, enough waffle. Here are some pics (Hopefully it's Ok to post these ones):
The story is, Dale rode over the line having won at a UK national race in Manchester and handed the bike over to Terry Smith along with all his Free Agent Rockstar race kit. What a generous champion! She misses the Californian sun but regularly stretches her legs at the Mitcham track:
The FA rides like nothing I have ever ridden. It's sooooo smooth! 100psi in BMX tyres was something new for me too. It's been fun trying to learn to ride again after nearly 30yrs. I'm sure I used to be able to jump much better higher and further bitd!
We've got the bug and want to do some regionals next year, but our 1st race is this Sunday at the new national track at Burgess Park, Peckham...I just hope we both do ourselves justice.