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![\"Nick](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Short-shorts-and-boomboxes-GettyImages-104561852.jpg\")
A veteran of the 3 Peaks Cyclo-Cross race, here he is in 2010, with a flat bar on his Scott CX Team. Bryn Lennon \/ Getty Images<\/p>\nIt all began for Nick in the late 1970s, when, in his own words, he \u201cstumbled on bikes\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad introduced me to cyclocross when I was nine,\u201d Craig recalls.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would\u2019ve been \u201979. I had a 24in-wheeled Raleigh Arena, trainers, flat pedals, really tight short-shorts, a football shirt and my mum\u2019s gardening gloves. Helmets weren\u2019t worn then.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did that winter [season], and that was me hooked. You can imagine riding cyclocross on bald tyres \u2013 it was basically learning to slide around corners and try to stay upright!”<\/p>\n
Bikepacking provided his training sessions
\nA veteran of the 3 Peaks Cyclo-Cross race, here he is in 2010, with a flat bar on his Scott CX Team. Bryn Lennon \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cBy the age of 12, I was doing track, road, cyclocross, criteriums (short closed-circuit road races) \u2013 whatever I could get my hands on, really. I was racing a lot.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen a friend introduced me to touring \u2013 we call it bikepacking now, don\u2019t we? \u2013 and I\u2019d go off youth-hostelling in the Lake District or on days out in the Peaks.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Those rides] were my training camps \u2013 we just rode our bikes, usually with a saddle bag full of sandwiches and a couple of quid for tea at a cafe, and that was cycling to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cyclocross was the gateway to MTB racing<\/p>\n
Nick continued to compete, but developed a strong preference for off-road racing. \u201cI started to win national-level cyclocross races,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n
\u201cI loved the off-road scene; the summer [road] scene wasn\u2019t doing a lot for me. Then this wonderful sport, mountain biking, sort of appeared.<\/p>\n
\u201cI noticed that Tim Gould and David Baker [of Team Peugeot], who were four or five years older than me, were trying this sport out.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey did it first, and in the winter of 1988, I ended up trying out a mountain bike. We rode around Kinder Reservoir [in Derbyshire] in deep snow, on Muddy Fox Couriers, and we froze and couldn\u2019t feel our fingers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe walked these bikes around the reservoir, took them back and went, \u2018That\u2019s not for us!\u2019 I think it was the bikes and the conditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guy at the bike shop in Huddersfield said, \u2018I want you to try some other bikes\u2019. So, we took some other bikes out, and we ended up setting up a team, and, in \u201989, started racing mountain bikes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sport was developing. There were these big money pots \u2013 a \u00a31,000 first prize for a cross-country race \u2013 but Tim Gould would normally turn up and take all of them. I was riding these rigid bikes and learning the trade, really.\u201d<\/p>\n
He rode in the inaugural UCI World Championships
\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Short-shorts-and-boomboxes-01.jpg\")
He\u2019s joined us on many an MBUK rides over the years. Russell Burton \/ Our Media<\/p>\n
Nick\u2019s career in mountain biking would include plenty of highlights \u2013 one of the earliest of which was flying out to take part in the debut UCI MTB World Championships in Durango, Colorado, in 1990.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was absolutely amazing!\u201d he enthuses. \u201cWhat cycling brought for me was travel, so to make the team to ride the first ever UCI Worlds [was incredible].<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a 20-year-old kid. I remember taking this massive double-deck radio-cassette player. I walked into the airport with this [boombox over my shoulder], got to security and there was \u00a310 worth of batteries in there that I had to chuck.<\/p>\n
“We were there [in Durango] for three-and-a-half weeks, at altitude, and it started the whole thing.”<\/p>\n
\u201cI can remember buying some bar-ends from the local bike shop and [RockShox founder] Paul Turner turning up with his forks \u2013 I ended up with a set of RS-1s for the race.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was really cool [having a suspension fork]. Obviously, it weighed a ton, but that was irrelevant. Instead of bouncing off everything \u2013 we used to run 50psi [in the tyres], so we just pinged off everything \u2013 this fork absorbed it. You could see it working.\u201d<\/p>\n
He’s raced downhill, too<\/p>\n