It’s perhaps no surprise that one of the new competitors on TV’s Gladiators is a pro mountain biker. Hannah catches up with Privateer Bikes rider Kerry Wilson to find out what makes her tick.
Look up Kerry Wilson on Instagram and you might need a lie down. It’s exhausting – sport, outdoors, fitness, action! It’s not the carefully curated shots of sunsets and rainbows of the influencer – it’s the bundle of snaps from someone out with friends, buzzing on life, and grabbing photos and clips before the next run – whether that be on wheels, snow, or otherwise. As someone who only started riding bikes in 2018, yet heads into 2024 riding with support from Privateer, it’s clear Kerry has natural ability when it comes to anything adrenaline-fuelled and physical. It might come as no surprise then that you can see her battling it out as a Contender on this year’s TV nostalgia-show of Gladiators. Yet her achievements on the bike and her TV appearance are something of a surprise to Kerry. I caught up with her to discover how it’s all come about.
Let’s buy a mountain bike
“I started motocross when I was seven, through watching my dad. It was a family thing. His dad did it, my granddad. So with my dad, I had literally no choice! I was getting a motorbike because I was basically his little son. I got a little 50cc motorbike at 7 and then stopped riding motocross at 24. Yeah, continuously for that many years.”
You can be forgiven for feeling a teeny bit jealous of the next part of her life, as Kerry and her wife Amber hit the Morzine scene, working winter seasons so they could be there for the snowboarding. Somewhere along the line, they realised that when the snow melts, everyone switches to bikes, so instead of leaving for the summer, they got equipped.
“We started our first winter in Les Arcs. And then we realised that because we weren’t quite ready to go home, we could do a summer. And it had become super apparent that everyone had mountain bikes in the summer. I’d made really good friends with Emily Horridge [who] it turns out, was super badass on a mountain bike – I didn’t even know! So we were like ‘We need to buy a bike. I’ve never mountain biked before so, yeah, just something that’ll last us a summer so we can play in the summer until the winter comes back around’. And then that was literally the start of it.”
Emily, mountain bike guide, coach, and 2021 Masters Downhill World Champion, recommended a full-suspension Vitus.
“I didn’t have a clue about spec. I was like it’s got brakes. It’s got wheels, we go. Emily basically found me my bike and she was like ‘Go with this one, you should enjoy it’ and that was that.”
From what was meant to be a way to pass the time over summer until the snow came back around, a whole new world grew around Kerry. Those motocross skills came in handy to some extent, but there was still a lot to learn.
“It’s just so much flimsier and lighter. I felt like there was nothing under me. But it was easy to adapt a lot of motocross skills. I remember my first massive crash was because I just hit this massive jump. My favourite thing in motocross was jumps and getting in the air. So I just hit this [jump]. But in motocross, if you hit a jump… if things are going tits up in the air, like if the front end’s coming up, you just tap the back brake, brings it down… or if you’re going front end, maybe you just give it a good old panic rev and it kind of balances the bike back out. And I hit this jump and my nose just went boom! And it literally felt like there was nothing under me. So yeah, that was way too early into my riding… I just started mega keen and thought that I could do everything. So I literally nearly killed myself by jumping what felt like a two-kilogram bike.”
Crashing well, making better friends
“I don’t know what’s worse, crashing in motocross or crashing mountain bikes. There’s no trees to hit doing motocross, but there’s trees to hit in mountain biking. But when you crash doing motocross, you’re going a fair bit faster and the bike’s heavy if you get entangled in that. But, thankfully, in my motocross career, I didn’t hurt a thing. My bike career, I hurt everything!”
There’s a lot to be said for getting a good introduction to mountain biking. With sound bike advice, and riding with the Morzine crew, Kerry’s skills developed fast. So fast, that she soon found herself becoming an ambassador for Hunt Wheels – without even trying.
“I wanted to ride with people who would just bring me on because I knew that I’d only been riding a short time. I met a guy, Liam Saint, who worked for Hunt Wheels. And he basically taught me how to ride a mountain bike the way I do. He was so, so good. I rode with him any opportunity that I had. He said, ‘You’re really good. I’m gonna get in touch with people I know’ and this turned out to be Tom Marchment who owns Hunt. [Liam] had done follow-cams with me and sent it to Tom, who was like ‘Who is that ?!’ So I was just this random girl who’d been riding bikes two years. I got like wheels and stuff and I was like, this is ridiculous, they’re giving me free stuff. That’s wild. And then obviously Privateer is a part of The Rider Firm, so Liam got a Privateer, and it was basically ‘Do you want a shot?’. Yeah, I rode that for a bit and then Tom was like, ‘Yeah, you’re getting a bike too, as well as the wheels’.
“I was super lucky with the people I was meeting over there. It wasn’t planned at all, I give it to Liam, he definitely helped me get my foot in the door with Privateer and Hunt.“
Home time
Sadly, the Morzine vanlife dream came to a Brexit-induced end, and unable to stay in Europe for the long periods of time they had done, Kerry, Amber, their van and two dogs made the trip back home. It’s a time Kerry clearly misses.
“[We lived in the van] Off and on, like in between apartments. It was hard to do a winter because we have two dogs as well and it’s a [VW] LT35 – it’s not a motorhome. We did it off and on, and in-between seasons we went away and we’d do Europe for two months and stuff and it was… Let’s not talk about it.”
Kerry looks wistful, but without rubbing in the pain, I want to talk #vanlife.
“Yeah, we lived in it for a bit. You stink when you live in it. We came home after travelling around Europe… You cook in the same place, you sleep in it, you literally live in it. And my mum was like, ‘you smell musty’. We thought we smelled great. We’d cleaned everything. Amber is like the biggest clean freak, it’s insane. But yeah, you still smell musty. Living in the van with two dogs. Eee, yummy!”
Back in the UK, Kerry has worked as a postie and is now a dog walker – ‘dream job’, she says. Meanwhile Amber talked her way into a marketing role at the Rider Firm.
“She was just so keen. She made this massive PowerPoint presentation – they weren’t even recruiting! She just sent it straight to Tom, like, ‘You will have me working for you!’ She was just that keen on the brand and what they were about. Just the whole dynamic of them. She was like, ‘You will employ me!’ And they did.”
Where are the chairlifts?
Despite the boundless enthusiasm that bubbles over when you chat with Kerry, she’s not keen on absolutely everything. She says she hates pedalling. And she’s not too keen on the British race scene either – she misses the easy weather and infrastructure of Europe. I asked her about the differences between the UK and European racing.
“I literally found it night and day. Like in Europe just… for the Alpine regions… there was a whole championship for there. It was massive. It’s France, they’re keen as mustard for bikes, so it was a great, great championship. The tracks were insane. There were so many riders, [including] women. In Britain, there’s like… two. It’s not great for women’s cycling in Britain. But in Europe, there was loads of wee French girls. It cost 25 euros to race. For a whole weekend! That was all your riding Saturday, Sunday, and your prizes were so good… But, just the uplifts, I suppose that’s where it’s different in Europe as it’s all ski resorts. There’s chairlifts at every round and stuff just ran very smoothly. And folk are mad keen to be marshals!”
“I’m pretty chuffed with what I’ve done in downhill since being home. but I would much rather be racing in Europe. I was chuffed obviously winning the Scottish downhill and then getting third in British Champs in 2022. Doing the EWS 100 Tweed Valley was pretty cool, ’cause anyone who knows me, I hate pedalling. Like I hate that. That’s coming from motocross. I’m like, whew, where’s the engine to get me up there? But, that was my first enduro race ever, and I got third. I did not see that one coming. I just wanted to finish it and be able to say to people that I actually pedalled that. Like, I pedalled it. So yes, when I got the podium on that, I’d say I was probably more proud of that than any of my downhill stuff. Because it was a shock to me.”
Kerry might hate pedalling, but she hates queuing more – something of a feature of the UK race scene. 2024 sees the first year ever where she hasn’t got a schedule of events lined up. Despite her success at downhill, she’s ready to leave the queues behind and make use of the pedal assist of e-bikes to go on some more chilled adventures away from the race tape.
“I hate f***ing queuing… I just hate queuing. I found myself getting really frustrated… stood on these fire roads for hours. And then getting to the top of the hill and then being ‘I don’t wanna do a full run. Cause I don’t wanna go down at the bottom of this hill in like three minutes. And then to be back to the fire road’. That really started to get to me. I would be signing my weekends away to go stand on a fire road. I don’t want to be that super negative, moany person, but by the end of the season that’s how I would totally feel.”
Changing scenes and ‘that’ TV show
“I’ve competed since I was seven. I would take little breaks in between doing the winters and that, but sometimes I do feel like the racing takes enjoyment out of it. For me personally, my competitive side is sometimes my downfall. So I think I’m going to ride my e-bike and go on adventures and do some Munros and just do things that I would never pedal around on.”
Kerry is quite tight-lipped about Gladiators – when we talk, the whole series is filmed, but only the qualifying rounds have been broadcast. We know she’s made it through to the quarterfinals, but without a BBC minder there Kerry is worried she’ll say the wrong thing and breach the terms of the contract with the programme makers. It’s a taste of what goes on behind the scenes that I hadn’t really thought about. Even being ‘a Contender’ wasn’t something that Kerry had on her radar.
“I didn’t apply for it! It was Amber, the usual, just chucking me into everything and anything! She saw online somewhere that they were taking applications for this new series of Gladiators. And she mentioned it to me. And I just laughed it off. I was like ‘Ha ha, very good. That’s a no!’ Lo and behold, she filled out this whole application form and sent it off. And the next thing I knew they were phoning.”
“So, I go to try out [for it] which, which was, oh my God, so, so hard. So you obviously see if you’re physically fit enough to do it. And you get interviewed on the camera. To give them your best chat, I guess. Once you go for your initial tryouts, then there’s other stuff to see if you’re good enough…”
Kerry trails off for fear of chatting and revealing too much of the behind the scenes magic. I press her on how much of the on screen chat and psyching out between Contenders and Gladiators is staged.
“It’s a long, long day. And it’s emotionally solid, and it’s physically solid, because you’re up doing the games and events, and then you’re [waiting] while they set up the whole next game, which takes a while. And then you’re right back up again. It’s a long day. It’s totally like how you’d imagine TV to be, like, ‘And cut! Again!’.”
In between cuts, games, and set-up time, the Gladiators and Contenders retire to their own changing rooms. According to Kerry’s version of events, the Gladiators spend their time having more make up put on, while the Contenders clean off all the make-up and body paint that’s rubbed off the Gladiators onto them and their clothes.
“They were just constantly getting make up on. Literally body paint. And that came off after every game all over your clothes!”
It all sounds quite silly to me. I wonder if it feels it, or if the Gladiators in their personas really are intimidating?
“If it is a character, they hold it backstage, for sure. The most intimidating would be Sabre. She just like keeps being Sabre. Growling at you. Yeah, she’s definitely intimidating.”
It’s hard to imagine Kerry being intimidated by anyone. She laughs and chats easily, and the way she tells it she’s just found herself in the right place at the right time, and life has worked out. In fact, perhaps she’s hit a peak while out doing the shopping…
“My life has almost been made because I was recognised in Aldi today! I was loving life!”
She doesn’t seem to have a point to prove, or a goal beyond seeing how far you can push yourself while still having fun. But I’ve a sneaking suspicion there’s a persona below the surface that’s just as gritty as any Gladiator tries to make out. Kerry may only be 5ft 3in but she’s clearly packed full of power and energy, with a level of toughness and determination that’s needed to keep pushing her body onwards – up the Travelator, or whatever else comes her way. Contenders, ready?! Kerry certainly is – for whatever path she finds herself following next.
