You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
My boyfriend (ha!) was paid the rather sideways compliment of 'still got it', which is kind of the old man equivalent of 'pretty good for a girl'. Which got me wondering, how many others are there like him - in case I want to trade in for an older model 😉
Old: older than Hans Rey (54).
Rad: does tricks, flies on a bike, gets air.
Who is there? Hans does tricks, but seems to be more of the hops and balancing kind than the whips and toboggans airtime sort. Don't need to be pro, or male, just anyone doing this kind of thing.
There seems to be a fair number of 60ish folks doing endurance stuff and fast XC stuff - I wouldn't want to keep up with them. But what about the freeride side? Or even freestyle BMX? Have broken bones got the better of everyone by 50 odd?
(N.B: this is a narrow definition of rad for the purposes of this exercise, other activities are rad too, before you all pile in with the frozen sausages)
Nah - not me. I’m old (68) but my stuff is more in the Hans Rey/vertriding genre.
Because I’m an ex motorcycle trials rider, I suppose, getting down some techy descent clean has always had more appeal than just pure speed.
I’m not Tobi Leonhardt or Johannes Pistrol by any means but I’m still not totally crap. I’ve just got back from eight months in Greece riding steep rocky stuff and I still haven’t worked up the enthusiasm to get out in all the slop we have here....
Didn’t Peaty post some impressive times recently in a WC qualifier run (or something)? He’s getting on.... (never would say it to him in person, he’s a lot bigger than me).
Would likely be the pioneers to be that old and still doing it. Possible Dennis McCoy or Bob Haro. Everyone else would be too young, although some like Jamie Bestwick are nearing 50.
Tony Hawk still seems to "have it"
57 and a wannabe Rad but in reality a bit tame. Used to have a go at anything when I was much younger, never any good at tricks that involved balance though. After a few years off the bike I've been enjoying a bit of a second childhood lately. Enjoy getting a bit of air time and started pushing myself to do more stuff than I have dared to do for a long time.
This thread has caused me threefold concerns.
1. Learn today am virtually as old as Hans Rey (! No way !?)
2. Realise I always had Hans Rey pegged as ‘some old 80’s MTB dude’
3. Reaffirms that my MTB days are probably over
Time to move along, grow a longer ‘tache and enjoy aspiring to #randocross 😬😎
Steve Peat is only 46! Waaay too young. Maybe he needs a better skincare regime if you thought he was getting on?
The beard he is sporting does seem to have aged him though!
3. Reaffirms that my freeride MTB dreams are probably over but there's plenty of other MTB fun to be had
@p7eaven FTFY
he was my first thought although obvs not a biker! Also he's not [I]that[/I] old, early 50s I think. There is a great doc available (on Sky maybe?) at the moment re. the Tony Hawk video games.Tony Hawk still seems to “have it”
What about that dude who posts on here sometimes, who invented MTBing? Dunno if he still rides though!
You need to go to skateboarding which is a bit of an 'older' sport than MTB.
@stwhannah to be honest I've always given too much freedom to my inner child instead of concentrating on sensible things like careers etc. Probably gonna regret that when I grow u.........er get old(er). Spent most of my life's free time either riding bikes or playing music. Still play in the band but after about seven years off the bike due to my leg not working properly due to a (non bike related) back injury I discovered I could ride again about a year and a half ago so started making up for lost time.
Well, very old , older than anybody mentioned yet, but not rad and never was even as a youff. But I am still riding three times a week which is the main thing. Consider the alternative as somebody once said
I feel this is deeply appropriate to the age group you are looking for...
Because I’m an ex motorcycle trials rider
Me too! Unfortunately at a mere 64 yrs old I'm not as rad as I used to be, & even that wasn't 'very'.
Quite a few over 50 here
You need to go to skateboarding which is a bit of an ‘older’ sport than MTB.
This is it. The first generation of BMXers are mainly mid 50s. Skateboarding a little older. Some amazing older surfers s=out there. People are keeping riding at a good level for longer but time will tell.
Rob Warner posted this the other day.
73 and still ripping (the bloke in the post, not Rob)
Ebike Ken
Instagram
@TheBrick yes! I'm in that RideOn facebook group, and there are definitely some great riders still going in there. I think there's a drop off after 54/55 there though. Seems to be the magic age for getting wiser - or maybe just the age at which you missed getting into it when young?
@Blackflag that Ruffles video makes me a bit sad. Shows how important it is to stay fit too. I need to put the effort in before I lose the battle of the bulge!
Steve Peat is only 46! Waaay too young.
Same age as me then! 🙄 even more reason not to call him old in person (though agree that the beard doesn’t help!)
Seems to be the magic age for getting wiser – or maybe just the age at which you missed getting into it when young?
I think so a mate of mine on there is was a pro in the 80s and he is 52. Its the age of the sport I think.
Premier Icon
stwhannah
Full Member@Andy-R that sounds pretty rad.
No, it’s just me doing something that I’m still half-decent at, namely getting a bike down steep, techy (ideally rocky) descents and doing it clean. I watched videos of these Vertriding guys a few years ago and thought “Riding can still have some credibility, even without big air and high speeds”, so I started doing more of it -hence the Liteville 301’s (because that’s what they all seemed to use).
I’m not rad though, only in my dreams .....I’m more like the Sweary Northerners. Some of their stuff was ace!
How old is Jedi - I'd guess he's in his fifties (apologies if not Tony!)? He's pretty rad 🙂
John Tomac is 53, don't know what he does these days but he'll always be rad as far as I'm concerned.
JP Bruni is regularly beaten by our own Alastair Maclennan at World Masters Champs. Plenty old and rad racers there. Maybe none more so than Dr John Rideout - mid 70s and still a pinner. And has some cool stories about hanging out with The Stones. 
wait is your boyfriend Hans Rey? No way! (DYSWIDT)
Gary Fisher? He's 70 and still rides.... although I can't speak to his current tricks catalogue
Matt Hoffman - is he old enough? Certainly still very rad.
Brett Tippie is 51, Andrew Shandro's 49... There's a bunch of guys in that sort of range, Wade Simmons I guess? All still definitely rad
TBH it just gets hard to find older riders like that, not because of age I don't think but because of the age of the sport. I mean, take Shandro... born in 71, started riding on dirt at 5, won first xgames medal at 17 in what I think was the first ever xgames mountain bike event, won a round in either the first or second ever years of the downhill world cup...Was in Kranked 1 in 1998, North Shore Extreme volume 1 whenever that was... 2nd in the 2003 Rampage, which was the third one ever and was already feeling like he was too old for it at 32 with a kid. (Kyle Strait won the 04, at age 17)
Basically, if he was much older, the sport as he did it didn't exist- they were still making it up, trying stuff like winter X, inventing rampage, posting out VHS videos. But in fact he founded the Whistler gravity camps which were really the first proper coaching available for freeride- a bunch of second wave pros like Kyle Norbraten came from that (and a bunch of those are now old enough to have retired). And he was the old guard in Seasons- when Peaty makes fun of your age that's a bad sign, and that was 12 yars ago.
And it's not like many 30-somethings looked at the first ever world cup or first ever Rampage and thought, aye, that looks like a good career to switch to, it was definitely a young man's game (now it's not but still mostly because young people get older, rather than old people starting it- I can't imagine me starting racing in my 40s, or Alistair Maclennan to take an actual racer)
So I reckon 50-ish is pretty much as old as you can be, and be a recognisably modern freerider/downhiller, which is where you find so much rad-for-its-own-sake as opposed to. Kind of impressed actually how many of those first wave guys are still out there doing mad stuff.
How old is Jedi – I’d guess he’s in his fifties (apologies if not Tony!)? He’s pretty rad 🙂
Thanks but I'm hardly in the aboves company.
I'm 52 in Dec but you only grow Old if you stop
Ah...so I think we've established that my man was just quick on the uptake back in the day when he should have been being a grown up already 🙂
I don't know how to make an instagram link appear as a picture. This was yesterday, and he's 56 this weekend. Hopefully my dodgy hip will finally crumble about the time he runs out of bone to attach metal plates to. Then we'll stick to fishing:
I’m still totally rad at 51
two pics worthy of the rad
At 75, the price of aging is my radness these days amounts to staying upright. Cautious because I'm on bloodthinners and a bad landing could go very wrong.
I have to make do with endurance races like 24hr events where the riding is less technical. (Eg the StrathPuffer, World Solo 24 Hrs).
Gravel has more appeal than downhill heroics nowadays.
Going outside the bike world again, Glen Plake is 56 and rad.
You wouldn’t imagine a 60yo bloke called Duane could be rad, but...
You wouldn’t imagine a 60yo bloke called Duane could be rad, but…
Well the picture illustrates perhaps those still alive are wearing helmets now?
Bob Haro
AFAIK, Bob Haro left the bike business and became a graphic designer. I'd love to know if he still rode bikes. Probably my first hero.
Sean Geoff is pretty rad on skateboard. I think he came second in a very comp this summer at Mount Hawk against some young ripper
Had a beer with Bob at the world's in cologne few years back. He was involved in the Olympics 2012 London opening ceremony but it ran over time and didn't get used. Rode rom back in the day and met him there too
The 60s surfers, Gerry Lopez, Robert August.
70s Skateboarders, Tony Alva, Peralta.
80s BMX, Fiola, Haro, McCoy, Hoffman, Tinker.
Jez Avery? He must be getting on and was still making a living being rad a few years ago when I saw him at Pately Show.