Ride with your kids and the moment will inevitably come when you’re no longer glancing over your shoulder to check they’re OK, and instead you’re struggling to hold onto their wheel. That changing of the guard may happen on a family ride. Or it may come between the tapes in the white heat of competition, in front of friends, family and hundreds of noisy spectators bearing witness to your humiliation.
But that moment will come to pass for everyone with a little ripper in the family, even if you’re a former downhill world champion and your name is Steve Peat.
Beyond our shared Yorkshire roots and similar vintage I’m not claiming much parity in our two riding careers to date, even if both of us started out as lanky teenagers on Konas back in the days of the NEMBA race series. But chatting trackside at the Steel City DH with Peaty, and Ride Sheffield man Henry Norman, we all have skin in the game, and a certain amount of dad’n’lad pride on the line.
Steel City’s heritage goes back to 2011 where it helped prove how advocacy groups, like the one Henry co-founded, can unite disparate countryside users in the shared goal of access and
