We are huge fans of bikes here at Surfdome. One of the most exciting things for us this year was making a great range of bicycles available to our customers. When we’re not looking at skate or snow videos, we’re loving the work of people like Danny MacAskill and the awesome downhill antics of chaps like Chris Van Dine. Apart from the adrenaline junkie side of bike sports though there are the athletes like Mark Cavendish and Bradley Wiggins (lets never mention the American again shall we?) who can sustain blistering pace through mountain stages for weeks on end. These men and women are absolute heroes and the bicycles they use are marvels of aerodynamic engineering. Without the necessity of suspension for soft landings and knobbly tyres for grip, elite road bikes are extremely light, stable, rigid and generally not very agile.
No one told British mountain bike legend Martyn Ashton though. This fellow is on a whole new level of fun cycling antics to the MacAskills and the Van Dines of the world. He’s taken the Pinarello Dogma 2 bike (worth a cool 10k), used by Wiggins and Cavendish in competition, and shown the world that in the hands and legs of a determined rider, stunts and tricks are more than feasible on a road bike. We’ve never seen a carbon road bike take such a battering, and the video that he’s produced is a true cracker.
Of course, don’t go trying any of the dangerous stunts here yourself. Martyn Ashton is the front man on the Animal bike tour and is absolutely a talent to be reckoned with and the fact that this sort of trick riding isn’t on the radar yet shows just how difficult it is. It shows a) how good that bicycle is and b) how good a rider he is that throughout the filming for the video he only used one frame, and one set of wheels with only a slight ding to the fork, gear levers and a single puncture to mark down as damage. If you were going to try some of the easier ones, we’re still pretty certain you will break your bike (and still, yourself). Of course, you could always borrow a bicycle from someone. But if you are trying that sort of stuff at home on your mate’s lovingly restored vintage fixed gear dream bike, we can’t be held responsible for their actions when they see what you’ve done.
By the way, that’s only the most recent of Ashton’s adventures with a road bike. Check out this video from way, way back in 2010.
The image of Martyn Ashton used as the cover image for this post comes from the awesome online UK bike magazine Wide Open Magazine.
