Twenty Questions: Dickon Hepworth, Jungle Products

The bike industry is a small world but its inner workings aren’t very well known about. While the big name racers, freeriders and personalities get plenty of coverage in magazines and on websites, there are many more people who have much more influence on the bikes you ride, how you ride them and what you wear while you’re riding than the people who are fastest down the hill. We get lots of industry people popping in to the office and we also like to go and visit them from time to time, so we thought we’d try and share a bit of our insight into the world of biking. What better way to help our readers get inside the minds of the movers and shakers (shapers?) of the mountain biking world than to force them to answer them a quick list of questions?

In the first, we speak to Dickon Hepworth, main man at Jungle Products, importers of bling from Santa Cruz, Niner and Syncros.

Mountain Biking_The untold British story

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1. Full name?
G. Dickon Hepworth (It’s a silent George)

2. Age?
35

3. What job are you supposed to do?
Managing Director of Jungle Products.

4. What do you actually spend your time doing?
Directing and managing.

5. What kind of riding do you enjoy doing?
Everything, it’s hard to say. If it’s on a bike and outside that’ll cover it.

6. Where’s your favourite place to ride?
I haven’t ridden enough place to have a favourite – Scotland for the hills, local for the woods, Santa Cruz for the smile.

7. What is your raddest cycling trick?
Pretty good at X-ups, that’s about as rad as it gets…

8. What one cycling component changed your cycling life?
Full suspension, without a doubt.

9. Left foot or right foot forward on descents?
Right foot.

10. Ride to the top or get the shuttle/lift?
Ride to the top, you pussy.

11. Worst cycling injury so far?
Bursting my knee at Mountain mayhem last year.

12. If you could go riding with anyone, who would it be?
Cooper (Dickon’s excitable spaniel). I’m quite an antisocial rider. I do like riding in a group but I like riding on my own. Roskopp (owner of Santa Cruz Bikes) is pretty good fun though.

13. Which cycling destination would you still like to get to?
Probably Moab. It’s always on the list, I’ve not heard of anyone that hasn’t had a good time.

14. Slack or steep?
Somewhere inbetween.

15. Tubeless or tubes?
Possibly tubeless, only just started using them but initial indications are favourable.

16. What pressure though?
Thumb pressure. Never used a pressure gauge. A good squidge.

17. What do you love most about riding?
Riding. There’s too many things I like about it. What’s not to like about riding?

18. What do you hate about riding?
The fact that it makes you want to ride more. The feeling of not riding is what I hate.

19. Cheeky trails or stick to the rails?
Cheeky trails.

20. And finally, give us something that people don’t know about you.
I once beat Tim Gould in a National Championship race. I nearly couldn’t overtake, I could hardly bring myself to do it.