Who has worked the most, raced the fastest, crashed the hardest, championed the most or just helped enable more of us to get out and ride. Who has inspired you the most in the last 12 months?
The finalists this year are…
- Guy Martin
- Josh Bryceland
- Manon Carpenter
Guy Martin
You may know Mr Sideburns from such films as ‘Complete Speed’ and various northern sounding canal-based or fast programmes on your tellybox, but he’s also a mad keen (mad, mad keen) mountain biker. He’s not only graced the pages of Singletrack, but he’s also reached the podium of the world’s toughest 24 hour mountain bike race, the Strathpuffer (beaten to top spot by forum regular and friend of Guy himself, Jason Miles). More recently he fell off his motorbike at quite some lick, headbutted the ground at 130mph, breaking 4 vertebrae, his sternum and his hand. He was in hospital just long enough to have 5 rods inserted into his back before checking himself out to go fix some trucks. Read his Facebook post for yourself if you need any more evidence for what a complete nutter he is. But a legendary one.
Josh ‘Rat Boy’ Bryceland
You just don’t know with Josh where his amazing skills on a DH bike end and his idiotry begins. We guess that to make it to the top of this sport, blurring the lines between the two is a prerequisite. This is the year that Josh, ridiculously in the lead in Hafjell, Norway took on the final jump into the arena too hard, and overshot a few metres. He landed to flat, dislocated and snapped his ankle but still continued on through the finish line with enough pep to take second place. We caught up with him earlier in 2014, following his first WC win win at Leogang. It’s really worth reading
Manon Carpenter
We were there at the team launch of the Madison Saracen team all those years ago when Manon was introduced to the press and promptly fainted before our eyes. Those early rabbit in the headlight nerves have been turned into guts and masses of confidence now. But this year in particular she’ll be remembered for that spectacular crash at Fort William in sight of the finish, where having picked herself up and riding home she still managed to finish in 4th place. Overall, this year she finished in 2nd place behind Rachel Atherton who still dominates the field, but we haven’t stopped thinking about would could have been if Manon had landed that last jump at Fort Bill. She epitomises what it takes to rise to the top. Next year maybe she will take top spot in the World’s but this year she this inspirational woman could still take top spot in the Singletrack Reader Awards. It’s down to you.
Read more about Manon in our interview from issue 72 of Singletrack
That is our final awards category until the night of the 25th where we’ll be handing out one more special award that we are keeping under wraps until then.
