Missed Connections

How cory leclerc turned around his lost opportunities

- Dave Tolnai

MANY THEORIES EXIST ABOUT THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN relationships. Malcolm Gladwell made some hay with his idea of “connectors.” Robert Zemeckis won an Oscar for his movie about one human’s involvement with every major historical event of the mid-20th century. And some jackass ruined Kevin Bacon’s life by providing a tangible example of the six degrees of separation. My theory is specific to British Columbia mountain biking and can be simply stated as this: Cory Leclerc knows everybody and is involved in everything. He’s a connector—Forrest Gump and Kevin Bacon rolled into one.

It started in the late 1990s, when freeride was blowing up B.C. Forests were thick with wheelie drops and haphazardly built wooden structures, and downtown Vancouver was overrun with knobby-tired stair-gappers. The spark was “Kranked,” where names were made and careers were launched. And Leclerc was there for it all.

“As with most things involving Cory Leclerc, my memory of when I first met him is shrouded in confusion and chaos,” says freeride legend Wade Simmons. “I definitely remember one of the first times being in Kamloops in the mid-’90s, and it involved a BMX track and us jumping some berm-to-berm gaps. From there, Cory had rented this old punk-rock house in Vancouver’s downtown eastside and I moved in. In those days, life was awesome: working at bike shops, racing/living mountain biking, partying and so on. Back when urban riding was a thing, we would go ride downtown Vancouver late at night, pushing each other on lines. Cory had always been a talented rider, and he and I, both being very competitive, would always battle at whatever we did.”