THE WHYTE STUFF

We hit the trails with elite downhiller turned bike designer Sam Shucksmith, the engineering muscle behind Whyte’s acclaimed machines

- Jamie Darlow

Most of us like reading those stories about young, unnoticed or rejected athletes that go on to make it big. The bigger, the better. Like American footballer Tom Brady who was famously picked second to last in the NFL Draft but went on to win the Superbowl seven times and earn $270 million. There’s something brilliant and human about sticking it in the face of the naysayers... like that English teacher who said you’d never write a sentence coherent-like.

The story in reverse though is far more interesting, and far rarer. Athletes who could have competed at the highest level, but chose to step back from it. Athletes who decided for various reasons – ethically, emotionally, physically – that their chosen sport wouldn’t be their profession or how they earn their keep. Athletes like Sam Shucksmith.

Picked for the British squad to race downhill as a junior, Sam found himself aged 17 racing World Cups in Maribor and Schladming and competing with one of the strongest generations of young riders. OK, so this isn’t the NFL, Sam isn’t in the same league (or sport, for that matter) as Brady, but the competition was stiff: Sam’s cohort on the GB squad consisted of Josh Bryceland, Sam Dale, Joe Smith and Ruaridh Cunningham, two of which – Josh and Ruaridh – would later go on to become world champions. “It wasn’t easy,” Sam says.

Despite that competition, he’d done pretty well at a national level. He finished fifth overall in the NPS downhill series in 2007, winning one race at Caersws as a junior. It was a long way from racing at Penshurst Bike Park in Kent, where Sam started out as a kid racing alongside his older brother, Phil.