Average day at home with Josh Bryceland and Sam Dale
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 Josh and Sam are two normal guys from Nr Manchester in North England, they live and breathe bikes and like to just have a good time. But they are also two of the best of the new breed of young DH riders on the WC circuit, and the fact they both live pretty near each other can only be partly to blame for how fast they are. I went up and spent a day or so staying with them and shot a few photos riding, building, testing, uplifting and generally going about their normal day to day, Not too bad is it? |
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| These are the two in question, Sam on the left, Josh on the right... |
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| In the racing transit as Josh calls it, on the way to the local woods. |
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| As I said, they are just normal riders, if you don't build it, you can't ride it. |
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| The only difference is in what they deem as rideable... |
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| Sam scrubbing over a wall aboard his new for 2011 Sunn Radical. |
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| Josh doing what he does best, getting the style on with his pretty slick V10 c. |
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| Sam laying it over, what you can't see in this is the fact that a split second later and I was covered in roost... |
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| See, I told you, was picking mud out of my hair for the rest of the day, ha ha! |
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| This is what happened when I asked for a serious portrait from Josh, at least Sam managed it. |
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| The tracks they were riding were loose, natural and fast. Well they were fast when these guys rode them... Josh has an incredible amount of style on a bike, he can make it do whatever he wants, no matter what the ground is like. Here he throws some roost up, a fun shot for me and my gear. |
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| Josh looking at lines. |
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| Sam looking on thanks to "creative differences" as to what Josh thinks is a good line. |
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| We found this great turn in some Oak woods, loose as you like and with Sam's kit, it looked sick! |
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| One of the dirtiest jumps I have ever seen, 40 foot rough bank roll in, huge G out through a swamp to thin, shit lip built by kicking some mud about, 10 foot step up to the landing and he still manages to do this?! |
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| We then went from their local woods into N Wales to do some uplifts and testing, here Josh talks through the finer points of the bike with his mechanic. |
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| Josh mid run in amongst all the moss. |
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| In the back of the van ready for another uplift, they packed in about 8 runs an hour, testing and tweaking before BDS 2 the weekend after this... |
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| While I was eating lunch Josh and Sam stole my camera and came out with this, all credit for this one is to Sam I'd guess?! |
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| And here he is, he took a pretty huge smash half way down his 9th run of the afternoon on the fastest part of the track. That's the bike, and some blood through the lid etc. Check out the Helmet cam from his run here to see the crash. |
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| Josh giving the camera a quick wave before we pack up and go to the pub for dinner. |
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| Off we go, next stop the pub for a pint and dinner, good luck to both of them this season. |
Thanks for reading, and see you at the races! To stay up to date with what Josh and Sam are doing find them on Twitter here:
Josh twitter.com/Ratboy_Bryce
Sam twitter.com/Sam_Dale
And to keep up to date with new work from me:
twitter.com/JacobGibbins
www.facebook.com/JacobGibbinsPhotography
www.jacobgibbins.co.uk
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Member since Feb 23, 2007
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Props to the photos, look rad.
Nice to see that even pros have dumb crashes like that too, hope it didn't hurt too much.