Chipps catches up with one of the UK’s original mountain bike pioneers, still making waves from his base in North Yorkshire.

CHIPPS PHOTOGRAPHY JAMES VINCENT

Tere are still a few veterans from those heady early days of mountain biking in the scene today, but few can claim to have been as influential as Pace Cycles’ Adrian Carter. Pace’s early bikes in the late ’80s with their square aluminium tubes were visually different, but they were also designed as mountain bikes from the ground up – rather than many peer products whose roots could easily be seen in the lugged touring bikes of the time.

Pace designed its bikes to be pure mountain bikes, with dedicated bosses for Magura rim brakes (the strongest brakes known to man at the time) and Bullseye cranks. By producing a one-piece stem and fork steerer, tightening a modified Mavic headset from below, Pace preceded the Aheadset by several years. Even when its later bikes reluctantly became more compatible with the components of the day, the frames still offered a distinctive silhouette and a long top tube, short stem geometry that was a decade ahead of the times.

On the cusp of the ’90s, Pace produced its first suspension fork, and that momentum carried the brand into the new century, becoming the majority of the company’s business. A surprising sale of the fork designs to DT Swiss caused many diehards to wonder if the company would continue. It did continue though, with design offces and a successful suspension tuning operation in Dalby Forest. Recently, though, Pace pulled out of running both Dalby and Gisburn trail centres, and has seemingly retreated to a corner store in Thornton-le-Dale, just outside Dalby Forest’s tariffed gates. While many might see this ‘retreat’ as a contraction, Adrian and the team at Pace see it more as a chance to regroup and focus on what’s important. And besides, there’s a ton of new stuff in the pipeline.

At first, Adrian can seem a little quiet and reserved,focused to the point of appearing distant or grumpy, but it only means his mind is elsewhere, solving problems and working out what comes next. Once you get him talking,the smiles come easier and the words, well, the words don’tactually stop.