Chris is a professional mountain bike rider with a background in trials who lives just over the hill from us. He was out doing some bike riding and working on a new video edit yesterday, but he got hay fever and so decided to call it a day and come to see us instead!
The Yorkshire style is strong with this one. He does what he likes and we like what he does. Always his own man, Chris has been a sponsored pro mountain biker for as long as we can remember. He’s made a career doing something that he loves and is without doubt one of the best in the world at, whilst not getting sucked in to becoming a corporate industry whore or a characterless nodding head yes man.
Starting off in motorcycle trials, Chris found push bikes were more fun for him. Watch him ride and you can see that moto style, boiled up, reduced down and served as raw human power, expressed though the form of the bicycle.
Talk to other pro mountain bikers about him and they praise his ability to generate huge power very quickly. He can make bikes do unnatural things in confined spaces! Watch his video edits and notice how quickly he gets up to speed to do massive hops, skips, jumps and sometime devastating crashes. He usually gets up and does it again with a daft lad chuckle. Not always though. He once fell off the Cow and Calf on Ilkley Moor smashing his femur and arm. Then when he got better smashed himself up again. He then wrote “don’t break your leg” on his handlebars as a reminder not to keep doing it. Good lad.
Currently Chris is sponsored by Whyte bikes and is using an e-bike to do his tricks and get his kicks. Apparently the trolls are raging at him, saying that it’s easy on an e-bike! What a bunch of cock wombles! Chris’ trouble is that he makes it look easy because he’s so fucking good. E-bikes ain’t cheating, say it to his face and get a beating keyboard warriors! This man is the E-vil Knievil.
“His happy place is sat in his highly modified 1961 Ford Anglia powering around the Pennine hills.”
The stylish yet comical small car exterior packs a punchy engine inside it and its fruity exhaust is a mischievous trumpet of fun. Basically it’s an analog spirit animal version of Chris Akrigg.
Take his bike helmet off and give him a scrub and he makes a fine model we think.
Chris is wearing navy Fatigue Shorts, Flannel Shirt in brown and blue, cotton seed Ripstop Windbreaker and milk chocolate Raglan Sweatshirt.