DOWN TO EARTH
DESPITE HIS FAME AND GOD- LIKE BIKE SKILLS DANNY MACASKILL HAS STAYED TRUE TO HIS ROOTS AND IS AS HUMBLE AS EVER
Danny MacAskill has gone from obscurity to full-blown internet star in a relatively short time. Since 2009 his videos have amassed over 126 million views and his popularity isn’t showing any signs of waning. We were made up when he agreed to guest edit this month’s MBUK and went for a ride with him to find out about his rise to success, how he comes up with his sensational ideas and the challenges he’s up against producing such progressive films.
It was a video filmed in Edinburgh that helped make Danny the closest thing mountain biking has to a household name, so it seems apt to meet him just outside the Scottish capital. Heading over the Forth Road Bridge, the engineering is mindblowing, as is the natural beauty of the sun gleaming off the Firth of Forth as it sloshes about below. We park in a small wood and soon Danny pulls up in his ‘Drop and Roll Tour’ emblazoned VW T6, which is nothing short of pimp. Climbing down from the driver’s seat, the 31-year-old shakes hands and introduces himself like a complete stranger, although he needs no introduction.
As we sit in the dappled sunlight, Danny tells us how he got into bikes while growing up on the Isle of Skye. “I had a lot of energy and a lot of freedom,” he says. “I’d cycle the mile to primary school and back every day, having fun and playing on the little kerbs. When the bell went, there’d be
OF POWER “THE USE IS PRECISION AND G. SATISFYIN REALLY P UP BUNNYHO A RAIL GIVES TO A HIGH AWESOME YOU AN YOU’VE FEELING – THIS GOT ALL OF THE BIKE” ENERGY ON
all these kids trying to no-hander for as long as possible, flat-out onto the main road! My friends would ask, ‘can you jump off this?’, or I’d say, ‘I reckon I can jump off that!’”
“I got into trials because we didn’t really have many trails,” Danny continues. “Trials is quite accessible – grass banks, walls and kerbs, I had everything I needed… and it rains a lot on Skye. You can still ride trials in the rain!”
Bunker shot
Thankfully the Scottish weather is being kind today, so we head to our first photo location, a wood littered with abandoned Second World War military installations – a perfect mix of urban and natural terrain that lets Danny show off his skills. He hucks off the roof of an old bunker, landing to flat, while we bobble down the trail next to him.
“I could already jump off a bus shelter or bottle bank before I even knew what trials was!” he laughs. “Then I went round to my friends’ house and they had the MBUK Chainspotting video. I remember watching it and being amazed. Seeing Martyn Ashton, Martin Hawyes, Hans Rey and all the other guys like Peaty and Warner was a pivotal moment – it made me want to do more trials stuff, like hopping on the back wheel, and learn more moves.”
Danny started out on a regular hardtail, a Kona Fire Mountain, that he upgraded with a bashguard and Magura brakes. Then he got a Pashley 26mhz trials bike and, in his own words, “the fire was lit”. “Trials lures you in,” he says. “The use of power and precision is really satisfying. A bunnyhop up to a high rail gives you an awesome feeling – you’ve got all of this energy on the bike, you’re putting everything into it and you capture all of that energy on the railing and use that to pull the bike up. It keeps you ticking, that’s for sure!” MBUK helped stoke that fire, as the only UK magazine that really covered trials riding during its late ’90s and early ’00s heyday. “The mag’s had a huge influence on my riding over the years,” Danny freely admits. “Chainspotting was the first time I saw trials and it really summed up the UK scene and had a huge effect on how people are now. Growing up, the Martins, Warner and Peaty all seemed like friends thanks to MBUK. I couldn’t wait to get my subscription every month – it was class, with the Hip Hop section and full features on trials too. And Martyn on the cover, which was really cool!”
Roll of the dice
Inspired by his heroes, Danny worked on his moves and now he’s the one on the front cover. While it may seem like he takes some big risks, he has an innate ability to accurately judge whether he’s capable of doing
something. “I’ve got a fairly clear idea of what I can and can’t do, and even with a fairly out-there idea, I know that if I go at it long enough and do it for a wee while I can roll the dice enough times to eventually get it right,” he says. “Take a jump. If I go at a certain speed and look backwards in a certain way, I know I’ll clear it and do a backflip.”
We see this for ourselves, as he eyes up a G-turn on the front wheel followed by a hop off an 8ft wall with a flat landing. There’s no shadow of doubt in his mind that he can do it, so even when his first attempt doesn’t go to plan – as he gets to the edge of the wall something hasn’t quite clicked, so he bails, out of sight, and we think for a second that he might be dead – he calmly dusts himself off, climbs back up and, after a few more tries, nails it.
“When the fear kicks in, that’s when the problems start,” says Danny. “If you feel like you’re going to bottle it when you hit the lip, that’s when it all goes wrong. Riding the technical stuff, the risk isn’t that high – at worst you might break an arm or twist your ankle. But then you’ve got high-risk riding, like in Cascadia [his 2015 video set on Gran Canaria] – jumping off rooftops, sending a trick off a drop or doing a rotation you’ve not done before. You get in a spiral of fear and go through all the different scenarios in your head. Getting through it can sometimes take hours, but as a rational person I know it’s possible. Where I can, I’ll learn stuff before doing it in the wild. I’m not afraid to use mats or airbags as a tool.”
Calculated risks
Danny’s persistence is impressive. Not one to shy away from a challenge, he’ll keep going until he gets a trick sorted. “I’ll get to the point halfway through where I have to throw self-preservation out the window, because I’m just going at it again and again. That’s what I need to do to get through it. It’s all calculated, you know. I’d love to have it so I could use my brain to push a little harder, but I’ve got my level and that’s that,” he tells us, peering over the lip of a jump. We push up the run-in together and decide to train it in. The pressure is on! Thankfully we don’t mess it up, but following someone as skilled as Danny certainly ups the stakes. The log slide and hay bale sections in last year’s Wee
DayOut were some of the toughest tricks Danny has ever had to nail. “I’ll waste days and even weeks of filming,” he says. “Imagine spending three days watching me trying to do something and not making it! It’s hard to back down when I know I can do it. Sometimes I’ll think, ‘is it worth putting that little extra in?’ But I have to weigh up how I’m going to feel the next day. If I break my leg, will it have been worth it? I know that if I bottle it, that’ll always play on me and I can’t deal with that. I don’t want to look back thinking, ‘why didn’t I do it!?’.”
Natural progression
Rolling down to the shore, we’re greeted by the sight of the sun setting over the Forth bridges. This juxtaposition of the manmade and natural is something that’s key to Danny’s enduring appeal – his ability to learn moves in the urban environment and translate them to natural terrain. “Doing trials on the mountain bike wasn’t something I thought I’d get into, especially with Chris Akrigg already doing it,” he admits. “He’s so versatile on every bike and he’s done an amazing job. I didn’t want to tread on his toes in any way.”
But then the opportunity came to leave the streets of Scotland for the jagged mountains of Skye, in The Ridge. “That film wasn’t really focusing on my riding ability, more the location,” says Danny. “Its success was a big surprise – and it showed a different side to my riding.”
Down by the seafront, Danny hops onto a 4ft bollard on his full-suspension Santa Cruz 5010, balances on the top and then hops back off to flat. We look on in awe, barely able to get the front wheel up there. We agree to call it a day and meet in Edinburgh the next morning to finish the shoot.
Inspiring stuff
Danny’s first video was shot around Edinburgh’s city centre in 2009, and even to this day the riding in that edit is next level. “The Inspired Bicycles video set such a high bar for my trials riding,” he says. “But I didn’t want to be a one-hit wonder and knew I could do something bigger.”
As we ride around the city, people stare at Danny and can be overheard talking about him. Some even pluck up
“YOU GET IN A SPIRAL OF FEAR AND GO THROUGH ALL THE DIFFERENT SCENARIOS IN YOUR HEAD. GETTING THROUGH IT CAN TAKE HOURS”
the courage to ask for a photo together. They tell him he’s been a great influence on their kids, inspiring them to get out on their bikes. He’s properly famous, and it’s great to see mountain biking in the public domain.
“What I realised with WayBackHome [his first video for Red Bull, released in 2010] was that rather than trying to better myself each time and make something bigger, it was better to make a video that didn’t even compare to the last one,” he says. “I have such respect for riders who are able to put out two videos a year and their level goes up and up! For me, it’s easier to find a different location or theme – there are no limits, so you can really think big or small. That’s what inspires me.”
“My videos tend to have a bit more to them than a traditional extreme sports film,” he continues. “Your average folk wouldn’t understand what it means to hit that jump or do that trick, but if you’ve got stuff they can relate to, like a building or car, they can understand it much better and it gives it a sense of scale. You get more of a reaction out of folk.”
We head towards the university to hit up one of Danny’s old riding spots. He hops up a 5ft high wall like it doesn’t exist, just as the students are filing out after a lecture. As people stop to watch, it’s fascinating to watch boundaries of personal space and social convention being broken down by one man on his bike.
Danny is happy to stop whatever he’s doing and chat. “It’s cool to have a conversation with people,” he tells me, in-between posing for photos. “One of the coolest things with my videos is that they sometimes use them in schools. Teachers will use them in assembly or in lessons, or as a treat for the kids. That’s a good incentive to keep doing it – I could never imagine that when I was younger!”
RIDING THE UNRIDABLE: DANNY’S EDINBURGH NEMESIS
“Trying to ride the spiky fence in the Inspired Bicycles video was the first time I ever really felt the disappointment of failure when riding my bike. I’d come out on my lunch breaks with my mate Dave, and in the beginning I wasn’t sure it was even possible. Then I managed to get two metres along it, so it obviously was doable. But I couldn’t for the life of me get to the very end of it. I think we spent about four days altogether, in two or three-hour sessions, trying to get along the fence while filming for the video. It definitely set the bar for what was possible on my bike, and from that point on, every time I’ve gone to make a video I’ve been willing to put the same kind of time and e ort into doing the things I really want to do.”
Staying grounded
This level of success can change people, but Danny has a solid grounding. “If I changed, then my friends from back home would knock me down a peg or two. If I got too big for my boots, they’d tell me! I’ll happily have the piss ripped out of me as much as anyone else!” he says, just as two more people come up to ask for photos and shake his hand.
The main drawback to his fame is that it can make it hard for Danny to film his videos. He doesn’t like to tease too much about upcoming projects before they’re out, but that’s difficult when there’s a phone camera around every corner. There’s a lot of pressure to get it right, because he’s no one-man band, with lots of people working on each project behind the scenes. “There’s so much work that goes into every video, whether that’s scouting or building or making it all work on the day,” he says. “To have all of that time put into one seven-minute clip is an amazing opportunity for me. I’m really grateful to all of the partners and the people who make it happen.”
What’s become clear during our time with Danny is that there’s no ‘secret’ to his huge success. It’s a combination of innate ability, persistence and his humble, likable personality that’s given him the opportunity to place himself and mountain biking in the mainstream, unite two types of riding and entertain the masses. As we trundle back to the vans, he goes for one final drop off a high concrete wall and effortlessly comes back down to earth.