DANNY MACASKILL

With 450 million YouTube views and counting, Danny’s the best-known mountain biker on the planet. His supreme street-trials skills, inventiveness and cheeky sense of humour make his riding edits and Drop and Roll Tour shows a must-watch, but with one wrong move spelling potential disaster, as he sends gaps and balances on impossibly narrow features, how does he maintain his mental acuity and energy? For the first article in a new series, we spoke to the 37-year-old Scot while he was staying in his sister’s house on the Isle of Skye, to find out what role food plays in his life.

“Since moving up to Inverness three years ago, I’ve shifted from riding around the streets, jumping up and down rails, to spending a lot more time in the hills on my e-bike – and I’ve been loving it,” says Danny. “I can ride right from my doorstep to really good trails, which is something I wanted in life. Inverness has the city side, too, so I’ve still got riding for my trials bike, and it’s also close to friends and family back in Skye. I’m riding two to three hours every single day, so I do try to fuel my body with what it needs, but I definitely take pleasure in eating, as well.

“I’m not that strict with my diet. I spend a lot of time travelling, and don’t have to compete against other athletes, looking for millimetres or milliseconds, so I get to live a quite relaxed, fun lifestyle. I can’t complain! Eating is more for my personal wellbeing and feeling good. I’ve got a gas barbecue outside the kitchen, and my go-to meal a lot of days would be putting some marinaded chicken skewers and vegetables on there, making a fresh salad with peppers, tomatoes and avocado, and having it in some wraps. Maybe adding some olive oil or balsamic dressing. Basic, nice.”

The first dish Danny learnt to make was scrambled eggs on toast (see recipe above), and it’s still his breakfast of choice. “That’s what I probably eat the most of,” he says. “Before riding, I’ll have my scrambled eggs. Then afterwards, I’m quite partial to a service station sandwich! M&S make a really good prawn cocktail one. You’re talking some high-end sandwiches, here! Oh, it’s so good – simple, but very juicy. This is the life of luxury I lead.

“I look at food like fuel that your body needs to run and to recover from exercise, so I do try to get some nutrition in there. I’ll have a little bit of protein – some prawns or cheese – but I’m not there drinking protein shakes. I don’t take any supplements, so I try

to eat lots of fruit and vegetables. Blueberries, tangerines, grapes – the snacky foods you can eat while driving, but I eat them for pleasure, instead of snacks or sweets. My sister has bowls of Fruit-tella sweets for when friends come around and I can’t keep away from them; that’s why I don’t have sweets in the house!”

What about drinks? “I quite like tea or coffee in the morning. I’ve always lived with housemates – it’s so much better – so often one of us will make a pot and we’ll share that. Then,

I drink a lot of water. I’m quite partial to sparkling water, as I spend a lot of time in Europe, where you get used to drinking it as your table water. It’s not very good for the environment, mind, because of the bottles. If I’m filming, then I’ll use Red Bull when I need to dig deep for the last hour. I do like it. And beer as well – but this is a bicycle magazine! I’m quite a social creature, so I do socialise a lot with my pals. In the evenings, I quite like decaf Earl Grey tea.”

Any guilty pleasures? “I don’t take sugar in my tea and coffee, but I am partial to a treat here and there. Crisps are probably one of my downfalls! There’s definitely a lot of oil in them, and they’ll have a bit of sugar in there, too, I reckon. The crisp companies know what they’re up to! [He’s right – not only is there sugar in some flavourings, but the potato and carbohydrates are broken down into glucose in the body ~ ed]. I do like cake and chocolate, too. Lindt’s soft caramel stuff is quickly wolfed down! It’s deadly.”

If we were staying with Danny, what would he whip up for us? “I like making breakfast burritos for everyone – scrambled eggs, smoked bacon and mixed beans, in a tortilla wrap, with some mature Cheddar – almost a fry-up in a burrito. Oh, it’s good! One of my friends started making them years ago and we realised it was a pretty efficient way to fuel people. The house we live in is quite social, so often we’ll have, like, five friends staying. All the housemates take it in turns to cook. There’s no secrets to what I eat, definitely not. I just try to eat a balanced diet.”