ABOUT MARK

Following a distinguished career working for a Scottish animal feed company where I was a company director in charge of four manufacturing sites, I left in 2014 to follow my passion and set up my own bicycle shop, OrangeFox Bikes. This has grown considerably since inception and we specialise in mountain bike sales and top quality workshop work. I am a Fox trained service technician and wheel builder, building six to seven wheelsets a week plus repairs.

In my younger days I was a competitive runner and road cyclist but as age has caught up with me I prefer riding with friends, frequently on the gravel tracks we have in abundance in the north of Scotland. In addition my son has been an avid mountain biker since the age of about five and in the earlier days I rode with him and our local mountain bike club. I have supported him racing since the age of seven, initially within Scotland, then the UK and now internationally. Racing top tier downhill professionally is his career aim but there are only two ways to race UCI World Cups as a Junior (U18) – one is with a national GB jersey or within a UCI registered Mountain Bike team. As downhill racing is not an Olympic discipline it has a low priority for our federal body, British Cycling. As a consequence, there is no support, financial or otherwise so racing with a GB Jersey offers no benefit. However, getting into a UCI MTB Team is nigh on impossible – in 2021 there were only 41 UCI Teams in the World (including ours). So the obvious solution was to set-up our own UCI MTB Team, a bold and challenging move but it gives the boys a stable platform to train and race. This was completed in January this year with a team of four, Douglas and friend Ryan Brannen, both Juniors and two Elites, Luke Williamson and Calum Mcbain. Luke had previously ridden for two UCI Teams and gave us a valuable insight and help at the World Cup venues, the rest of us had never competed at a World Cup…….

Our first season was good, we raced the four European rounds (Austria, France, Slovenia and Switzerland) but did not have the funds to race the two rounds in the USA. Travelling from the UK to Europe in the middle of the pandemic was both difficult and expensive with on average a COVID test every 72 hours. But we succeeded, learnt a huge amount and we are ready to race all 8 World Cup rounds next year – France, our home track in Scotland, Austria, Switzerland, Andorra, USA, Canada, Italy and hopefully World Champs in France. A very demanding but exciting schedule