John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
One thing which will influence me next time I buy new wheels is the noise which the freehub makes - how loud it is. I have tinitus and am quite...
More notice needed for Remembrance Sunday road closures...
This is an impressive new way of avoiding work by the police! Several crimes here (eg. phone use) - so is the new game "if we can identify *one*...
Which explains a lot. I reckon the standard of driving in the UK has noticeably decreased in the last 5-10 years. A host of factors no doubt, but I...
He wasn't brake-checking me, he was trying to get me to stop. Nothing good would have come from me stopping.
It was designed around 28mm tyres but there's lots of clearance and could certainly take bigger tyres.
A dinosaur version is shurely for the kiddies. Myself I'd like The Hindenburg. There may be The Freisian, filled with methane rather than hydrogen,...
When I see SLOW HORSES I always think ah, so this is where the ones I bet on are kept...
No great mystery in either case, surely? Both US politician and the motor trade say "choose us and your life will be better and easier!" And other...
theres an attitude I encounter alot locally, and demonstrated in bucket loads by drivers on my commute home tonight, that cyclists shouldnt be on...