
Mountain Cog
Hosted by an enthusiast and a mountain bike industry expert featuring laughter and passionate guests.
Mountain Cog
091 – If he’d drank less, he would’ve won more... Steve Peat (Guest: Tim March - ghostwriter of Peaty's new autobiography)
In this episode the boys are joined by Tim March who ghostwrote Steve Peat’s new autobiography “Forged By Speed – The Making of a Mountain Bike World Champion”.
Steve Peat needs no introduction, he had a prolific downhill race career with 17 World Cup wins, 2 World Cup Overall titles, and a World Championship title. He is currently the head coach and team manager of the Santa Cruz Syndicate race team. He is hands down one of the fastest and most successful downhill mountain bike athletes in history.
He’s well known, not only for being wicked fast on a bike, but for his rock star persona. There’s no other athlete that we can think of that embodied the “work hard – play hard” philosophy more than Peaty. His party animal shenanigans are as well documented in the media as is his downhill supremacy.
The book, which was underpinned by ~20,000 journal entries that Steve religiously kept throughout his career, tells the deeper story of Steve’s upbringing, thought process, training methodology, challenges, and a healthy amount of his infamous shenanigans.
Ghostwriter Tim March (who himself, is a Professional BMX racing legend and long-established bike journalist), worked for several years with Peaty to document and give fans a true inside look into Steve’s back story and the trials and tribulations that lead to his success.
Forged By Speed – The Making of a Mountain Bike World Champion
- Apple: https://books.apple.com/us/book/forged-by-speed/id6717572064
- Amazon (U.S.): https://www.amazon.com/Forged-Speed-making-mountain-champion/dp/1839810963
- Amazon (U.K.): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forged-Speed-making-mountain-champion/dp/1839810963
- Web: https://www.adventurebooks.com/products/forged-by-speed
Peaty’s (Steve Peat’s mountain bike product company)
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what's big, red and eats rocks? Oh god, okay, what's red and eats rocks?
Josh:Oh God, oh God, what's big red and eats rocks it's not Santa Claus, the big red rock eater.
Dane:See, I'm going to have to remember that one. That's like my dead chicken one. I like it a lot. Yeah, it's like so obvious.
Josh:It's awesome. If you are a mountain biker, I am sure you know the name, steve Pete. Uh, steve, currently the head coach team manager of the Santa Cruz syndicate, you know just prolific downhill racer, one of the best in the world 17 world cup wins, two world cup overalls and a world championship title. He's from Sheffield, uh, united Kingdom. Uh, and just recently, um uh, steve came out with an autobiography that was co-written by Tim March, called Forged by Speed, the Making of a Mountain Bike World Champion. And today we are joined by Tim March. How are you doing, sir?
Tim March :Yeah, I'm very well, thank you. Thank you for inviting me into your show and to an audience that may be interested and hopefully are interested in the book.
Dane:Absolutely. I'm excited because you've got some history that we were starting to touch on. Uh, x BMX. Were you a pro? I guess a pro right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was a pro.
Tim March :I started off my history straightforward. Like I'm 61 now, I started off racing motocross bikes when I was 14, 15. Went into adults, was sponsored by Mako for a little while and at the time that I was racing motocross bikes, BMX was beginning to gather some real energy and you can start to see BMX bikes in the pits at Grand Prix races, in American Grand Prix races. So pictures were appearing from Carlsbad with motocross riders riding BMX bikes Bob Hanna, these kind of things. So that crossed over into what I was doing with motocross bikes. So I just got into BMX and I ended up being a pro in BMX and stopping racing motorbikes and going into that.
Dane:So, yeah, that's what I did for I don't know, five or six years, but I um, then you, then you moved to um you, you moved into, like organizing the events after you raced and kind of no, I had a team.
Tim March :I had a really, really big team that was global. We met. All our bikes were made by Rickman in America, over here in in England, so they were all ex motocross riders and so we had a big international presence. But when I stopped riding I had a brief period out of the not out of the sport, but just out of the limelight and then got back into publishing.
Dane:Oh yeah, and you worked for Dirt. Yeah, I worked for Dirt yeah.
Tim March :So I started to work and they were doing Ride BMX Magazine as well at the time, and then we did Moto Magazine, a few other things, but yeah, I got into publishing and that gets me to like, how did you end up doing this with Steve?
Dane:Like, how did you end up connecting with him and being a co-writer?
Tim March :Because before I started working for Dirt Magazine at 4130 Publishing, I went to a couple of downhill races because I had a couple of mates of mine that were working. I don't know whether you ever heard of the magazine Grip. Did you ever hear of that?
Dane:No, with a, b at the end.
Tim March :Grip was before was really a really, really good magazine and it was. Jerry Dyer and Paul Bliss had a downhill mountain and it was excellent and I'd known Paul and Jerry for a while, but Paul better, and Jerry knew that I could write. You know I'd written some stuff Not a lot but I and so I was going. I went to a couple of downhill mountain bike races that Steve was at and so whilst I was there I witnessedve win some races and so one of the articles I wrote appeared in grip.
Tim March :That steve read back then, and then maybe another one that I'd written that had gone in dirt or something I can't remember. And so he, he really, really liked that. I didn't know at the time, I didn't know he really liked it at the time. I just wrote it because at that time I didn't know he really liked it at the time. I just wrote it because at that time I didn't know Steve. I knew of his writing, I knew of his notoriety and his populism and all those things that get dragged along with him because he's very popular.
Tim March :I mean, he's a huge character in this country and so when I got approached to write the book and it wasn't just me that was approached, I think there were probably three or four people in the pot I would think to do it. Maybe I ended up writing it because I was the least expensive. I don't know. I don't know. You'd have to ask the publishers about that. I don't know. You'd have to ask the publishers about that. I was in the pot because Steve wanted me in the pot. I know that Mike Rose was also in the pot and Mike was the editor at Dirt Magazine. And the reason I made the joke about the money is because I know Mike asked for more money than I did.
Tim March :So if I'd have known how hard the writing the book was going to be, my fee would have been out of the ballpark, but that's another story. But that's how it started, from when Steve told me that he'd read the stuff that I'd written about him a long time ago, that he really liked it, and I think, with the publisher, the publisher wanted to provide my understanding is they wanted to provide someone to write the book that wasn't from mountain biking and steve was pretty adamant. I think I I stand to be corrected on this, but I think steve was pretty adamant. It had to be someone who knew about mountain biking and knew him and and had an understanding of what his legacy was now, rather than someone who didn't know.
Dane:That you know yeah, now did you? Did you end up like, do you get together with him and then write the book together, or does he write portions and you write portions? How's that work? I wrote all of it. You wrote all of it.
Tim March :You wrote all of it, okay, but you're using him. It happened at a funny time because it was just before COVID, yeah, so when we'd agreed terms to do the book, we thought that we'd probably end up having maybe four or five meetings. I'd go to see Steve in Sheffield, we'd sit down, put the tape recorder on record, a load of stuff and that would be some of the book. And that never happened because of covid. And then we had a couple I in my family, we had some uh, uh, very, very. You know people died during covid sadly sorry then um, and so we went through.
Tim March :That's okay, it's okay. Um, we went through about a bumpy time, so it made um sorting it out and how it was going to manifest made it quite difficult. And so steve then told me that he had some diaries and he had all his press cuttings from riding and I just go okay, great, you've got them. He goes well, I'll bring them down if you want, because then you could still drive as long as you were kind of driving somewhere yeah stay so many meters away from somebody else.
Tim March :You know you could do that, so he drove down from sheffield, which is probably three or four hours away, maybe a bit longer and tim you're in london no, I'm down on the south coast, in the middle of the south coast, in a place near paul gotcha, which is yeah, yeah, right on the right on the south coast in the middle. So he drove down here, bought my partner a lovely bunch of flowers and some whiskey to to kind of soothe our aching hearts at the time and it was just lovely.
Tim March :But what I didn't realize about Steve's diaries was that there were, I think, probably over 20 years' worth, and every single page had an entry in it. Wow, every single page had an entry. And so when I started going through it and the fact that we couldn't see each other, really it was difficult for me to travel. I'd had I before COVID had hit and everybody knew about COVID. My partner and I had COVID, but we didn't know what it was at the time and I was struggling with, um, really really badly, with vertigo. So I was not. Sometimes I couldn't stand up, I'd be walk, sometimes I was in bed and I was really struggling to know when I was going to be able to travel.
Tim March :So I just thought, right, I'll just immerse myself in what these was in these diaries. So I just got a load of post-it notes and started making notes on, year by year, on what was happening and and very, very quickly, I kind of had an idea what the book would be like. I got, and then that coincided with me having a couple of really good conversations with his mum about his childhood and which was just hilarious his mom is the most amazing person like she is. You know, if you want to know part of team p, team p is is the. She couldn't be more team steve, like right. She's amazing and so her influence did she?
Dane:go with him? Did you know if she went with?
Tim March :no, not really this, this is more when he was younger oh, okay because obviously, reading in the book, you know it is his upbringing's pretty interesting in terms of, uh, the things that went on for him and his brothers within the family home and stuff. You know it's not uh, it's not all um, what is it? Partridge family? Let's say, yeah, yeah, his, his, his dad was sounds like his dad was uh pretty strict, strict is probably an understatement.
Josh:Okay, yeah, yeah.
Tim March :Yeah, His dad. His dad had a temper. I don't think that would be something Steve would disagree with and so his mom was amazing, through through that Very, very supportive of him, and you get the idea that he's not formed at all in those early years. He's just a kid that just loves going out, having a good time with his mates. He's the guy. If you want to go out on a Friday night and have a weekend, he's your man.
Dane:Yeah.
Tim March :He is full on, your man. You won't get anybody else like him, and he's been like that for a long time. You know it was in him before he got on a mountain bike, and so the story was quite interesting, because when I started to read the diaries, it's not like that stopped. Yeah, it was like, um, I don't know what, what you you would have in america in terms of your sportsmen that carried on like they were in a rock band. So you've got this.
Josh:Like Keith Richards. Well, yeah, he just keeps doing it.
Tim March :He's just like over here we make a joke. He's like a 70s football star, because there was a big drinking culture in football in the UK in the 70s I'm sure there was before that, but that's my era that I know about it and those guys played great football too, and Steve is just one of those people that's managed to have a lifestyle that he has not compromised either side of it. Right, wow, the social side is just as important as the as the ride inside. Yeah, it's. It's incredible. I'm in awe of it because I'm not like it.
Josh:yeah, that was one thing that that blew me away about the book. Like if you've known about steve pete at all, you kind of knew he was what we'd call like a party animal and he had a big personality and liked to go out and do shenanigans.
Josh:But I didn't really understand how much he was partying until I read the book and I thought holy shit. And then I noticed, you know, when he finally won the world championship that weekend, he didn't drink. So one of the things I wanted to ask you is, if he had balanced that differently, do you think he would have won more?
Tim March :Well, they're the questions I asked him Because the conversations that we had get back to your original digging about. But yeah, we had a lot. We had a lot of conversations. Steve and I and I've known him for a long time because I I was working at dirt from 2000, yeah, until probably 2009 maybe or something like I mean, and and they're good years for steve, those and and I know mike really well and all the crew, steve jones you know that's a heavy duty down. Alex ranking doing all the earth films yep, I got I, yeah, I got alex in at 41 30 to make the films for us.
Tim March :So we, we were kind of mainlining downhill at that time and we knew what steve was was like we knew steve, like I wouldn't say I knew him very well. Then I, I I'd helped him I, you know, when he was with gt he phoned me up or I phoned him up about something or other and I ended up having to recommending go and see you to accountants because of a tax issue we had over here with. You know, with all the money he was earning with um, with GT, and the funny thing it was that was in his diaries and he couldn't even remember that Tim phoned me about you to accountant, you know, and all this stuff. But you know and all this stuff. But you know, steve's way of doing things is unique to him. Some people can't. I don't think that many people are that confident in their ability and their mental strength, resilience, whatever you want to call it to be able to pull those two things off Like some. And you can see, there's been some casualties in mountain biking. I'm not going to name names, but there's some casualties who have struggled with that. You know, and it's hard.
Tim March :Steve maintained it all the way through. The question you've asked me is you know I asked him that question. I said you know, you do realize that your career would have been way different if you hadn't a drunk. I mean, one of the main things was which I mentioned in the book, which was, um, every time he would and he got run down, picked up viruses, yep back issues, it's usually following some kind of pattern in terms of what he was, um, let's say what, what downtime was, yeah, you know in what he was doing. But also there's another side of it, I think, which, because we dug around this stuff, these were the.
Tim March :I didn't want just it to be a book that you could read and then think oh, I really didn't learn much about steve yeah then I didn't know already, because you, you guys know, I'm sure he's he's probably one of the most photographed, written about, interviewed downhill mountain bikers in the world, anyway, right, and so once you start to watch all that footage and listen to that, you realize that he's got a very, very straightforward, straight way of answering stuff.
Tim March :I was not really interested in that myself for writing the book. So when I was talking about me writing the book, I said I don't really want to that myself for writing the book. So when I was talking to about me writing the book, I said I don't really want to tell that story of you. I want to go in a bit deeper than that. I want to get some stuff that when people read this, whether they're from mountain biking or not, that they actually learn about you. And it's a story about you, you know. And so to answer that question, he said well, of course I probably would have won more, but I wouldn't have had anywhere near the amount of fun I did that's a good answer actually and so why would I do that?
Tim March :yeah, yeah you know, if the end result of that was just kind of winning more races. Well, so so what you know, all right, and I know there's a payoff for that, because you can tell there is, when he wins the Worlds, like that feeling I'm sure is like it's been so close. And if you think when he spun out so close to the edge previously, when he was miles in front, you know that was the party steve, that wasn't the non-drinking steve or that was a guy that was way in front, miles in front. He only had to cruise to the finish line and blows it out in a turn. So yeah, he's got no regrets, like there's there's. There's no regrets.
Tim March :That was my understanding of it and that's, I think I'm hoping, what you kind of comes across in the book, because it does, I think mainly as well as because he's seen some stuff. He's seen some friends have a hard time because of choosing other ways of life and and other things. And I think the one thing I know about him, and this is Steve absolutely loves mountain biking. You know, if you cut him in half, he's got mountain biking written through him. He's, he's a mountain biker, that's what he is. And so you know you can't, you can't really fault that it's.
Dane:it's amazing to me because I've, you know, I've run teams and I've been a, an athlete, if you want to call it that. I had a career, which I wouldn't call a career cause I never got paid, but I've met these people, the there's a, there's this person, this type of person who can jump into an like a sport and, just without even thinking about it, just do so well. And then I've met the other one which is more like me, which works so hard and never gets there I think I think he worked hard.
Josh:At least from the book it looked like he worked really hard. He just, he just partied a lot too.
Tim March :Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, yeah, I think, I think, um, I think there's. It's difficult to. Yeah, I couldn't separate those things. But what I Steve's a hard grafter Like Steve is if Steve's gone out and, um, this is all in the book. But if he's gone out and he's drunk eight pints of beer of a night in the morning, he'll be up at seven o'clock and ride 50 miles in the sheet snow and sleet and, uh, to the sheet snow and sleet and to ride that off. And he will ride it and he'll log how long it took him and he'll log how, what his average speed was. You know, the whole thing will be logged and it's not because he's doing it, because it's a status thing, it's just that's what he does.
Dane:Yeah, he's just keeping track.
Tim March :He just he does the work, yeah, like, and and you know he rode over here which in the early days, on a rigid bike, because he came from a cross country background. He was a cross country racer that ended up racing downhill, you know, and he went fast on a rigid, a rigid bike. You know, he was a big thing and and I hadn't heard of him, uh, right, right, early on, and then all of a sudden everybody started talking about him. So this is when he was on his Kona his rigid bike, his sponsored bike.
Tim March :You know he's getting a bit of help from the bike shop and everybody's going because Jason McCroy is kind of around at that time and you've got these other big names that are about but everybody's talking about this really skinny kiddie from from sheffield who is just an absolute hammerhead. Like an absolute hammerhead, you know. And um, you know that was where it started. He did put the work in, you know, but not not necessarily on the on the um tracks to start with. He's just all his brothers all rode bikes. You know they all have push bikes. Yeah, he's all up in it. You know his dad had a trials bike and was very good at trials and very well respected trials rider up in yorkshire, which is, you know, a big thing up there. It's a big thing moto trials yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dane:And when you say push bike just that's.
Josh:That's british for just pedal bike pedal bike, not a motorcycle. Yeah no, it's just, yeah, just a pedal bike, yeah okay, yeah, yeah, tim, I was stationed at rf mildenhall for a couple years. Uh, just, outside of cambridge, so I can translate, yeah between uh and american english.
Dane:Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's, he's a hard worker, he's a hard worker yeah, I grew up on in that era and kind of participated a little bit in that stuff and got to see these guys from a spectator standpoint.
Dane:And they were just bigger than life and he was always one of the top, top, top people that you would talk about after a weekend of racing. He's the guy that not only did it on the course, but then you were talking about what. He's the guy that not only did it on the course, but then after the course. Then you were talking about what he did after the course.
Tim March :So yeah, like, yeah, he, he reminds me of like, the like, the determination and the hammerheadedness of tomac, you know like, because he's, he's got that in him. He's like, like he's. He just likes riding a bike cross country, downhill, doesn't matter, but he's got that other, you know the, the party side, which is obviously, you know, important too.
Josh:Yeah, you know, some of the things I wanted to ask you about, um, and you you touched on one already is like some of the keys to his success and we uh, we talked about the Kona and the rigid bike and in the book you say like multiple times, you think like this, because he actually raced some downhill races on a rigid bike. Really, yeah, I didn't know that that's to me, that's crazy yeah, I mean he won them.
Josh:Yeah, he won them yeah, right, and in the and the companies kept sending him, and my partner, dane here, is like a, we call him the guru, the suspension guru, but they kept sending him forks and he's just like no no, I don't, I don't want it.
Dane:It's too, it's too too wishy-washy, but how much do you?
Josh:think that played like the skills that he learned on that on those rigid bikes early on. How much do you think that impacted his success when he got better gear and better equipment in the future?
Tim March :I think probably I don't know how old you are, but I think if we're roughly within 10 years of each other in age, we'll all know that if you can ride a rigid bike fast over loose terrain or pick your way through rocks or ride cambers or whatever it is, you are going to have way more of an advantage than someone who doesn't know how to do that and has only ridden a suspension bike that yeah I totally, totally agree with that.
Tim March :That's for sure, and so I think I think that was key. What was also key was, um, if you go on youtube or whatever where you go to have a look at him riding, you just type in the places where he rode which were just up the road for him, which is the chapel town woods and the the woods that were just on his back door. Yep, you'll see that it's just. It's really gnarly fast, horrible, pick your way through stones, single track stuff, but he's doing it at such a high speed. Yeah, and the thing is, with steve's riding style, you can see how he weights the pedals really intelligently and will ride a line by pushing on the pedals, which you learn that when you're riding a rigid bike yeah it's very different on a, on a fully suspended bike, and especially now without good day, are because and also the fact that they've done down downhill tracks a lot of them, especially on the world cup.
Tim March :You know, the bike almost I'm not saying it covers up a multitude of sins the modern, modern day downhill bike, yeah, as opposed, as opposed to what they were having to ride back then. Well, like that, like that, if you, if you look at that bike you were riding that you and Nigel rode, you know the Intense. I mean, that was state of the art back then. But if you look at that now, it was short wheelbase, completely wrong riding position and the rest of it, but it taught you to ride in a way where you would have to pick your way down and through things. Otherwise, if you didn't, in a way where you would have to pick your way down and through things, otherwise, if you didn't, you're going to come unstuck. Whereas 29-inch wheels and I don't know what, the suspension, they change, don't they, how they set the bikes up, but the travel on suspension, the rebound and all that stuff is very different now.
Dane:I got one of those old Intenses in the garage and I can go out and hit the trail on it and it's like a cross country suspension or a geometry. Now you know, it's amazing. You know, short top tube like really steep head angle compared to a cross country bikes that we're selling in the shops right now and and uh, I, you know, I, I totally get that, because during COVID I sold all my bikes and I had to pull out one of my old ones and start riding it on the trails you know, until the bikes became available and 26 inch wheel out at some of the trails that we ride which are really rocky and lots of wheel grabs, and it was alarming how unstable it is compared to a modern bike and we were careening down the hills.
Dane:I remember racing in a world cup at Durango and I'm pretty sure Steve was there, but I'm not a hundred percent, but that terrain, you know, it was just insane. And then a couple of years later they just started, like you said, dumbing down the courses and they would get more aerial. Like you said, dumbing down the courses and they would get more aerial, uh, more machine built jumps gaps, you know, more impressive to watch because right for the spectators, yeah, because it's hard to appreciate, like going off a rock, what you're doing through a rock garden, yeah, so it's definitely different now. So well tim if I'm sorry, go ahead no, I agree with your point.
Tim March :Yeah, it helped massively. Yeah, yeah, that era of his riding.
Josh:If we keep pulling the thread on the attributes from his youth or from his upbringing that contributed to him being super successful. After living in England for a couple of years, let's face it, the weather's like shite in England.
Tim March :It just is awful, especially where Steve lives, because I live in the south coast. It's way better down here weather-wise, but I think that's helped steve as well. Because of the weather steve will go out riding. It doesn't matter what the weather's like for him, he, he doesn't care, um. So he's learned to ride and drift and all that in all different. You know situations and obviously he's helped it. You look at the world cup. Yeah, you know you had a lot of them, especially when you go to canada at mountain, and I can't remember seeing that many dry races there. Right that they have the world cup. I'm sure there have been some, but but not too many. So I think you know it's. It's helped him.
Dane:The terrain he's ridden on for sure yeah, I can't ride roots or moisture to save my life well, yeah, we live in the desert, yeah, so it's, we don't get rain here. Yeah, yeah, so I can handle rock gardens, no problem, but man you get a root in front of me and I start freaking out so, but it's very different.
Dane:So what? So in this book, you know, one of the things that we want to talk about is this book, and you helped write this book. Well, he wrote the book. Yeah, I'm sorry, I keep saying that because it's about Steve Peet.
Josh:So I think Steve wrote it and it's written in the first person, as if Steve wrote it.
Dane:Yeah, yeah. And so you have to kind of wrap your head around the fact that you know.
Tim March :They call it ghost writing, I think is, yeah, it's a technical term, but um, yeah, and and writing it in the. In that, you know, I think it helps that I know him quite well and we have some conversations so every chapter. How it would work was that I'd write a chapter on what I thought would be of interest and what we could bring forth from conversations we'd had, that I'd recorded. So I'd have literally hundreds of, probably over 100 hours of audio and I'd pick some stuff. I'd write that up, edit it, send it to Steve and Steve, when he would be away, would be ticking off. Yeah, that's great, change that bit, do that bit. And to be honest with you, that that was getting.
Tim March :The time for steve to do the editing was hard because he's busy lad. You know, yeah, he's a very busy, busy lad, and so that's how we moved through. The book was literally mostly linearly. Um, you know, one chapter after another, except there was a few that I kind of thought I wasn't sure where they'd fit, and you know, I think a hundred thousand. To write the, the publishers told me you've got to do about a hundred thousand words and then it's going to end up down probably maybe 80. I don't know how many words that book is, but what's it? 228 pages or something like that.
Josh:You know, I read it on the on the Nook e-reader, which is Barnes and Nobles.
Tim March :I don't know if you guys have Barnes and Nobles there, but it was 285 pages on that e-reader.
Tim March :So you know that's how it was written. So Steve has read. Even though I've written it, steve has read and corrected every single bit of the book. That's awesome. Sometimes you might find that if someone's ghostwritten a book, the person they've written it about has not been involved in it. But how I wanted to do it with Steve was I wanted him to be involved in it. But my how I wanted to do it with steve was I wanted him to be involved in it every step of the way. And the conversation that we'd had about it, the two of us was that I want, you don't want, someone else later on. Well, I didn't personally want someone else later on to go oh, we could do another book about steve pete you want to write that.
Josh:You want to write the full, the full story it's like no, you fucking can't.
Tim March :I'm sorry that's been done. So, um, yeah, not, not, not gonna happen.
Dane:Well, we want to get we want to get people to to read this book, so we don't want to give away stuff, no, but at the same time, is there any kind of nuggets that you want to throw out there, like things that you, things that surprised you? Yeah, maybe that surprised you. You're like wow, I had no idea that little teasers that we can give people.
Tim March :I think there are interesting things that have happened in there so I won't give them away.
Tim March :But his meeting when he had a, the first initial meeting with roscop from uh syndicate from santa cruz, if you want to know about, uh what, when it really starts to kick off and where he feels it's starting. And up until then, good time. He's been on GT, been on a great team, been on Orange, he's ridden for his country, but that meeting there is very, very important. I think the bits about his childhood are really. The bits that aren't about mountain biking are just as for me, probably more interesting.
Tim March :But it's like when you look at, you know, when you look at success and we all could be fascinated with it, right in what makes great riders or great musicians or whatever it is you're never quite sure how those flowers grow in the garden. You know, like, where they come from, how do they get formed. And I think his willingness and I don't and I see this as a gift that he gave me and that might be to do with because he felt safe with me digging about his character, but I wanted to really dig in. You like to find out and tell his story. It wasn't ever about me. I didn't want to be on the, I didn't want to be named.
Dane:Yeah.
Tim March :They put my name on the book. I didn't want my name on the book. I don't mind now that they've done it. But the reason I didn't want my name on the book was because I was able to. I know this is sound odd, you know, like when actors talk about becoming method actors.
Dane:Yeah.
Tim March :I was right in it. I didn't write it as me. Yeah, yeah you channeled and I was.
Tim March :I was, I didn't. I kind of got into a weird trance state of which I would and you'll laugh I wrote all of it, most of it, when I'd have a beer, because I'm not a big drinker, I'm not in any way, but I wanted to bring the spirit of Steve through and have him talk through me. So I ended up being like his puppet, if you know what I mean, like it's really him speaking through me. Um, and and just the fact that I can write, yeah, you know, like that. That's why I think a bit, you know, that I have that ability to be able to do that and I and that, and that was what was the most important thing for both of us really was that it was only ever about him.
Tim March :And I think that early part of the book I think sets the stage for you to understand how that next bit started. And I think that bit I'm not going to give any bits away about his childhood and what he got up to, and also team riders and and the rest of it. I I just think as a book when I was, you want it to be like a good meal, don't you like? There's a starter, you've got, you've had. Just how do you like your starters, you know? And it's like well, what do you? How do you want your steak? Do you want it? Do you want it medium? Do you want it rare? You know you're a vegetarian. Well, there's something in there for everybody.
Tim March :Yeah, and that's how I wanted the book to be and I think, with steve, I think what it's done and this is what we hoped to do, and maybe why he might have chosen me to write it is is that I always think that there's like some people write like in the same way that mountain biking might be portrayed by TV, where they have this idea of who the viewer is or who the reader is, and they think they've got this duty, like which they have at mountain Biking.
Tim March :At the minute it's happening in Supercross, where they kind of dumb things down a bit. You know like, oh no, let's have a motorway there, it doesn't need to be too technical there, everybody needs to see all the races closer together time-wise. This is not that for me and for him, not a way to write the book. What we wanted to do was almost write the book like we wanted downhill mountain biking to be, which was all the natural, horrible terrain, the good terrain, the the bit, the whole shebang, you know yeah and uh, from top to bottom, and so I I think it's difficult to in a book like that.
Tim March :It's difficult to in a book like that, it's difficult to pull bits out, because it just follows a narrative of a series of years where someone is haunted by a person. What's the French kiddie that rode sun, excuse me for not remembering that beat him at the world championships. What's his name? Nico, nico, oh, yeah, yeah, you know, and, and that's there. You know that, that, that's there in the book. You know that that and it's real. It's not. It, that's not made up by the press that steve really, really, really wanted to beat nico. Yeah, you know, and what's in his mind at the time? How frustrating it is when he, when he doesn't beat him, how amazing it is when he does. But you don't, you know, I can say that, but it's very's very different than how it reads in the book.
Dane:Yeah.
Tim March :For anybody that wants to know what it's like being on the road. I don't know. What are they on the road six months of the year, yeah, At least. And Steve doesn't say no to anything as well. So you've got to understand that that kind of makes his world bigger as well. Then, yeah, I think you'd be quite surprised by reading it, because I think it is so much different than what if you typed in the word steve pete on now, online now. It's very different than what you'd get that's from seeing.
Josh:Yeah, you guys didn't pull any punches at all. No, it was in in the amount of. Like one of the things that floored me, tim, was like the amount of details and I was trying to figure out early in the book, like how in the hell is, does you know? Regardless of whether you wrote it or steve wrote it, how do you remember something that happened like 30 years ago in this much detail?
Tim March :and it wasn't until you mentioned the diaries, which you actually reference in the book that I figured out that's where the details are coming from yeah, yeah, and they're in there, and then I've had to time stamp it by going back and finding the race yeah and so I watched the race and I know I'm having to correct it.
Tim March :I was going no, it's not that bit. Do you remember? You said that he goes. Oh well, that's. I wrote that bit a day after that bit and I'd forgotten that. That's awesome. Yeah, so we had to correct all that and so you know, when you're doing this stuff, it takes absolutely ages to do it. You know what I mean, because the last thing we wanted was someone to read it. Go now, that's not what happened there, you know, and you don't want any of that artistic license crap in it either. Yeah, yeah, you know that would be the worst thing in a steve peep book, because you don't need any artistic licenses. It's what it is, you know. Because you don't need any artistic licenses. It's what it is, you know.
Dane:Yeah, you don't need to dramatize it. Yeah, no, he's got, it's already there.
Tim March :Yeah, you know and there's stuff that's been left out, you know, for good reason you know, you know that's. That'll be down to the lawyers looking at stuff and thinking, well, you can't put that in, or whatever it is. But it wasn't too much of that. But I'm sure that the powers that be were just like nope, nope, that's it, we're not doing that bit.
Dane:Is there any little secrets that come out that you think people will get a kick out of trying to find?
Tim March :I think the whole things are revealing.
Dane:Yeah.
Tim March :You know what I mean. It would be like if you look at Steve as a bit of origami. The thing is, the book allows you to unfold it bit by bit and see into the folds and the shadows and the little bits. I wouldn't say there's any secrets in there. I would say it's just an honest revealing of a thorough, well-lived mountain bike career.
Dane:Now, is there anything in the book about what he's doing now? How far forward did you go?
Tim March :I didn't want to do too much about that Because I think that that for me the interest and that may be something Steve wants to do later.
Dane:Yeah.
Tim March :But I didn't want to do that and we talked about that and we said we'd stop at what we thought would be the worlds there is a mention of. Like he's got a very, very successful company that make cleaning products, handle grips.
Dane:PDs right.
Tim March :That's run with Martin Murray, who's Steve Murray's brother. I don't know whether you know, but the Murray's family. So you know Stephen Murray, who broke his neck doing the double backflip at the X Games.
Tim March :Oh yeah yeah, his neck doing the double backflip. Yeah, at the x games, oh, yeah, yeah. Well, martin murray is um, runs with steve runs, the company that do the cleaning product, so he does that. He's still heavily involved with santa cruz help. They're all sponsored by fox now, so he's doing that. I think he's an ambassador for I got a funny feeling he's an ambassador for. I've got a funny feeling he's an ambassador for Triumph bikes motorbikes.
Josh:Interesting yeah.
Tim March :So it's a full-on job being Steve Peat. Yeah, and he loves it, he's not fading away.
Dane:He's still going. That's my point. It's like when this book ends, it doesn't end. Steve he's still going.
Tim March :Steve's 100%. Then he's 100%, he's 100 now. Yeah, it's not, it's not changed, it's just different. That's what's so impressive about it is that he's just one of those people that, yeah, people like myself, I've had success in sports, but I I know in my own character that I would never have had a career like him because I'm, I'm not. He's just one of those people that you, they only come along, you know, every now and again, yeah, and we're lucky to witness it, you know, because they are quite unique.
Josh:It seemed like the book that he was doing his best when he had a rival and you talked about Nico and you have several chapters dedicated, or at least talked during that time when he was going against Nico, and then I think Nico fell off at some point and then that was replaced by Greg Menard. Did I get that right? Yeah, sam, sam, and then Neil.
Tim March :Yep, it's hard, isn't it to get when you're trying to be motivated. You know, all right, you're coming down the hill on your own and you've and you've got to do the best you can, and you you want to go as fast as you can. Sometimes it does help if you've got a bit of a niggle, you know, and there's someone you enjoy beating and rubbing their nose in it a bit. In the same way. It might be the same for them. You know, right, and um, you know that that can be part of it. You know, those things, like you're saying, they don't always last too long. Somebody might fall off the the pace, let's say, for whatever. I think the interesting thing with steve that you know, like you look at winning the Worlds, it's probably the one time that he did, he doubted, he did have so many doubts.
Josh:Yeah.
Tim March :And you have to go back to real basics to work out how to win that race. And I don't think, if you read in the book I think I'm probably probably he probably says it is that um it. It didn't start like I've got to win the world. It started by. I don't even know whether I want to go I've been there, yeah, yeah, and then and then he got some advice from someone right that said just go and and
Tim March :every day solve one problem yeah, or tackle one issue, yeah, yeah. So yeah, I think um, yeah, he's um, I think we covered probably everything, like in the book. Uh, we covered probably everything that you could cover in in what was, you know, his race career, you know, and what he did in the off season what you know, did he eat great.
Tim March :You know he had loads of food, you know, and what he wanted when he wanted. And uh, you know, there's that comment I've seen it on a, I think, a review somewhere where someone said they found it really funny that Steve said that he was getting serious about training so he stopped drinking lager and started drinking Guinness.
Josh:Cause he thought that was better for him.
Tim March :It's a meal. He actually did believe that like that was a serious thing. So it's not like. It's probably a lot different mentality than maybe I don't know. You know, someone in the tour de france is having right um with their nutritionalist, yeah, and and obviously with big difference when kathy came along with santa cruz. Yeah, you know that. That. That I think it's a massive change. So, yeah, I think those pivotal bits are covered in the book. The bits that, your bitch, you're talking about. What are those pivotal bits are covered in the book. The bits that you're talking about. What are the pivotal bits? You know they're, they're in there.
Dane:Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing. I think of my little little world. And you know the same thing I had nemesises you know, on one season.
Dane:you know that you're going back and forth and trying to beat Sometimes they were my own teammates, you know, and I'm trying to beat my own teammates. And then, uh, nutrition. I mean back in the day we used to just drink flat Pepsi or Coke. You know, put that in the water bottle and let it uh defizz and and uh. Then all of a sudden there was this revolution in nutrition and he was right on the cusp of that.
Dane:So he's not far off, you know, figuring out what you're going to eat before a race not far off you know, figuring out what you're going to eat before a race Nowadays is a big deal, yeah, but back then it was still a big deal. But you were doing it with just regular stuff and you didn't have, like a nutritionist or anything like that. You just kind of had to figure out what works for you, what didn't upset your stomach, what didn't make you throw up at the end of the race, things like that. So it's pretty crazy.
Tim March :I think he was lucky as well with the publisher we that chose him. If that, because vertebra uh, they publish books on um, rock climbing outdoors. They, they're, they're climbers and I don't know. You know you've got some serious mountains and walls of rock in your country. They're an interesting bunch, those people, and when you read about their exploits it's not something that your mainstream publisher is going to pick up on as a story about some climate, not averagely. And I think with Verte, vertebrate, which is the name of the publisher. So they're from sheffield, they're from the same same same town, he's from same city that steve's from um. I think that book would have been very difficult to get written if it would have been a more mainstream, bigger publisher. I think they were really accommodating to the fact that he's a character and had a story to tell, and they were. You know, I think they would have much rather, it would have been written much quicker. I mean it took over three years, oh wow.
Josh:Did it take three years?
Tim March :Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's not how they envisaged it, but they allowed that to continue so we could finish it, do it right, and we did get it right. And I think there's a title amongst their titles. I think there's a title amongst their titles. I think it's something you know. I'm hoping that you know you look back on that in 10 years' time and the reviews on that book will hopefully warm them in some way. You know of the commitment and the fact that they plumped up the money to get it done. You know and both of us are very, very grateful for them doing that, because you know we've had free hand. At no time did they phone up and say you can't do this or you can't do that. It was more like we've done this, we're doing another chapter on this and I was giving them feedback all the time. So we had a lot of support.
Dane:So lucky that. Do you think that this is a good formula? Because it sounds like the formula that you've kind of developed? I'm sure other people have too. But your keys are you know the person, you got to know them, you participated in the activities they do and then you can deep dive into their lives and, like you said, almost become a method writer for them. Do you think that's a formula that's going to be super successful and are you going to do it?
Tim March :Are you going to do it again? I haven't got any plans to do it again. I don't know what it would be like if someone asked me, and it would have to do with who they were or what I knew about them right, but I think I never the money was. You know, you don't get a lot of money for writing, for for what you write, for a hundred thousand words. You know it's. It's much more profitable to write, be a feature writer in a dirt magazine than it is to write a book.
Tim March :Um, I don't know what steve's fee was, but that's not why I wrote it. I felt privileged to be chosen to write it and I felt like I could. Really, after speaking to him about it and the publisher, I, I thought I and I'd said to him I there's three books that could be written about him and I said, and they'll all be different. I said, but this is what mine will be like from what I know about him and how I feel about him. And so I never really approached it in a way that where it was about the, the commercial aspect of how it was, it had to be about him and and only about him, because if I didn't do that I've completely failed in my job as being a ghost writer. Yeah, you know, like that's my job is is for steve to come through me. It's not for me to just quickly knock out a hundred thousand words and choose a load of stuff that's already out there and a few other little stories we've had when we've got drunk and oh, ha, ha, ha ha.
Tim March :You know, no, that's not going to happen with me. I wanted, I really did want, to tell his story and I feel very, very lucky and privileged that he did. Let me do it. You know, I think lucky and privileged that he did. Let me do it. You know, I think I think I've I've you know between us.
Dane:I think I'm um, hoping he can hold the book and think, well that you know, that's me in it, you know, because there's none of me in it yeah, you know it's all him like that so that's a hard combo to get sometimes, to you know, for somebody to want, you know, to put something like this out there and then to actually be able to find somebody they connect with who can then actually write right, you know, I mean, you can always have friends, but having a writer as a friend who can actually tell your story for you with that kind of heart, is going to be hard to produce in a way, tim, did you guys have any disagreements about what went in or what did not go in the book?
Josh:throughout the process, you and Steve.
Tim March :We had a couple of things where we weren't sure how to approach a couple of matters that would draw people's names into something that possibly didn't need to be named.
Josh:Protect the innocent simply because what?
Tim March :which is we both? Which I said to steve because he wasn't sure about it. I wasn't sure about it and I just said to him look, it's your book, you know. Anyway, it's not. I could, I can tell you what I think, but it's not, it's not up to me. I said but if you want me to, if you want me to help you say that thing, without it involving any of the things that you're worried about it, there's another way of doing it. Why don't we look at it in this way?
Tim March :We did that a couple of times and they were just like little. They weren't big, they were big topics, but they were easily remedied by taking, you know, like a different fork and just, it's the same thing but different. If you know what I mean. Yeah and um, it didn't take away from the book, it, it, it. The same points were made about it. You know, it's just about um. It's very difficult when you're young and you're out and your mates are having fun and you're having fun and you're growing up in a city and you like going out, and all of a sudden you've got an interest in something and they've got their interest in that and it's not what you're doing, got their interest in that and it's not what you're doing and for you to it's like a fork appears, you know, like it's like yeah, and the pull's hard because if that's all your mates and that's what they're doing and it's fun and you like it, you know, and, and, and I think luckily for steve, you know, mountain biking came along at the right time.
Tim March :Yeah, and what he's talking about is basically hard drugs. Oh yeah.
Josh:I think, some of Steve's mates were going down that path and he did not take that path.
Tim March :Yeah, and that's a hard part for him because he's had mates that haven't made it. You know Right.
Dane:Yeah.
Tim March :And he has. You know, there's there's been casualties, which is a shame, but I think you know, luckily, we'll all know, you know, whether it's mountain biking, bmx, motocross, it's all saved a few, a few of us from different lives. Having having that in those interests and passions about, about things that get us out of too many thinking too much, that's probably a better way of putting it. Maybe you know.
Dane:I've got one. I can't speak for Steve. I got one of my teammates who had to make a decision of hanging out and racing with us or continuing to be in a death metal band, and so we saved him from being in a death metal band If it was a punk band, it would have been okay. No, no, it was full on like guar kind of death metal. So yeah, we saved him from that. So I can say I feel like I did a good thing there.
Josh:So, tim, one of the things that I thought you did a great job at, you know, as I went through the book, I really kind of felt and understood like Steve's relationship with his dad and and how that impacted him. Uh, really saw, like, like I said earlier, like his, his rivalries. I really felt like that, like I was in there with him and then, like he lost throughout the book you mentioned he's lost several people in his life and like the impact that that had on him. So I want to commend you on you did a great job, um, with the words that you chose, telling that story because I really I really felt it yeah, thank you, thank you.
Tim March :Yeah, well, we. You know, when you you go on a journey, when you read a book, you don't know where you're going to be taken, do you? So there's an element of you where you just have to let go and you're on your way and I have to be. You know, when I was writing it I was mindful of that, and so was Steve. You know You're going to remind people of things. They're going to think about things in their lives that might've been similar or whatever it is. So, yeah, you try and be delicate about things. You know people's well. Look at Jason McCroy dying. Yeah, you know you've. You know that's a. I've no idea what that was like seeing him leave a house when they they don't want him to leave the house, they want him to stay, and that's the last time they see him he, uh, he left.
Josh:They had a group at a party of the house and he left and took his motorcycle and the last thing they saw was him riding out and I think he was knocked off the road by a lorry. That's a yeah, big truck, big truck, yeah and uh, another lorry hit him, I think, and kill him, if I remember the story correctly.
Tim March :Yeah, just tough things. Yeah, you know, for young lads to go through, you know like not great. You know, and that's a when you're a close-knit community of people as well, then you know, I think they give him, you know you can read in the book, they give him a good send-off and the rest of it, but like you talk to steve, they're all everybody's still upset about it. Yeah, yeah, you know it's a heartbreaking story. You know it's not great.
Josh:Yeah, it's tough well, hey, the book is uh, forged by speed. The making of a mountain bike world champion. Autobiography of steve pete, one of the best mountain bikers ever? I guess not. Was, but continues to be a great mountain yeah, that's that.
Dane:That's the thing that I'd like I want everybody to remember is he's still there, he's still doing a ton of stuff, he's a coach and team manager of the syndicate yep yeah still he's got his company pds, pds and royal royal.
Josh:He actually sold his shares in royal. Oh, did he? Yep oh?
Dane:nice, I still have my royal jacket.
Josh:Yeah, that was an interesting merchandising company that I think their whole mission was to focus on rider development. They did a lot of rider development.
Dane:Yeah, rider develop yeah, he's been big, big influence. I think uh I have no doubt that in the future he's going to start uh being more of a mentor to people. You know, I think that's a big portion of what athletes tend to go towards as they get older and like he's 50 years old.
Dane:They, they have their own kids coming up or you know friends, their age kids, and they start to get into that role. And so I I'm excited to see that I saw that with uh oh man, uh Sean Palmer. It was crazy. Sean Palmer took over a uh know sean palmer. Sean was tight with yeah, with yeah steve. That's a big part of the not always the best uh role model uh, but, but.
Josh:But running a junior development team, how you like your role they got into some debauchery up and oh yeah, uh, in tahoe for sure. Oh, big time which is uh prevalent in the book. Yeah, yeah.
Dane:So, yeah, this, this book's got everything. It's uh, I'm really excited for people to read it, um, you know, to kind of see a little bit of what what a writer has to go through, um, to see how he integrated his life into his writing and and then I think tim just did just such a great job of like channeling steve and and bringing it out. And having that many, you know, that much resource at your hands really makes it nice. It's a super deep read.
Josh:So the book's available today as an e-book and, tim, 90% of our listeners are in the United States, so available on Amazon Kindle and Barnes Noble's Nook. It looks like the hard copies are not yet available, at least on Amazon in the US. It looks like December 31st those books will be available, so you can get a hard copy on December 31st, but you can get the Kindle version right now. I think it is available on Amazon UK for our folks across the pond. Steve, you got any final thoughts for our listeners, brother?
Tim March :No, the only. Thing.
Dane:I think steve's just doing an audio.
Josh:The audiobook version now is nice awesome.
Tim March :Yeah, yeah, he's doing it. He's doing it, which would be good because he's got a really good speaking voice oh, that's awesome right now that'd be good, just to let on.
Tim March :This is a funny thing that you guys will, I think some of your listeners will find funny. I needed a working title for it. When you know like in my brain I was just like what's it going to be called. I had a funny feeling the publisher wouldn't use any of my suggestions, probably because they were just a little bit left to center or whatever you want to call it. But one of them was there's a lovely picture of Steve in the book. As you open the book on, I think, probably page two or three, he's probably I don't know 17, 18, with a piss pot helmet on his head and it's just got like a hammerhead sticker on the helmet. You can just barely read it. It's in black and white, the picture, and it just says hammerhead, which, of course, is what steve is like. He.
Josh:He's the original hammerhead yeah we're just, we were pausing there. We're just, we're looking at the picture right now.
Tim March :So yeah, that's it. So that's got ham. So I was just, you know, that would have been for me quite a good title. But like I said, you know, at dirt we were always left to center, so maybe that wasn't. But as I started to kind of get more into it, I was just like well, this is 11.
Dane:Well, you know, like spinal tap yeah, yeah, yeah, it goes all the way to 11.
Tim March :He goes and he goes. But what if just make 10 louder and steve would be just like no, but it's not 11. What I'm trying to explain is and and it was a serious thing is a paradox is steve, is is always. For me, it's one more than everything else, because that's what makes him unique it. There is something magical. You speak to people that he's spoken to and and they light up. They actually light up. He takes time to speak to people. You can go and have a beer with him. You could walk into a pub and not know him and and you could have a beer with him.
Tim March :One of those exciting, one of those examples is in the book where he walks into a pub in um down by the forest of deans. So he's gone down there, he's in a pub in the Forrester Dean, he's just been riding but got normal gear on and he just bumps into a chap at the bar and just starts talking to him. And this is just as he's put the Orange deal together and he hasn't got enough money for Andy Kiffin. So, andy Kiffin, he needs some money, he's got no money for a mechanic.
Tim March :And so he starts talking to this guy and he's just bloke, says how are you getting on? He goes oh, all right. He said well, I'm just trying to put a bit of a deal together. What do you do? What do you do? And oh, I miss, I've just sold my business and yeah, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm just on and Steve just tells him this story about he's just signed with Orange. He's really over the moon, but not for much money. And the guy just goes well, I'll pay Andy's money. I've got some money. I'll give you the money for Andy Kiffin and this is a bloke that he's met in a pub.
Josh:So he got his mechanic funded. That is amazing.
Tim March :And this is what I mean about that paradox, paradox of being 11. It's like it was. It is an in-joke, of course, which is hilarious because it's it's probably one of the funniest things ever, isn't it? The spinal tap, yes, but the point is that there's, he goes into territory and I don't know how. It's just his character, how he's, how he's made. He's just a bit different and he's, he's a bit special for me, you know. So you know, I'm just hoping you know that I I've done, I've got a bit of that across, but the only way you're ever really going to know that is if anybody is out there and they meet and he's anywhere. Yeah, go and say hello to him, you know, because he's the kind of guy you can just talk to and buy him a beer. He'll be over the moon.
Josh:Buy him a beer and read the book. Yeah, get the book, tim. Thanks a lot, brother. I really appreciate you taking some time with us.
Tim March :I really appreciate your time, gentlemen. Yeah, and you know, I hope people buy it and read it and enjoy it.
Dane:And if they don't send me any bad reviews, that's awesome. Thanks, jim.