Where: Abandoned dog food factory, Yorkshire. Who: Chris Akrigg. When: February 2008. Photo: Victor Lucas.

>>> Chris Akrigg biopic: From There To Here

Interview & photo by: Victor Lucas

Chris: “This shot represents a time in my career when I had been a trials rider for a long time and I was becoming more and more influenced by BMX and that aggressive riding style. So I was getting into building nasty ghetto style kickers and landings in old disused factories in the mill towns around Yorkshire. I’d literally go in with a handful of nails and a hammer and drag some old pallets and bits of wood around to build some really ugly lines that were really fun and challenging to ride.

“I had just come back from an injury and I was struggling a bit for motivation, so for some reason I thought taking the brakes off my trials bike was a good idea. First time I rode it was like ‘Oh this is a bit interesting!’. It took my mind off the injury, and I had to re-learn how to ride my bike with no brakes. I’ve always been into strange challenges, it just spiced things up a little having no brakes, there were a lot of extra things to think about, it taught me a lot about how to use the ground to manage your speed, how to scrub speed off, how to get speed from nowhere and basically it forced me to ride smooth.

“You’ve got to be super confident when you’ve got one gear, no suspension and no brakes. The margin for error is so minimal, you can’t chicken out at the last minute, so when you’re riding away after doing something like this, the feeling you get is amazing. It’s the polar opposite to Mongoose Teocali that I ride now – 160mm travel front and rear, 12 gears and really powerful brakes.”

Chris Akrigg

It’s hard to pigeonhole Chris Akrigg – he started as a trials rider before getting into BMX and then full-suspension bikes in the Noughties, racing downhill and enduro. Known for his silky smooth skills and mind-blowing stunts, he makes the impossible seem effortless.