On April 19, 2009 a young Danny MacAskill and his friend Dave Sowerby clicked ‘upload’ on a YouTube video titled ‘Inspired Bicycles’. The rest is history.

You’ll no doubt remember this video. You’ll also no doubt remembering all your non-cycling friends and family members emailing you the link to it asking “Have you seen this?!”

At time of writing this iconic video has been viewed nearly 38 million times. Thirty eight million. And that’s not even MacAskill’s most viewed video! That title currently goes to ‘Imaginate‘ which has over 66 million views so far.

Modest MacAskill

Speaking to his sponsor Red Bull, Danny is typically modest: “I find the whole idea that these videos go viral very strange. By the time it goes online, I don’t have expectations. I’m not thinking or hoping for millions of views or massive feedback.

“It’s nice to get feedback from the mountain bike scene and around the world but I’m always hugely surprised how the videos go especially as we don’t follow the rules of viral making videos.

“We’ll often have long intros where we’re not even on the bike for the first up to like a minute. That’s a no go from video marketing point of view.”

Danny MacAskill is a prime example of the modern era sponsored rider. He doesn’t do races. He makes videos for YouTube.

He has competed in trials events in the past but admits “the competition side hasn’t really appealed to me as I’m not that competitive. I don’t enjoy if I have a bad day in competition, I don’t enjoy that feeling. I always preferred coming with an idea, working at it until it works or it doesn’t. I prefer the kind of more creative stuff, coming up with something that seems impossible but you try it enough that you somehow land it in the end.”

More please!

Thanks for the uploads Danny. Keep ’em coming!