Old School Throwback: MBUK Presents Dirt

This week we're coming back to the UK for our Old School Throwback with the film that started it all for UK downhill videos. This is more or less day zero, MBUK's slightly confusingly-named Dirt (it has nothing to do with Dirt magazine, which didn't even exist when this came out). If you want to understand why freeriding never really caught on in the UK, then this video goes a long in explaining why. While the US had a crop of incredibly fast, but very serious, racers at the time, none of them seemed like much fun and I think it's fair to say freeriding grew from a desire to put fun back into riding bikes. Over in the UK we had riders like JMC, Rob Warner and Dave Hemming, so it was a problem we never had. If you don't believe me, try and picture John Tomac dicking around like this... On a more sombre note, it's also a good opportunity to remember how much mountain biking lost with JMC's untimely death a few, short years later in 1995. If you don't know about Jason McRoy, you should take a few minutes to look at www.jasonmcroy.com and read his story.

And yes, it's an old film so they aren't always wearing the appropriate protective equipment, if you may find that upsetting it's probably best to watch something else.