Britain's Best Bike Mechanic 2018 in association with Park Tool
Britain's Best Bike Mechanic 2018 in association with Park Tool
Posted on 5 Dec 2018
Earlier this year Cycling Weekly and MBR set out to find Britain's Best Bike Mechanics in association with Park Tool and supported by British Cycling, with the final held at ATG Training's new Cytech Training Centre in Oxford.
The campaign to find Britain’s best road and MTB mechanics was launched back in June, where the public were asked to nominate and vote for those who they felt deserved the title. In just 3 weeks there were c.3000 votes for over 300 mechanics from across the country, reflecting just how valued they are by bike owners when looking after their two-wheeled machines.
Shortlists of 10 were created for those that received the most votes from the public. The shortlisted mechanics then had to answer a series of scenario based questions which were submitted to a judging panel to decide who was going to be in the final.
The 6 finalists (3 mechanics from each of the disciplines) were invited to ATG Training's new Cytech Training Centre in Oxford to compete in the final to be crowned as Britain’s Best Bike Mechanic 2018.
Britain’s Best Bike Mechanic 2018 - finalists
| Road | MTB* |
Rikki Pankhurst, Pankhurst Cycles Scott Jones, Mickey Cranks Theo Tanner, Pedal Heaven |
Denham Elvin, DC Cycles Tom Cropper, Twisted Cogs |
Road
Rikki Pankhurst, Pankhurst Cycles
Scott Jones, Mickey Cranks
Theo Tanner, Pedal Heaven
MTB*
Denham Elvin, DC Cycles
Tom Cropper, Twisted Cogs
*One of the MTB finalists could not attend on the day
In both the morning and afternoon the finalists had a number of tasks to complete within a time limit of 1h30m to really test their skills. Not only that, to add to the pressure they were also being closely watched by 3 industry experts which made up the panel of eagle-eyed judges; Park Tool's Director of Education Calvin Jones, British Cycling’s head mechanic Mark Ingham, and our very own Cytech trainer and master technician Jules Thrasher.
Take a look at the videos below to see how the day unfolded:
| Road | MTB |
Road
MTB
Photos from the day can also be found on the Cytech Facebook page here.
Coincidentally, although not a requirement of the competition, all 5 finalists on the day hold at least a Cytech technical two qualification, with the winners both having Cytech technical three qualifications and therefore Cytech master technician status.
The winners
Congratulations to both Scott and Tom for being crowned Britain’s Best Bike Mechanics 2018. They both took home the coveted BBBM2018 trophies, a bottle of fizz each and £250 to spend on Park Tool products.
An extended congratulations go to Rikki, Theo and Denham for making it to the final and for adding to the amount of skill and professionalism on show on the day, a true reflection of all those working within our technical and challenging industry!