We try not to blow our own trumpet too much at road.cc, but we’re delighted that our commercial lynchpin, Elaine Curtin, has been named as one of the 50 most influential people in British cycling by trade website and magazine BikeBiz.

BikeBiz describes Elaine, whose official title is commercial director of Farrelly Atkinson, the company behind road.cc, as “a long-established player in the bicycle industry”.

Elaine was ad manager of Cycling Plus magazine when it was launched by Future Publishing in the early 1990s, and of MTB Pro magazine. She was also involved in the launch of Dirt magazine at 4130 Publishing and its continued development at Factory Media.

The bike industry is still a male-dominated world, and Elaine is one of only a handful of women to make the industry section of the list, which is dominated by CEOs of companies such as uber-distributor Madison Cycles and bike makers Trek and Giant.

She was part of the team that launched the Cycle Show, and ran her own events company for six years. Until recently she combined her role on road.cc with running the Core Bike trade show, helping to build that event into arguably the most important trade-only event of the year, and for two years ran the expo at the Dalby Forest mountain bike world cup.

Elaine joined Farrelly Atkinson in 2008, becoming commercial director in 2009. As well as helping keep the lights on at road.cc, she also provides support to cycle to work provider Cyclescheme.

“Well, for once I'm lost for words,” Elaine said. “I've been assisted along the way by always being surrounded by supportive teams and hard working individuals, so I say thank you to them and of course to Bikebiz for including me in this great accolade.”