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Steve Worland 1954 - 2014

Farewell to road.cc contributor, hugely respected bike expert, and much valued member of our team

Cycling journalist Steve Worland has died of a heart attack while running in Ashton Court, Bristol earlier today.

The doyen of British mountain bike technical journalists, Steve started writing for Mountain Biking UK in the early 90s and was instrumental in building that magazine’s reputation for fair bike testing based on real-world riding.

He went on to edit What Mountain Bike magazine and was technical director of the mountain bike magazines at Future Publishing from 2005 until being made redundant in 2011.

In the last couple of years Steve became a valued contributor to road.cc. He may have helped invent British mountain bike journalism, but Steve loved all types of riding and was a noted road racer and time triallist in his youth. He was also an accomplished expedition cyclist and outdoorsman who rode all over Europe. With Keith Bontrager he took part in the TransRockies in 2005.


Steve on the cover of MBUK in 1991 

Steve also wrote or contributed to books including ‘The Mountain Bike Book’ for Haynes and ‘The Complete Book of Mountain Biking’.

To say the road.cc team is in shock is an understatement. Steve was a fixture in the cycling media, always willing to talk bikes or go for a ride. Despite his formidable knowledge of bikes and the reputation that went with it, he was a modest, generous, self effacing man who was always happy to share what he knew.

Steve will be greatly missed. Our thoughts are with all his friends and family, especially his partner Jo and their daughter Holly.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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