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road.cc's Elaine Curtin selected as one of the 50 most influential people in UK cycling

“A long-established player in the bicycle industry” says trade mag BikeBiz

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.”

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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4 comments

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sunDOG | 10 years ago
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 41

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WolfieSmith | 10 years ago
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 41  105

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Gkam84 | 10 years ago
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"BikeBiz describes Elaine, whose official title is "head of keeping those pesky guys in check" at Farrelly Atkinson, the company behind road.cc,"  103  103

Congratulations Elaine, keep up the fine work and the lads in check  21

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antonio | 10 years ago
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