Living Legend

No. Not me. Silly. But Jacquie Phelan.

On a brief visit to Edinburgh having taken part in the Singlespeed Mountain Bike World Championships over in Ireland, we've met once before when she was in Edinburgh for a couple of weeks and I interviewed her on the stage of the Filmhouse when she was half cut. But why was I interviewing her? Well she was featured in a movie-documentary called Klunkerz, which told the story of the very beginnings of mountain biking, which was being shown at the Edinburgh Bike Film Festival.

Jacquie was there. As was her husband, Charlie Cunningham, a man who is more or less responsible for the invention of the V-brake, and the use of aluminium frames for bikes.

Both are charter inductees to the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame. Seriously. This is cycling royalty. And she had been calling me all week to hook up. Head. World. On. Its.

Jacquie was so good she actually went undefeated for 6 years in the early 80s (which, if it had existed for mountain biking at the time, would have seen her world champion), and was poster girl for Muddy Fox. And she's off back to California tomorrow. Damn. I'll just ave to get out there, where there's an open invitation to be shown the MTB trails on Mt Tam.

She's on her third sofa of the short trip. She's a little... Disorganised. And has been losing loaned phones and keys and bike locks of those putting her up. This morning at a CitycyclingEdinburghForum coffee meet at Peter's Yard she dragged out a jar of cooked gammon in some sort of homemade sauce concoction that she was trying to palm off on people. One of a kind.