Sam Shucksmith is head of mountain bike design for Whyte Bikes and has been passionate about MTB racing since he was a teenager.
We caught up with Sam for an episode of the MBUK Podcast to find out about his wealth of experience in the mountain bike world.
From his early days racing downhill bikes to developing and testing new MTBs for Whyte, here are 8 things you may not know about Sam in his own words.
1. He’s got nearly 20 years of racing experience
“I’ve been racing since I was 15. I got into it through my brother, Phil, who was racing World Cups at the time. I raced downhill for eight years and then transitioned to enduro after knee surgery, which knocked my confidence a bit.
“It just seemed more fun – being able to spend a lot of time on your bike riding new venues, new tracks, new equipment.
“The first enduro race I did, in 2011, I was wearing a skateboard lid and some high-ankle Five Ten flat boots, because enduro clothing didn’t really exist.
"If you were a downhill rider, you just had a DH helmet and a BMX lid for dirt jumping and stuff.”
2. That helps when it comes to testing bikes
“I think you’ve just got to be comfortable enough on a bike that you can ride really consistently, ride the same track within a few tenths [of a second] over and over again, and actually feel everything, and not just be engrossed in the experience of riding but be thinking about the bike.
“That probably takes a fair ability level… what I’m looking for, in general, is just to feel confident and have fun.
“Riding bikes and testing bikes is very subjective, and people say, ‘How do you know what other riders are going to want? You ride at a high level – how does that translate to people who don’t?’.
“The way I like a bike set up seems to translate to the masses – the track record has shown that, with the bikes we’ve brought out at Whyte.”
3. School was a struggle, but he stuck with education
“I have dyslexia and I didn’t really learn anything until I was about 12. Then I kind of learned how to learn. After GCSEs, I could focus on the subjects that suited me, like maths, physics and design technology.
“It went from school being a nightmare to school being great… I remember being in the pits at Maribor [the Slovenian DH World Cup venue] doing maths past papers – which may have contributed to the race not going very well!
“After A-Levels, I studied engineering at university. I had a year out to race and because I didn’t use my brain much, the first semester was pretty tough.
“One of the things that saved me was that I had knee surgery and basically couldn’t ride for the whole of the second year [of uni], so all I could do was study.”
4. He fell into bike design unintentionally
“I went to Cardiff University and did a Master’s degree in mechanical engineering. I didn’t have this end goal of wanting to design bikes necessarily, but it just kind of took me that way.
“I did my year in industry at Red Bull Technology, which is the F1 team, and that was a really good grounding in design, to be spending loads of time on CAD and also working with composites.
“The summer after graduating, I got a message on LinkedIn while on my honeymoon from a product director at Whyte, saying: ‘We’re looking for an engineer, are you interested?’ It went from there.”
5. He regrets buying so many bikes when he was younger
“I look back at a lot of bikes I had – bikes I wish I hadn’t had – and I can’t imagine any of them were set up very well.
“You just want to have the best bike you can have [for racing], and you get dragged into buying a new bike when you probably shouldn’t.
“There’s been lots of times when I’ve had a bike I’ve felt really comfortable on and have been doing well on, and the next year I’ll get a new bike, because that’s what you do…
“It takes a long time to learn how bikes work and what has what effect on the bike. My two decades of riding, you can’t really skip that.”
6. Bike development is a lengthy process
“The starting point is trying to get the brief nailed down, and that can take a while, especially as things are changing in the market.
“Then you flesh out the geometry, add componentry, and balance the kinematics and geometry around any other requirements, such as an ebike motor.
“Once you’ve got the first draft, you begin designing in 3D, the engineering and industrial design teams working together to make sure function and aesthetics blend harmoniously.
“Then we take that to our manufacturing partners. There’s a bit of back and forth until we’ve got a design finalised and drawings confirmed, then it’s time to make ride samples and [fatigue and impact] testing samples…
“We test at the factory side and in a third-party [test] house, for international compliance… then you’re into assembly and gearing up for production.
“The Kado project took nine months to nail down the plan, then over a year from embarking on the manufacturing side to passing testing, and another five months to getting bikes into the UK.”
7. Testing isn’t about going on fun rides
“Usually, when I get out testing, it’s with a specific goal in mind and a specific product I want to test, whether that be a suspension fork or shock, or even a bar or stem.
“If it’s a new frame, I’ll take it out on a couple of first rides – as you guys do – just to have a bit of a shakedown and make sure nothing falls off and it all works.
“Then I’ll start dialling it in. Usually, I’ll stick to the same couple of tracks, for a couple of months, for the bulk of testing.
“Consistency, of the bike, the track and the conditions, is super-important. I test in the Forest of Dean a lot and different trails in South Wales.”
8. Surprisingly, the best part of his job isn’t seeing the finished bike
“Getting the riding samples is the most exciting bit. The most nerve-wracking part is waiting for test results – I’ve learned over the years that you can never be too complacent.
“Getting bikes at the end is a mix of excitement and nerve-wracking feelings about how they’re going to be received.
“Usually, you’ve almost forgotten about the bike, because it was what you were working on last year and you’re consumed by something else!
“But it is very cool to get a production bike.
“Sometimes I don’t even see them for a while, because I’ll just have the sample I got eight months ago and the new bikes will go to customers, but it’s cool seeing them out on the trail.
“That’s one of the best things – seeing the bikes out and people riding them.”
