“The stars aligned," says Cornish freeride star Tom Isted, recalling the day he backflipped his way into the record books on a £300 Giant Glory frame. “I had a fire in my belly to prove myself, I timed it perfectly and the wind we had was, luckily, a tailwind – but I absolutely didn’t think I’d go 120ft!”
I’ve known Isted for 10 years or more, and he’s never been afraid to try anything. He may be known as ‘Ice-T’ these days, but before that many knew him as ‘Sketchy Tom’, due to his apparent inability to see any danger in trying something others wouldn’t.
If there’s a session going down, whether that’s slopestyle or big jumps, you can be sure Isted won’t be shy about dropping in first or sending something big.
He thrives in high-pressure situations and is equally eager to get stuck in when people begin to trade heavy tricks.
Isted grew up in Liskeard, Cornwall and has never left. On the day I visit him, we hit two of his favourite local spots to get the lowdown on his seemingly rapid rise from local dirt-jump hero to world-wowing freerider.
Chasing the dream
Our first stop is close to Isted’s compound at Adrenaline Quarry.
He’s set up a flat-drop ladder, two dirt landings and two wooden moto ramps made by his friend Jasper Flashman, and also has his airbag here, for learning new tricks.
It’s a prime spot, out of the wind, which he uses a lot.
All the tricks he does are fascinating. You rarely get to see people sending 40, 50 or 60ft jumps, or to watch dirt jumpers of this quality.
In between sessioning the jumps, we talk about Tom’s past. His love of bikes began not far from here, on an old BMX track turned skate park across the road from his childhood home.
Any spare time Tom had, you’d find him there, fixed on progression.
He went on to ride BMX for Mongoose Bikes and became pretty well-known in the UK scene.
Mongoose was producing mountain bikes, so he dabbled in MTB, but the turning point didn’t come until he got his hands on a dirt-jump frame.
In 2016, he began competing in the Dirt Wars UK series, and a year later, he stepped up to the dirt-jump and slopestyle events of the FMB World Tour.
That same season, though, his deal with Mongoose came to an end, after six years riding for the brand.
“It was tough to take, losing Mongoose after so long,” he says. “But it just lit the fire in my belly to go head-first into MTB and chase the dream.”
On to bigger things
From Isted’s compound, we head to another of his favourites, Woody’s Bike Park.
Cornwall’s first bike park, it has a good mix of blue, red and black trails, plus plenty of opportunities for Isted to try new tricks to dirt, with some rather tasty lips.
The timing of Isted’s arrival on the MTB scene couldn’t have been better. Woody’s had recently opened, and it gave him the opportunity to, firstly, meet Flashman, who builds the trails there, and also get comfortable riding a downhill bike on big jumps.
It didn’t take him long. Shortly after, Flashman managed to get Isted an invite to LooseFest, part of the super-sized Fest Series, organised by Nico Vink, in Malmady, Belgium.
After that, he was hooked. Having ridden dirt jumps for a while by this point, Isted had some tricks up his sleeve, some of which he’d been able to bring over from BMX.
Transferring these to a DH bike was tricky, but soon enough, he had them dialled.
Another rider who helped Isted get where he is today was Sam Pilgrim. After switching from BMX, he became good friends with the FMB world champion.
Up a creek with no sponsor
In 2018, Isted was picked up by GT Bicycles and continued to build his FMB ranking. The next year, he started a YouTube channel, following in Pilgrim’s footsteps.
All appeared to be going well, but then, in 2020, Isted’s sponsorship with GT came to an end, just as the world began to close down because of COVID. Unable to find a new deal, he was forced to go solo.
“The timing of my exit from GT couldn’t have been worse,” he reflects.
“The global pandemic had just started and everyone was being very conservative.”
Losing the support was hard for Isted, but it made him determined to get out there and prove to potential sponsors what they were missing.
He made frequent trips to Europe, with his increasingly beaten-up GT frames, so he could progress his skills, ride different jumps, feature in other FMB riders’ vlogs and create his own content for YouTube.
It wasn’t until 2023 that he had his breakthrough, though, when he headed out to Darkfest in South Africa.
At that point, Isted was well-known within the slopestyle scene, but sufficiently ‘underground’ to be nominated in the Newcomer category of MBUK's Rider of the Year awards.
The first inkling that this was about to change came when a video began circulating of Isted and fellow UK rider Sam Hodgson backflipping a 110ft jump, built the year before, but never previously flipped.
Flippin’ heck
“The light was fading fast,” Isted recalls. “Sam and I were the last ones up there, and we just dropped in one after the other, resulting in us both breaking the previous [dirt-to-dirt] record.”
That wasn’t the end of it, though. While the pair sent it an impressive 106ft and 104ft, respectively, on their first try, Isted knew he could do better.
The day of his next attempt was windy. While most riders would have called it a day, Isted isn’t one of them.
The clip of his world record-breaking flip blew up the internet, racking up hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. It didn’t surprise me, though – Isted had been on a mission to prove himself and get a big ride, and went there knowing he wanted to do something big.
While the jump itself was wild, what’s even more astonishing is the fact Isted did it on a £300 frame. Before flying out to Cape Town, he’d decided it was time to replace his battered old GT DH bike, and took a punt on a decade-old Giant Glory, building it up with parts he already had.
“I just wanted to change it up,” he explains.
“I’d been running old frames for years and I’d always wanted to try a Glory. One came up on eBay, I thought ‘why not?’ and the rest is history.”
When Isted returned from Darkfest, the calls started to come in. The right person at Giant became aware of the clip circling the internet of the massive flip, the staff couldn’t believe he’d done it on a 2010 Glory, and the brand reached out to him, offering the pro deal he’d been searching for.
“It was a perfect fit,” says Isted.
“They were on the lookout to expand the freeride team, and I was still looking for a ride.”
At the top of his game
Tom Isted can safely say he’s made it. He has a pro deal, more than 40,000 YouTube subscribers and 100,000 Instagram followers, and has cemented himself as one of the world’s top freeriders. He’s picked up another sponsor, too – DMR, whose parts he’s running on all his bikes.