Words and pictures by Noah Dougherty

The world's biggest names in mountain biking faced a young person from Stroud this week when he represented Great Britain at an international competition.

Alfie Stephens, who also runs the non-profit organisation Access Bike and recently won Stroud town council's person of the year, competed in the first Crankworx from June 13 to June 17.

He took to the mountains of Innsbruck last week, taking part in the Mons Royale Dual Speed and Style.

Despite having only ridden this exciting discipline once before, Alfie put in a solid performance in the timed runs and found himself seeded against fellow Englishman Sam Reynolds. 

In his first run through the course, Alfie performed a tail-whip over the first jump and a superman-seat-grab over the second but finished just over a second behind his opponent. With the second run due, Alfie knew he had to up his game.

Although he was able to slightly decrease his time and 'upgrade' his tail-whip to a double tail-whip, the 22-year-old couldn’t claw back the deficit from run number one and he was knocked out at the hands of Reynolds who went on to finish second overall.

Alfie is now competing again in Les Gets, France, at the next stop of the Crankworx tour (alongside Joe Aldridge from the Forest of Dean) as the pair will take on the Pump Track Challenge (a race around a short rollable track without pedalling) before Alfie has a second shot at the Speed and Style contest.

If he makes the final rounds this time, you can cheer him on via a live stream from the Crankworx website on the CWX TV page.