Who is Dave Walsh?

If you’ve read any of Dave’s Buying Guides on the Pro Cycling Outlet site you might be wondering who’s behind this encyclopaedic knowledge of bikes, cycling kit, road-racing and mountain-biking, and the hidden pro cycling world.

That’s Dave, the owner and ideas man who went from mountain biker to collector and seller of ex-pro kit in the global cycling hub of Girona, northern Spain.

Dave's first bikes

In fact, Dave’s been collecting bikes since he was 14 years old. His first proper bike was a Kona CinderCone 1990, back before they became vintage collectibles. The bike is still in his dad’s shed in the UK and will one day be hanging on display at the Pro Cycling Outlet warehouse.

But, unlike every other treasure housed there, the Kona won’t be for sale. And neither will the jersey Dave’s sporting in the photo, a much-loved ‘90s Kona shirt. Though you’ll find plenty of other secondhand cycling jerseys Dave has personally curated from the pro cycling world.

From his first bike at age six, when he’d run around the streets in Leicester, England, pushing a drop handlebar bike he was too small to ride, playing with bikes is all Dave’s ever wanted to do.

At age 10, his family moved to hilly Devon in the south, the perfect place to try out the new, cool mountain bikes everyone was into back then. As a school kid, he started competing in mountain bike races all over Europe until, many bikes and two decades later, he crashed head-first at 65km an hour when a 3.5-metre training jump in Spain went wrong.

A career-ending accident

Most pros will recognise the long list of broken teeth and bones Dave’s experienced in his lifetime. He even wears a bolt that once pinned his collar bone together as a bracelet. But this break was career-ending, shattering his left elbow and breaking his arm in 26 places. It took just over a year of multiple surgeries, some of them up to 14 hours long, to reconstruct his elbow, the threat of amputation always looming.

Throughout his recovery, all Dave would ask his surgeon was “When can I ride my bike again?”

The surgeon thought he was crazy.

However, the doctor finally gave him a bemused all-clear and Dave was back on a bike 18 months later, though he wasn’t able to mountain bike for two-and-a-half years.

From Racer to business owner

By then, Dave was also running the former business, Bike Breaks, organising tours and bike rentals in Girona with a fleet of 300 bikes pre-Covid.

With an engineering degree and 20 years of experience as a bike mechanic, Dave is a go-to person in the pro and amateur cycling world of Girona. If your question starts “Does anyone know where I can get a …?” someone here will inevitably reply “Ask Dave Walsh.”

Since Covid disrupted the tourism side of the business, Dave has switched his focus to selling ex-pro gear online from a warehouse that could hold anything from bikes to bottles, Bib-shorts to Cycling shoes, tires to toolkits and everything in between.

Still playing 

But he’s still out, playing with his bike, every weekend, though now with his 10-year-old daughter so no more 65km an hour, 3.5-metre jumps.

These days, he gets his bike play thrills from super-endurance rather than speed, taking part in the 750km-in-7-days Trans Pyrenees event from Catalunya to the Basque Country in 2019, 2020 and 2021 on his Cannondale.

It’s all he’s ever wanted to do.