Daryl Brown is a lucky guy. It could also be argued that he’s unlucky. The evidence? After a knee operation in January 2023, he’d only been back on the bike a matter of weeks when he fell onto a metal stake, which punctured the inside of his upper arm. Unlucky. Fortunately, it missed a vital artery, by not very much at all. Lucky!
Recovering relatively quickly, he headed out to South Africa for Darkfest. Calling this a freeride event is underselling it, really – it’s packed with the biggest jumps that Daryl’s friend and regular riding companion Sam Reynolds can put together, in a spectacular location near Stellenbosch, and attended by a crew of world-class riders who push each other further and harder for the best part of a week. Surviving that with no serious crashes? Lucky.
But, a few weeks after returning, an innocent over-jump at
