It’s early evening when I speak to British dance music pioneer, Pete Tong, squeezed in the minutes on his schedule between a spin class and a sound bath in central London.
The room is scattered with cameras and laptops and notebooks lying open on their spines. But when I ask Tong about cycling, he’s transported somewhere different, eyes in the middle distance, remembering the chopper bike he’d ride around North Kent on as a kid, to the Specialized StumpJumper he’d tour round Richmond Park two decades later.
“Probably in the late 90s, I became aware of the rise of Lance Armstrong – that kind of just reached me somehow,” Tong smiles, taking me through the timeline of his love affair with cycling.
“It’s a bit like getting into cooking through Jamie Oliver. It was like the sport of cycling kind of came into my consciousness, and I started to take an interest in him and the Tour de France. I was going on these rides on my mountain bike, seeing people come by on their racing bikes in their lycra, and I just realised, what the f*** am I doing? I’ve got to switch.”
Tong is world-famous. Despite being the BBC’s longest serving DJ, with his own signature saying and dance orchestra, the 65-year-old is calm, thoughtful, relaxed. Whatever impact the decades of late-night sets and Ibiza partying has had on him, it’s impossible to tell.
He puts it down to cycling: “It’s kind of an antidote, really. It’s kind of meditative to get out on a bike, and know that because you were going to get out on a bike the next day, you couldn’t go to the after party, so it kind of kept me sane.”
Tong’s cycled in Ibiza, in the Cotswolds, all around his old London home, but the best place he’s ever cycled was – indisputably – California.
“I lived in West Hollywood, and I could go up onto Mulholland, going to Griffith Park, and then going out to Pasadena and into the mountains there,” he explains. “The riding is absolutely mind blowing. And that’s the only thing I really miss about America. And obviously the weather – even in the winter, it’s a perfect cycling day: blue sky, cold-ish, but not too cold.”
But every summer, Tong’s two loves come together at Joyride Festival. The Ibiza weekender brings together pro riders, Michelin star chefs and wellness experts for a weekend of group rides and evening parties on the island. With tickets starting at £2,300, the exclusive event is beyond the bounds of many of us, but for Tong, it’s an opportunity to party with his heroes – and chase them up climbs too.
“The first celebrity cyclist was Mark Cavendish,” Tong remembers. “We didn’t really know what to expect. I just thought it was going to be a laugh when I first got told you get to cycle with him, and then you get to play some records. But we had the most amazing night. Mark Cavendish was in the booth with me the whole night. He grew up listening to me, and he was crying. And I was like, what the f*** is going on in here?! It was amazing.”
“I’m surprised, he’s doing it, but I’m very pleased he’s been allowed. I wonder what his team manager will think when he sees him at a rave.”
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