Born and raised in the interior British Columba city of Kamloops, Aggy- as he’s commonly called -grew up with one goal in mind: to become a professional biker. Like many riders before him, watching Cru Jones race to glory in Rad was all the motivation needed to set a dream in motion. At age 7 he began racing BMX regionally and had success throughout the years. At age 14 he picked up his first sponsor, the Bicycle Café, whom he’s still in partnership with today. “They’re pretty much responsible for getting me into mountain biking and my grassroots deal with Kona when I was 17,” he says.

While having a shop steer a young career in the right direction is always welcome, it didn’t come without tribulations. Bicycle Café owners Taylor Hollstedt and Cheryl Beattie laugh while recounting the story of Aggy’s first downhill race. “Let’s just say I ended up with a pretty great apology letter,” Beattie says. “I still have it. In fact, I have a whole box of apology letters from Graham.” Aggy’s version is subdued (with a smile, of course), but the short version is this: the course was too easy for a DH bike so he’d been practicing on his slope bike. In the gate for first qualifying run, they suddenly told him he couldn’t race because he was only running a rear brake. He quickly rode home and tried to attach the front brake from his DH bike to the slope bike but the adapter didn’t fit so he falsely attached the caliper so that it looked like it was functional and hoped they wouldn’t notice. The marshal at the top did notice and tried to stop him, but he raced anyway. Officials threw clipboards at him during his run and tried removing him from the course. Turns out riding away from crazed race marshals makes one ride quite fast and he managed to make it to the bottom unscathed… until he was tackled and held down.