David Graf | Tokyo 2020 Olympic Bike Check

While Switzerland’s David Graf has been a mainstay at the cutting edge of the sport since 2015, his ‘breakthrough year’, it was only this year, 2021, that saw him finally win a World Cup, and now we’d bet he’ll be rolling into Tokyo brimming with self-belief. When he gets on the gate later this month for the 2020/2021 Tokyo Olympics it will be on this beautiful Prophecy BMX that he in large part designed from the ground up.

Since Verona, Graf has not appeared on a gate in public, instead preferring to stay in the shadows preparing, and as you would expect from Graf, he’ spent some significant time dialling in his bike! Always looking for some extra grams, he’s managed to get his fast machine down to a feather weight 6.9Kgs, admittedly by taking extreme measures. He’s been weighing new tyres, that he painstakingly blacks out the logos on, and only selecting the lightest ones, or making the decision to go with a 28 spoke front wheel. It’s all in the details … par for the course with Graf.

Graf had his Prophecy frame custom painted by Ralph Lugten in the Netherlands who added lots of little custom touches, from the Swiss Cross and the Olympic logo to the seemingly random years on the inside of the forks and rear stays! Obviously, the years are not random at all … they are all important years in David’s life … birth years of the significant others in his life, his birth year, 1989. 2015 his breakthrough year, 2019, they ‘got the dog’ (who made the helmet too) and 2021, his first World Cup win. At the end of July, 2021 may just have a new and major significance in his life …