Clinching the dream

After piling on the pounds as a City banker, Dov Tate turned his back on finance, burnt off 25kg and set up as a sole trader in the cycling market.

- Simon Smythe

“In your first year working in the City, if you put on less than a stone, you’re doing remarkably well,” says 35-year-old Dov Tate. “For me, it was more like three stone in the first two years.”

Tate had played hockey at a high level at school and university, making the Welsh national squad.

But when he graduated from Worcester College, Oxford, with a mechanical engineering degree, he heard the siren call of the City.

“You essentially go from the student scenario of having no money and lots of time – able to play hockey all the time – to working 100-hour weeks and having no time but a decent amount of money.”

Before long, sport had been replaced by less wholesome pastimes.

“You very quickly fall into that work-hard-play-hard culture. All physical activity goes out of the window because you just don’t have time for it. Suddenly you’re going out at weekends, eating at good restaurants, drinking, partying lots.”