MEET THE MAKER Alice Towers & her dad Jonny

How was the Canyon-SRAM star shaped by her motorbike champ father?

- Chris Marshall-Bell 

Life is better on two wheels, and the Towers family would most certainly agree with that. For those with an interest in motorcycling, Jonny Towers will be a familiar name. A British Supertwin and European Classic Endurance champion, Jonny has also won at the world-famous Spa Francorchamps, as well as competed at the Isle of Man TT. He claimed his first victory aged 16 and he's still scoring wins today, at the age of 57.

Sporting success runs further back in the family, too: Jonny's father lan was a professional footballer who played for Burnley for nine seasons from 1965 and went on to play for Oldham Athletic and Bury. When Jonny was five, the family moved to Cape Town, South Africa, where lan continued his pro football career.

At the age of 19, Jonny moved back to the UK to pursue his love of motorcycling. Alongside his frequent wins on the track and his very successful motorcycling apparel company RST, he was also a successful cyclist in the late Nineties, then in his early-30s, gaining an elite licence at the turn of the millennium. In 2003 he married Sam, and the couple had two children together: Alice, born in 2002, and Lucas, the following year.

Alice, who became British road race champion aged just 19, is now 21 and has just completed her first season in the women's World Tour with CanyonSRAM. "My brother and I were always riding but not at a serious level until we were teenagers," Alice recalls. "We began going to the local circuit series in Shrewsbury, but it wasn't until I finished fourth in my first national race that I took it any more seriously. From 15 to 18 my progression was pretty quick and I was competing in World Tour races with Le Col-Wahoo aged 18."