Fun and fast
Dalila Lecky established her cycling directive—”fun and fast”—early on. She thinks back to her first crit race in 2014—”I was so proud to have stayed upright, at least until the final lap anyway,” she says with a grin—and the feeling of elation she got from having crossed London to get on the startline. At this point, she was a brand new member of a club in South London, in the very same part of the city she’d grown up in, except now she wasn’t playing on her BMX or crossing the city on her commute, she’d discovered racing.
As she weaved her way through the usual weekday traffic to work, taking alleyways and park cut-throughs wherever possible, it became clear that her weekends could look different.
The Steezers
Nowadays, she’s a ride leader with the Steezy Collective , one of a host of groups in London that are making cycling a more approachable, inclusive place, reducing barriers to entry and shifting the focus from power-to-weight more towards parity and positivity. This means helping female, trans, non-binary riders access the sport through regular rides, meet-ups and workshops on bike mechanics, bikepacking and more.
We followed Dalila and a group of ‘Steezers’ at the 2022 edition of North London Dirt , keeping their wheel as they made their way along 70 miles of the finest dirt, accessed directly from the city, featuring river paths, hidden parks and needle-threading through woodland on little-used singletrack.
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