Curve’s Ryan ‘Rhino’ Flinn talks ultras, adventure bikes and making metal cool again
Words PADDY MADDISON Photography PATRIK LUNDIN
The average sales exec might zip from boardroom to boardroom via train or plane, clad in a suit and carting their overnight gear around a fancy leather holdall. But there’s nothing average about Curve co-owner, sales director and ultra-distance rider Ryan ‘Rhino’ Flinn. To his mind, when he’s peddling his adventure and bikepacking bikes, the only real way to get from meeting to meeting is by, well, pedalling his adventure and bikepacking bikes.
‘I’ve mainly been living in my tent,’ Flinn tells Cyclist as we catch up during his latest two-wheeled trans-European work trip to visit Curve dealers scattered across the continent. ‘I stay in a hostel here and there to wash my clothes and keep the bike in “showroom” condition.’
So far, Flinn’s current adventure has taken him through Wales, England, France, Switzerland and Germany. As you can probably imagine, he’s had his fair share of interesting encounters. While wild camping in France, for example, his too-good-to-be-true pitch in a postcard-perfect country meadow was ransacked by crazed wild boars during the dead of night. On another occasion, he unintentionally startled a bunch of local men on their way home from the pub, who caught him bathing nude in a river by moonlight.
‘It must have been a most peculiar sight for a group of young men after a night out on the town. Can you imagine staggering back home through the forest only to see some oddly disturbing creature in a river bed, frolicking around washing its weirdly tanned legs?’
Flinn is no stranger to such escapades and adventures. A traveller since childhood, he was born in South Africa and spent his youth moving around places such as Mozambique, Botswana and Lesotho with his parents. These days, he spends most of his time cycling around the world for work. When he’s not in business mode, you can probably find him participating in an epic ultra-endurance race of some sort.
Curve’s tough-as-nails metal bikes are built for this type of riding. They’re ridden by some of the world’s top ultra-endurance cyclists, and there’s a strong emphasis on hardcore real-world testing. Many brands would be happy ticking off the required ISO boxes before releasing a bike, but co-founder Jesse Carlsson insisted on riding (and winning) the 2015 Trans Am Bike Race on a Curve titanium frame before he was ready to sell them to the public.
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