Career
He had been riding professional trials since 1993 and is often described as a mountain biking legend. He has been credited with turning trials from a niche form of riding into the sport it is today. Ashton was paralysed in an accident in 2013, during a bike trials demo at the British Moto General Practice. "Legend" Ashton started out as a motorcycle trials rider, and only later took up mountain bike trials.
Ashton is the High Jump World Record Holder.
In 2008, Ashton entered the Mountain Biking United Kingdom "Hall of Fame". Ashton not only rides trials, he has also designed the exhibition stages and has been designing products for his own Ashton Bikes range since 2002.
He has appeared in television shows, magazine covers and MTB videos, and also has his own column Hop Idol in the MBUK magazine. Ashton lives in Portuguese Talbot, Wales.
Ashton broke his back in 2003 when he compressed a vertebra and fractured it during a fall, having misjudged a landing, but he soon returned to riding.
Ashton established Team Ashton Diamondback in order to provide support for young riders. A range of Team Ashton bikes was released in October 2008 as part of the 2009 Diamondback range. Ashton again broke his back on 1 September 2013 during a demo at Moto General Practice. A 3-metre fall from a high bar left him with severe damage to his spinal cord and dislocated T9 and T10 vertebrae.
On July 2, 2015, Ashton rode a modified bike down a mountain, which was featured in the YouTube video "Martyn Ashton - Back On Track" by Global Mountain Bike Network.
On 9 October 2012 Ashton published a popular video on YouTube called, where he takes an unmodified carbon road bike and performs a series of acrobatic tricks. Shot in various locations around the United Kingdom, the video was viewed millions of times, receiving tens of thousands of likes and over ten million views by early 2014.
2
After the success of, Martyn was working on a sequel. During a trials display he had an accident which left him paralyzed from the waist down.
2 was completed with help from other riders - Danny MacAskill and Chris Akrigg.
"2" was released on December 10th 2013, and like the first episode became a success. The video gained more than 7.5 million views and 66,000 likes in the first month.