It all started on New Year’s Eve 1987/88. A young woman, Marie Meineche, had followed her ancestors across the North Sea (or Western Sea as it’s called in Denmark) to the wild and harsh Scotland. And believe me Scotland is very wild and harsh in January!

She had been over there for a 3-day seminar about sheep farming. See she grew up in mid-west Jutland where the land wasn’t really suitable for anything. Except sheep. At least so she thought one day, so she had gone to agriculture school with the ambition of starting her own sheep farm. Since Denmark have mainly focused on pigs and cows for the last few hundred years she had to go overseas to get some real expertise on the field.

And that brings us back to the story. Marie was supposed to go back to Denmark the morning of the 31st, but her plane couldn’t get a lift-off due to some mechanical problem and then when it became after noon the airport decided to close down for the year.
So there stood a 25-year old Danish woman outside Aberdeen Airport with nowhere to go. So she started walking towards the town, but soon a young man pulled up and offered her a ride.

He was going towards town where he were to celebrate the new year with his (much older) brother John, who incidentally had moved to Canada, in one of the local pubs.
Or that is his brother’s band had to play so in reality William (as his name was and still is) had to go there and clap and cheer on his brother alone. You can probably all guess how it went from there…


To make a long story short Marie somehow managed to convince William that the flat Western Jutland was even more beautiful than the mighty hills of Scotland. At least close enough to get him to come with her to see. Then it was no disadvantage that William himself wanted to be a sheep-farmer, but had just seen his father sell the family farm to the neighbour since the oldest son John had no interest in it.

Things go as they do when a young man and a young woman become fond of each other and the 2nd of November 1989 young Erik was born.
Only a year later his grandfather died and his grandmom moved to Denmark to be closer to her son and grandchild, so Erik never got to spend enough time in Scotland to get familiar with the hills.

At that time his parents farm was well established and Erik soon became part of the work. And when he got his first bike he started riding with his dad out over the bad roads to check on the animals. He loved the animals but even more he loved the biking.
Those roads became his home and after watching Paris – Roubaix on TV the first time there was never really any doubt as to what his future should be.

Fortunately the combination was great. He could go to school in the day hours, but each afternoon he took his bike and rode on the gravel roads checking on his parent’s sheep. And as Erik grew older the farm grew bigger and the route longer.

When he was 14 the daily route was close to 100 km in order to get to all the pastures. On top of that the trips to and from school.

With Grand Prix Herning going past these roads Erik started taking part in the annual amateur race on these parts and it quickly became obvious that he had some real talent. He joined the local club Herning Cykle Klub and went on from there to do very well in the hard flat races, but lacked every time he came to more hilly terrain than he was used to.

He slowly raced more and more amateur races and finally at 23 years he was offered a contract at the Danish Pro-tour team Saxo - Tinkoff, who just so happens to have headquarters close to where Erik grew up.

On a side note John McDermott went on to be fairly successful with his music and even included a small reference to his brothers (Erik’s dad) new life in Denmark on his version of the traditional Scottish song “Scotland the Brave�.