Let's see:
"Overall, US mountain bikers tend to be younger, male, and white, and with than average levels of income"
Not only do I fall into all those categories (except income levels), but also so does pretty much everyone else with whom I ride. According to the report, these trends apply pretty much everywhere around the world.
This got me thinking (it's scary, but it happens sometimes): I don't believe that other outdoor activities have the same demographic breakdown; so what have we done to exclude people in the past, and what can we do to attract a more diverse group of people to our sport?
The first problems is the gear involved with riding is blown out of proportion. As much as I love reading mountain bike magazines, there's never tests of $500 bikes, or really even $500 frames. Everything is the top-of-the-line equipment that only appeals to frequent riders who are able or willing to drop ridiculous amounts on their bikes. Do you really need a $2500 + bike to enjoy riding mountains? No. Hell no. I started riding on a $300 Giant and only spent more on a ride after years of enjoying the mountains. People need to try and promote biking on any safe equipment, not just the cool-looking stuff.
Besides that, as much activism happens through IMBA and more local groups, our outreach tends to be limited to trail building and access politics. What about bringing others into the world of mountain biking? We yell and scream about letting us build and ride areas, but maybe we should also focus on bringing people who may not have been interested into the sport. The beginner groups I've seen around seem to focus on those who already have decided to bike, but maybe we ought to try and find ways to bring people who otherwise would not have tried it out. Granted, do I have any suggestions for how? Not really.
Finally, and most importantly, what about women in the sport? On the last ride with my recently-discovered all-male DonRats, I overheard one fellow saying that some past rider "was the only girl to stick with us for an entire Thursday ride." There are some wicked mountain biking girls out there, but for the most part, there are a lot of dudes on bikes. Then I started to notice certain things, for instance on bonktown.com (an outlet for road biking gear) they advertised a tire pump as "The Dual X Pro features a high volume / high pressure switch, so you can fill up your tire with fewer strokes and get it up to pressure with ease." The same pump on chainlove.com was described as "getting you from flaccid to hard with minimal stroking." Fine, I found it funny, but that kind of humor is rampant in the mountain bike world. I don't know if that humor turns women away from mountains, or even if it's a symptom of the amount of testosterone in mountain biking rather than a cause. And I don't want it to stop, but maybe if we toned it down we might not turn away some potential girl riders...
The point of the whole rant is that I would like to see more people on mountain bikes, and there are some obvious actions we could take to attract others. Perhaps I should start being part of the solution before I open my mouth and criticize, but hey, this is my blog, so I get to say whatever I want...
I disagree with your gear advertising point. Take a look at any sport magazine - all of the gear in any one of them is top-of-the-line. There are exceptions, of course, but in general, the people reading those magazines are people that have bottom level equipment or higher. They're not in the market for it.
ReplyDeleteYou are right in the sense that it doesn't encourage new riders, but this isn't a problem unique to mountain biking, and it's not something that's going to change any time soon.
I think the biggest thing you could do would be to advertise guided rides, so people that might be interested in riding but have no idea what to do or where to do it have somewhere to start.