Photography is another good example.

except that a better camera won't compensate for lack of skill and merely give you a lot more bad photos :o)

Photography is another good example.

photography is very driven by the amateur market, they keep the cost down on 'professional' equipment and guarantee a ready supply of lightly used second hand equipment. all that gear just to take pics of sunsets 🙂

in answer to the original question then yes.

Before cycling I was into swimming. Pair of Speedos, goggles and a towel and that was it.

When I really got into it I splashed out (no pun intended) on a shower gel that counteracted the chlorine smell.

Very cheap sport (although a bit boring ploughing up and down 60 lengths face down in the water which is why i took up MTB'ing).

BTW, after a while the 'S' wore off my trunks. Couldn't work out why all the mums in the pool kept giving me funny looks 😉

Most people who ride a (mountain)bike rarely buy a bike mag
Even fewer bother to stay very long on forums

So don't base your views of cyclists on the tiny proportion of those who bother to post here.
They/we/you are far from representative of 'mtb-ers as a whole' and represent the freak-end of the biking spectrum – I mean look at some of the 'debates' on here and say they're not from an episode of 'when geeks go bad'
😉

lol

I love kit but have no money!

So I ride instead.

……and now and again something comes along that just looks lovely and will make riding more fun. Lapierre 2010 full carbon Zesty frame I am looking at you. That or the the Blur carbon……ooooooooh.

So the marketing works then?

Do those bikes work any better than equivalent bikes of half the price?

There are worse things to spend money on and I'm sure we all don't need the quality of some of the kit we have but so what? I love the fact that my bikes are worth much more than my car – what's the fun in spending on money on a steel box that you sit inside when in traffic jams yet plenty of people waste much more money on cars and gyms and stuff that don't interest me.

My bike spending tends to be inversely proportional to the amount I ride – If I can't ride I spend more time on hear and reading mags which give me the itch to get something shiny and new 😉

Most people I've ridden with don't care what kit you've got. I like kit so can quite happily wander around a bike shop looking at it even if I'm never going to buy it.

I'm interested in the mechanical side of biking as well as the riding so will always be interested in a new fangled suspension doodaa. Doesn't mean I'll buy it and I don't for a second believe it will make me a better rider although it may make me quicker (well my first lightweigh full suss after a freeride hardtail certainly added some va va voom)

I'm riding a rigid bike that I bought for £500 5 years ago and have since taken the gears off. I think it has maybe six moving parts?

If i didn't spend money on bike kit then I'd spend it on beer. At least with bike kit I can usually remember what happened after I used it for a period of time!

For the person who asked about what the original poster rides, he has a gary fisher cake with revel;ations and other upgrades, a kinesis xc 120, with revs, hope pro3 wheels, just bought a new thomspn post, hope seatclamp, time pedals etc, a custom made steel road bike, and a gt avalanche built as a singlespeed (blasphemy).

He was probably talking about me and my addiction to buying new bike parts i really cant afford, then selling them 6 months later.

One thing which hasn't been mentioned is the role which gender has on peoples perceptions of sports/activities/hobbies etc. I saw a report several months ago which basically said that although both men and women can enjoy any sport/hobby equally, how that enjoyment is expressed differs massively.

In a (very simplified) nutshell:

Women – happier to talk about emotions etc so a post ride (in the case of cycling) conversation is about how scared, happy, confident they felt and the sharing of "the experience".

Blokes – not good with expressing genuine emotion so the post activity talk revolves around technical geekery and mechanical performance ie "my forks felt plush, my hubs seemed grindy" etc etc

A womens only forum (not visible to men) for any activity is likely to have much less emphasis on kit whilst the male equivalent uses the crutch of "what tires for Dalby red?" type conversations as a euphemism for "mtbing makes me happy but I'm not confident in my abilities to ride Dalby red so I'm looking for assurance and comforting words".

From there it's a slippery slope from talking about the mechanics of biking to understanding groupset rankings, rebound adjustment etc and from there to buying kit you don't really need…

So yeah, male mtbers just want to be loved and enjoy friendships with similarly afflicted and can't find other ways to express themselves other than through kit discussions!

According to the report thing anyway, I didn't write it and it could well be pseudo-scientific bollocks. 😉

except that a better camera won't compensate for lack of skill and merely give you a lot more bad photos :o)

That's my point. Buying a fancy camera doesn not make you a better photographer in the same way that buying a fancy bike doesn't make you a better rider. There's a lot of people out there bouncing wildly down a descent not because of any skill on their part but because the bike is so good that it allows them to get away with it.
Same as your car having all the fancy sat-nav, ABS, suspension that stiffens in corners blah blah, it doesn't make you any better at driving it, it often makes you worse cos you *know* you can leave the braking late or take that corner at speed etc.

Having moved from a hardtail to a full suss bike this year, I've found myself riding and attacking stuff that I'd have minced down, or even walked down previously. Having the confidence to commit has helped improve my riding, and the knowledge that the bike will get me out of trouble helps me to try things that I wouldn't have previously, letting me improve my technique over drops, shore, and jumps.

Yeah Kramer same here exactly. Kit has definitely made an improvement for me. I don't really see that many rubbish riders tearing up DH runs just cos they bought a decent FS.
People who are saying that seem to be assuming that you're only a good rider if you could go as fast on a HT. I don't get it. It's more about what can you do with your machine.

There's a lot of people out there bouncing wildly down a descent not because of any skill on their part but because the bike is so good that it allows them to get away with it.

I don't quite buy that argument – I understand, but don't fully agree.
If I can't get down a difficult run on a rigid bike, does that make cleaning it on a fully suspended bike less of an achievement?
Technological advances make it possible for the average person to perform sporting feats (climbing, skiing off the top of my head) that were out of their reach a generation or less ago.

Mountain bikes cost too much to keep – full stop, replacement components are over priced and the cheap stuff is crap that is not cheap at all.
I want the best I can get to keep my 5 year old enduro going but I’m just not will to pay the prices being asked.
Whilst out running last night I was asked to compete in the “Open5/12/24 etc” series but had to decline as I simply can’t afford to maintain mountain bikes that fall apart when used for the intended purpose.
The person asking takes her bike to her LBS where it costs more to keep than her car!!!

As Jo Burt put it rather succinctly in that 'other publication' edited by Chipps:

I've been into mountain bikes since the mid eighties, bought my first bike in '88, and I've been buying mags since then. There is nothing different now to what was happening then. Fact. Any sport or pastime that has any kind of tech in it will have massive amounts of promotion or advertising aimed at selling the latest whizzy piece of kit. You don't have to buy it. The benefit is longevity. Good kit lasts longer. If a kit-fetishist buys fancy toys and sells it on six months later, well, who's business is it? The person buying it benefits from upgrading to bits he/she would otherwise be unable to afford, and their bits go to either another bike or someone further down the food chain being able to upgrade. I've got kit that cost me lots, but is now years old, still working, and has been on a number of frames. Other bits get changed as and when. I really don't see a problem. I would suggest the OP tracking down a top of the range bike from the late eighties and compare with a modern equivalent and see what the kit arms race has achieved. For example, an '88 Stumpjumper, which was my first MTB, and an '08/09 Stumpy. Then tell me there's too much emphasis on kit.

@Peregrine

"Mountain bikes cost too much to keep – full stop … I simply can’t afford to maintain mountain bikes that fall apart when used for the intended purpose."

9-speed gear has been around for more than ten years now, there's scads of new and nearly new floating around on eBay pretty cheap. Suspension is a different matter, a right pain in the arse to be honest, but it's largely a case of letting others trail test for you to find out what works and keeps on working, and then trying to get hold of the right kit in good condition.

I was pretty shocked at the price of kit coming back to MTBing after nine years away, one of the main reasons I've hurried back to the Retrobike(.co.uk) land from whence I came…

Mountain bikes cost too much to keep – full stop … I simply can’t afford to maintain mountain bikes that fall apart when used for the intended purpose

I spend very little on bike parts.

So the marketing works then?

Do those bikes work any better than equivalent bikes of half the price?

IdleJon……I have an alu Blur LT1 which I like a lot, suits me well, I ride it pretty hard. I dont however take it on big climbing days out in the Lakes or Spain because its just a couple of pounds heavier than I'd like it to be. ie a carbon version might be perfect. So yes it would make a difference for me but at a cost.

I love bike bling

It makes my life complete

The kit is there if you want to buy it. If you dont , dont.

I like this t-shirt

Women – happier to talk about emotions etc so a post ride (in the case of cycling) conversation is about how scared, happy, confident they felt and the sharing of "the experience".

I must be a closet woman – at least, I'd like to be in a closet with a woman…

I must be a closet woman – at least, I'd like to be in a closet with a woman…

You real doll doesn't count as a woman…

Damn those crafty manufacturers forcing people to buy expensive bikes. Doubtless Mr Shimano and Mr Sram are sitting laughing atop piles of ill-gotten loot.

Technological advances make it possible for the average person to perform sporting feats (climbing, skiing off the top of my head)

LOL you must have a massive head!