Our Legacy of XC uk riders??… where are the new David Bakers, Tim Goulds, Nick Craigs, Gary Fords, Paul Lasenbys, Tim Davies, Barrie Clarkes, Adrian Timmis…..??? among many more…
With or without the modern day technology… I’m sure they went faster than this lot?? 8O… maybe it’s watchin it on the TV?? …. maybe!

it’s time for my nap now… I’ll catch up in a bit!

Shhh grandad….We’re watching tv.

Too many trail centres focused on downhill and the British ethos of “taking part” rather than “winning”

the British ethos of “taking part” rather than “winning”

As demonstrated by our hopeless track and road riders, eh?

I suspect that the obvious “risks and glamour” of DH make it much more appealing to the average teenager than XC racing?

Unless the the kids currently racing have got parents with very deep pockets and BC get a proper structure then it’s not going to happen. Too easy to build a velodrome and concentrate cycling in one area.
Just have a look at the mtb “race” scene and see where the races are concentrated.
Eg if you live in the north of England or SW Scotland the travelling alone puts people off. I know quite a few good young riders who could maybe go on the become serious competitors but the cost is just so prohibitive.

All our young talent disappear into the woods and build jumps and generally be well rad and gnarly while scoffing at anyone in lycra perhaps??

Actually a lot of the riders you mention came through ‘cross or the road scene bringing a lot of fitness with them. Now it seems the xc race scene is a little weaker – not as many true xc races, lots more niches and endurance events which are a little like sportives really.

Actually responding to the above post, the lack of racing really does not help. I would not want to travel 2 or 3 hours to events every week or two, and I am sure most parents are the same. When I last looked, if I just wanted to compete for ‘fun’ I would only have a two or three races nearby all year. Hardly enough to make it worthwhile to train for.

It’s very clear from the multitude of posts in the past that STWers don’t like class XC’ers.
Elite XC racers should be handicapped so fat old biffers can compete equally, that or the circuits should be soooo technical it slows down the racing.
But there we go, we seem to want Warner commentating instead of recognized Olympic champions as it would be funnier! I think Mr Bean would be even funnier.

We don’t have enough riders who ride UCI World Cup XC to get enough points to qualify for the Olympics. Ironically, of our two best XC riders, Oli Beckinsale earnt the UCI points which allowed Liam to ride….

Shhh grandad….We’re watching tv.

😆

Got to admit the finish was old school… where’s my slippers 😉

MTBing is very much the poor relation over here, which is very sad indeed.

After yesterday’s race though, Annie Last is certainly one to watch in the future so it’s not all doom and gloom.

Trekster, You don’t have to race at a young age though. You just need to work hard at your riding and prepare your young body for racing as you get older. You could hone your skills off road and find your fitness elsewhere. It’s no easier for kids wanting to race road.

Id stick my neck out and say it’s attitude. Whilst my and other clubs actively promote racing and do their best for them, the mountainbike fraternity label their racers as jey.

That said the scene was buzzing at my last XC race on Friday just gone.

Back in the 90s there were loads of xc races which were hard even at sport level .Then mtbing seem to become mucking about in the woods on jumps or belting downhills .Organizers realized people wanted to do this more and put those sorts of events on which dont require aerobic fitness capacities of xc racing (I know they do at elite level )So we need more xc races and we drag some fit junior road and cross racers and turn them into xcountry racers

I was thinking just the same.
I’ve always loved XC racing since the Gould / Baker Peugeot days, (I don’t compete anymore, but I’d credit Tim Gould & David Baker with inspiring me to race back in the ’90s) and much prefer watching it to DH events. The Olympic XC race was fantastic. 😀
It’s a real shame we have no depth of talent in the UK these days and haven’t had for years. 😥 There are a few promising youngsters, but very often they don’t last long after making the transition to the adult classes.
Not sure why we don’t take XC as seriously as other countries, but there does seem to be a bit of a slacker attitude in MTBing here.

From my understanding of it, All our top youngsters go through the British cycling system, this is set up to encourage riders from all backgrounds to road cycling. Annie last is an exception as she has a background in pure mountain biking and thinks of herself as a mountain biker, rather than it being a step on the road, to the road.

Back in days of the Bakers and Goulds, British cycling didn’t have the same structure, organisation and ethos that it now has.

It’s because MTB has become the equivalent of pony trekking by bike (copyright TJ…), where relatively well off, relatively unfit, relatively middle aged chaps go out for a hour or two and think that they are sportsmen. Add in magazines which are little more than catalogues and a bike industry that has realised that they can sell aspirational equipment to weekend warriors simply by changing colours and you have a situation where the commitment and dedication needed for elite level XC is just too much for most.

If you’re young and talented then you get scouted by British cycling.Who then feed you straight into the road/track program and you get masses of support.If you’re not quite good enough for that ,they let you go back to mtb’ing and give you a jersey.

None of the above is unique to the UK.

None of the above is unique to the UK.

No, that’s true. Add in our natural aversion to cycling, only lately and partially reversed by Wiggins et al, the dominance of the beautiful game 🙄 and our lack of interest in anything we can’t immediately win at too.

From my understanding of it, All our top youngsters go through the British cycling system, this is set up to encourage riders from all backgrounds to road cycling. Annie last is an exception as she has a background in pure mountain biking and thinks of herself as a mountain biker, rather than it being a step on the road, to the road.

Back in days of the Bakers and Goulds, British cycling didn’t have the same structure, organisation and ethos that it now has.

British Cycling seems intent on producing Track riders above all else, some then migrate to where the money is, ie road. To be honest no one in their right mind would choose to race XC in the UK as a paying job when Road offers so much more.

I wonder what the Swiss system is, 4 of the top 10 riders ( by world rankings) are swiss,

Back in the day Gould and Baker crossed over from cross and road, a time with no structure and a huge reliance on luck.

In my opinion what XC racing needs is more races at a purely local level, how many people are going to drive for a couple of hours unless your good? What is also needs and not sure how to achieve this is less lazy riders. The idea of buying fitness and skill doesn’t work, you get better by riding, not very popular as an idea though!

None of the above is unique to the UK.

No, but it seems far more of a UK thing than a Swiss/Czech/etc thing.

That’s not exactly true. At real grass roots level they focus on off road riding as it’s accessible, safe and easier to monitor.
Now there are great pure off road clubs up and down the country, but there are far more road ones. So it’s likely that they’ll be drawn to those.
Also there seems to be an anti club issue with MTBers? and that’s never going to help.
I’m chairman of my road club, and right now I’m in talks with coucils, landowners and other clubs about taking on XC racing so we can attract more and younger riders. And that’s the difference, clubs try and make a difference rather than expect someone else to do it.

All the ‘right’ kids are riding road bikes. Road club’s tend not to cross over to mountain biking, so the kids don’t get introduced to MTB. They’re also a lot more likely to stick with road biking than cross over because the rewards available are greater, as said above, but also because for most it means going from a decent training setup with a group of riders riding a few times a week for fitness, to riding on your own through the woods.

We’d benefit massively from having a proper club structure in the sport, with good mountain bikers training together regularly with the goal of getting fitter and racing together.

At the moment what clubs there are are mostly about having fun with other people, not competitive riding and personal improvement. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it doesn’t help to produce young and fast xc racers.

No idea how you change that though. I suspect the first step would be to get British Cycling on the case, though they have run an MTB race series in Manchester the last few years that could be considered a start.

Oldgit knows the score.

crikey – Member
It’s because MTB has become the equivalent of pony trekking by bike (copyright TJ…), where relatively well off, relatively unfit, relatively middle aged chaps go out for a hour or two and think that they are sportsmen.

Nothing wrong with people riding bikes, conning yourself that you can race is the problem. That’s the cancer of challenge rides. They pretend to be races but aren’t. Add in a mickey mouse rider classification system where age related racing pits elite level riders against novices.

Add in magazines which are little more than catalogues and a bike industry that has realised that they can sell aspirational equipment to weekend warriors simply by changing colours and you have a situation where the commitment and dedication needed for elite level XC is just too much for most.

Publicity for the xc racing scene is minimal, most magazines focus on advertorial content. Cycling is the new golf for some, for others its about getting out with mates but the pinnacle should be the racing scene. Sadly the reverse seems to be true.

I think the problem goes farther back than we think. Sports is still not seen as a viable career path by the kind of parents who have the money and the time and the attitude to make it work for their kids, in a convenient nutshell, the middle classes.

Track cycling provided a controlled and controllable outlet, bit like after school classes or extra tuition, and the development of a cycling base in Manchester has shown it can be done.

The problem is now, and has been ever since the Velodrome in Manchester was built, is that other less controllable forms of cycle sport don’t get the same attention as track cycling. It has become self fulfilling; spend money on the track, get success, spend money on the track, get success.

Road racing in the UK got ignored and pretty much stiffed by the track cycling programme, leading to racers like David Millar, Roger Hammond, and so on going abroad and making it on their own. Wiggins and Cavendish are perhaps the best products of BC, but how many budding racers, both XC and road have we lost because they didn’t do well on the track circuit?

The challenge for BC is now to concentrate on developing talent in forms of cycling other than track; we’ve shown that we can win track medals, how about doing it elsewhere?

If you’re young and talented then you get scouted by British cycling.Who then feed you straight into the road/track program and you get masses of support.If you’re not quite good enough for that ,they let you go back to mtb’ing and give you a jersey.

I’d like to call you a cynical git, and say that doesn’t happen at all… But knowing a couple of young talented MTBer’s as I do, that love the sport, they have constant temptation thrust in their faces to ditch mountain biking and get on the drops…

Mountain Biking in the UK has become a victim of its own success. It is far more popular these days than it has ever been (despite many forum nay Sayers), but it is the demographic that dictates the direction of the sport. When the average age of riders is probably late 30’s or early 40’s, and they’re all relatively recent to the sport but do it for enjoyment and to get away a bit at the weekend and not to compete as such. And the industry has adapted to this, and thus raw MTB competition at least in short XC races isn’t what it used to be. It’s great there’s loads of us out there on bikes each weekend, having fun but not taking it particularly seriously, but there needs to be a flip side where youngsters are encouraged into the sport, and a competitive (and accessible) element remains.

It’s like comparing a guy who owns a classic MG that leaves the garage once a month only if it’s sunny, to drive round the block before it gets polished again, and a guy who races a single seat car on track, most weekends, struggling to get sponsorship to pay for it etc. They’re both car enthusiasts, but at very opposite ends of the scale, and their interests have no crossovers whatsoever other than they’re both 4 wheeled.

Oh, and I can assure the OP he needs to take his rose tinted specs off. Fast as Baker, Gould etc. were (and Nick Craig still is!), Liam Killeen et al in the race today are another step above…

If BC committed to a mountain bike programme now, searching out the best 15-16-17-18 year olds, preferably females (because the gap between the best and the worst and the numbers of each are lower in womens XC), we could be looking at medals in Rio.

But the lack of a definite outcome will mean that the track squad will soak up more and more of the cash.

As others have said there just aren’t enough races, especially in the north. I used to race cross and there’s a great league where you can race approx 10 times over the winter that had some top riders in plus fat overweight mugs like me. I looked for a couple of MTb races to train for and there’s noting. I can join th cross league again, track league at Manchester or any number of road races, but xc ? No chance

I looked for a couple of MTb races to train for and there’s noting. I can join th cross league again, track league at Manchester or any number of road races, but xc ? No chance

Really? I thought there were a reasonable number of xc races in the NW area. Brownbacks at Lee Quarry, those Midweek MTB Madness races, sure I’ve seen some more advertised as well.

Road clubs doing MTB. Nooooooooooooooooooo.

Mixed, e.g. Team MK, is the way forward.

Good old Team MK 😀

Last time I looked on th bc website Simon there was one race between July and the end of the year, lee quarry I think,

Last time I looked on th bc website Simon there was one race between July and the end of the year, lee quarry I think,

MTB XC racing is a Summer sport. The last round of the MTB Midweek Madness series was last Thursday at Boggart Hole Clough. It’s very nearly time for Cyclocross season now 🙂

Ha, thanks, I’ll go back to cross then.

There ends my first xc season 🙂

Not read all the above but I’d say its down to lack of races for youngsters.

My daughter is 8 and races road. She’s done a few go-ride mtb races and loved it so I looked into finding some others to do – I looked within a 60 mile radius of Milton Keynes and nothing until she is 12 and thats only one 10 round series.

Within the same radius we could race road every week.

No shortage of talent in DH though! If you are young, skilled and competitive on a mountain bike would you prefer to race DH or race around a field for a couple of hours? When I raced XC there initially wasn’t anything else, but more than once I quit a race due to it being so damn boring! As already mentioned, riding XC is a ‘sport’ for middle aged people.
Oldgit raises a good point re. clubs though for the people who do want to race. When it was literally all fields, the Mid Shropshire Wheelers created an MTB division of their club and that partly helped some people on their way to success, Titley, Collins Boys etc. But again that was in DH!

As already mentioned, riding XC is a ‘sport’ for middle aged people.

Trail riding if you don’t mind. 😉

It’s all XC 😉

It’s also worth mentioning BMX. BITD BMX was DEAD. The tracks were overgrown messes and the only kids who rode on them were like me, on mountain bikes. Now it’s huge again so that’s another avenue for young people with skills on a bike to go down. If you want to show off your fitness, ride road or track, and if you want to show off your skillz, ride DH or BMX? Not sure where that leaves XC.