The History of Singletrack and more. Formula’s Video Interview.

When Formula wanted to shoot a video about mountain bike media, they came and asked us here at Singletrack Towers lots of questions. And we gave them lots of answers – about the history of Singletrack and the future of mountain bike publishing…

Yep, is it all bloggers vs publishers? Influencers vs personalities? Have big, corporate publishers and web giants edged out the small publishers and independent writers? Or has digital printing and the likes of WordPress helped democratise publishing and helped the smallest of thoughts get a place to tell a message?

Can you spot Singletrack Towers?

Italian fork and brake giant, Formula, has been touring the UK filming a video series that looks behind the scenes of the British mountain bike scene. For a small country with reasonably limited terrain, Britain has been very influential in the mountain bike world and Formula has been keen to document some of it.

Vittorio is here to quiz you…

In Formula’s travels, Vittorio from the brand, has visited and chatted to Chris Porter at Geometron, sponsored EWS racer Joe Barnes and on this leg of the trip, they spent a day with us at Singletrack, seeing where the, ahem, magic happens and quizzing Chipps on everything from the history of Singletrack to the future of mountain bike publishing.

It’s 14 minutes, but you weren’t going to do anything else this afternoon, were you?

Can’t see the video? Click here

The rest of the series is good too. See Joe Barnes’ man-shed, and Chris Porter’s trade secrets from the downhill world cups.

He just wouldn’t let them leave… At least the guitar in the background is Formula’s colour.

What do you reckon? Is Singletrack still doing it right? Is it time to prepare for the bloggers and the vloggers and the podcasters? Or is printed paper still king in your world for trusted information?

For more details on Formula’s VLOG series, check out this link.

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

Comments (5)

Kevin BrennanKevin Brennan November 1, 2019 at 6:09 pm

I can see the tower and my house too

Rubber_BuccaneerRubber_Buccaneer November 1, 2019 at 10:52 pm

I can’t help wondering what the Mark version would have been

footflapsfootflaps November 2, 2019 at 3:42 pm

Enjoyed that!

ChippsChipps November 4, 2019 at 12:08 pm

We’ll have to get Mark to do one for you, Buccaneer… 🙂

David BissetDavid Bisset November 5, 2019 at 2:30 pm

AS always, a very intelligent and thoughtful review of by Chipps. As an old man, I much prefer printed paper over a screen, but recognize I am the dinosaur here and I am slowly learning to love the web.

Strangely, one of the things I like most about the printed magazine is the full page advertising, often with very striking images.
For the future paper and ink is not going to get any easier and maybe one day the future will be purely online.

I am in awe of the Singletrack team all of whom have given their lives to making it happen.

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