Does mountain biking have an image problem? Is the barrage of shred-gnar imagery putting off newcomers and infuriating land managers?
A good read, and thought-provoking. I guess the question that comes to mind first after reading it is, who are we talking about here? Who is it who we think has the problem with the image of mountain biking?
I'm lucky to have a number of trail centres locally; I was at one over the weekend with a pump track and beginner trails and there were a ton of kids there, accompanied by their parents (often the dad but some mothers too). They were having a great time, mostly on hardtails, some BMXes and the occasional jump bike; a lot of boys but some girls too. The aspirational pictures of MTBing is what gets them excited about it - that they can do the cool pump tracks and the berms and the gnarly trails and jumps. In terms of bikes all the kids locally think they want a FS; but really the biggest thing they want is just to go out and ride trails. And road or road-adjacent (which gravel can look like) is seen as a bit weird and boring - why would you ride on endless roads in lycra all day?!
On another trail centre locally the red and black trails trend more to the middle aged men demographic, some couples and families; and that's about 70% eMTBs, the occasional tasty looking Yeti, some old-looking hardtails (including mine).
I'm not really sure what my point is; except that the younger generation DGAF what made up label we assign to different types of riding. And gravel does anyway feel like a navel-gazing, "inside baseball" definition - long-established riders arguing over whether it's just old mountain bikes with drop bars, or a way into MTBing for roadies. Adults genuinely new to trail riding don't know enough to be bothered; kids don't care. So to some extent we have to be careful with this kind of discussion to appreciate that we're probably talking more to/ about people like ourselves, than genuinely new riders, or teens/ kids.
It's one of the things that really pisses me off about Bikeradar's otherwise good content, their endless obsession with "oh this is an up-country bike", "this is only for down-country", "why endurance bikes should look more like gravel bikes (but are really so different from gravel)". It doesn't (expletive) matter - what matters is just focusing on what makes it so fun, and helping people get out there and ride!
I think Fitness has always been the gatekeeper for MTB, not money, and I think folks who've discovered gravel have found a niche becasue of that.
MTB fitness takes dedication week in week out riding and pushing yourself, otherwise the steep techie descent at the top of that super steep and long climb is out of reach, and certainly doing it more than once is out of the question. You can, however do a 65km-ish gravel ride on canals and disused railways at Z2 trundling along at 20km pretty much all day even if you're just an averagly fit rider.
I think MTBer's entering their 4th or 5th decade are realising that without a couple of rides a week, that fitness that used to come easily when you're in your 20s and 30s just goes away and doesn't come back, and if you can't do the midweek ride with the keen boys anymore because of family commitments or you're just knackered after work, then the weekend 30km/1000m climb/descend ride is out of reach.
Enter the gravel bike.
The imagery that is used in mtb primarily come from marketing one way or another, whether that be advertising or the influencers type route. I assume those choosing the imagery used do so becuase they believe that’s what works and sells product.
Whether the STW demographic is the primary target audience of this imagery is open to debate, again, I assume advertisers and editors pick images and article to used that maximise sales and the impact they want to have.
Do we have a problem with mountain bikes? It's rare to see kids riding anything other than a mountain bike. I was in Halfords and Decathlon today and they had more mountain bikes than anything else. So presumably someone is buying them.
Maybe people just dont go and flog round trail centres and do something else. Maybe middle aged man has a gravel bike to look trendy and try and recapture some "cool"
Maybe there's less interest in spending thousands of pounds on a bike just to have it made more difficult to maintain by continual changes in parts specifictions.
I am much less willing to part with cash for new bikes than I used to be.