Is mountain biking now a rich man's/woman's sport?

if you think biking’s expensive, try motorsport. Even at a non-competitive level (ie just doing track days), you’re looking at a bare minimum of £2k outlay, and probably in the region of £500 per day of driving, once you take into account the cost of the session (~£200), fuel (£50), tyres (£50), and repairing something that enevitebly goes wrong (less than half the cars at the day i went to were running at the end, none due to crashes). If you want to add track day insurance, or running something tastey (there was a full range of cars there from my snotter up to a v8 vantage race car – there were probably a dozen cars there that cost over £100k).

If you want to do racing, you need a licence, track-only modified car, transport for that car, etc etc etc.. I’m very happy I didn’t enjoy it as much as biking

For me it’s getting expensive just on fuel to drive places. My bike wasn’t that expensive by some standards, though probably cost about £600 in parts. It breaks way more frequently than my old bmx that probably cost half that, though.

To be honest there’s no need to buy a 600 quid bike, 250 (last years models) will get you one that will get you started and last a bit, 400 will see yo one that will do just fine. That’s sod all when compared to a lot of sports. Sure its not as cheap as football, but it’s 1000 times better.

And who wants the sport to grow massively anyway, the trails are crowded enough as it is.

I dont think going to go football matches really is a fair comparision

It is, because lots of “poor” people seem to manage to afford that. Likewise they seem to be able to afford Sky Sports.

not really, I bought a 700 quid bike 4 years ago, and it’s still doing me fine, probably spent that in parts that have broken on it mind, but 1400 quid over 4 years isn’t a great deal..suppose you could factor in trips away, trains, hostels, food, drink etc, during those trips, you are probably talking about 2-3,000, so over 4 years about 3-4500 quid, still not alot imo. Also you can factor in minus 40 to 60 a month with the commuting too, so that helps even it up quite considerably.

As people have said going to see the fitba costs you alot more, I did the home away and europe thing with celtic, probably cost me about 4-5000 a year for a few years, why i chucked it, was just far too much, fitba is the rich mans game if you ask me..

As for going to the fitba not being a direct comparison, I disagree, biking is a pasttime/hobby for most., same thing as the fitba.

If you can’t afford to fill your camelbak with Bollinger then don’t bother riding you pikey

The collecting of bikes that goes on round here is a bit obscene, and will skew the replies this thread gets. It’s a rich mans sport if you buy bikes and don’t use them because of internet forum addiction. Mind you, that’s consumerism and a social issue, not mountain biking.

Guilty as charged (though not as guilty as many), but I know that if I had to pare everything back to the bare bones, as long as I had a bike to ride offroad, even if it had V brakes and no gears (heaven forbid!) I still wouldn’t be without mountain biking. Money enables us to buy nice stuff, and that’s what many of us do, though to be fair I have minimised the effect myself by going down the 2nd hand route 9 times out of 10.

For me it’s getting expensive just on fuel to drive places.

This is my problem, and part of the reason I have bought a road bike (that needs to get ridden more!) recently. It’s at least 15 miles for me in any direction to get to any trails. I spend a lot more on fuel in the car (even in a diesel) to get to ride my bike than I spend on the bikes at the moment!

I don’t think its too expensive. I built both my bikes from a mix of online parts new and used fron here and ebay. Two nice bikes to ride now. Bikes are going to be more expenive now, due to the simple fact of the raw material being a lot more expensive for a start. It could get expenisve buying a new bike from a fancy shop where they give you Kit Kats and other tasty biscuits and pick your pockets while you eat them with your free cup of tea.

This site is at the extreme end of the spectrum of the sport. Using this site as a guide to cycling in many ways would put you off riding. To me a bike is a bike! Its nothing more than a golf club. You choose your equipment to your level of riding. If I could ride DH like Peat then I would not mind shelling out a few grand. I’m quite Sh it at that, so I spend less on a more XC type of bike. I seem better at that. Cycling as been taken over by too many people having the gear but no idea! This as made it seem more expensive than it really is!

It’s a pitty that some people are so chippy about others spending their money on lots of expensive bikes. There are worse and more frivolous ways to blow your cash, and at least it helps to pay for development that people with cheaper bikes eventually benefit from. Why should you care?

Not a rich man’s sport but a man who knows where to spend his hard earned dosh.

How many times have you seen a £2000 worth of car with £6000 worth of bikes on top!

It’s at least 15 miles for me in any direction to get to any trails. I spend a lot more on fuel in the car (even in a diesel) to get to ride my bike than I spend on the bikes at the moment!

So, ride there. Once you add up the time taken to load and unload the car, faff at the car park, etc. I bet it won’t take much longer and you’ll be lots fitter.

but he’ll spend a fortune on cakes to fuel the journey…

Once you add up the time taken to load and unload the car, faff at the car park, etc. I bet it won’t take much longer

Takes me about 30s to load and unload my bike from the car, and similar amounts of faffing time whether I’m starting from home or the car. No way am I riding 15 miles to get to the trails (though normally I don’t have to).

Mountain biking is the new golf.

Mountain biking is the new golf.

It is in the sense that there are a lot of middle aged enthusiasts doing it wearing clothing that you’d never consider wearing if it wasn’t the current fashion for the sport but otherwise, it’s pretty different.

Golf typically requires a golf course which are generally private/expensive/etc. MTBing can be enjoyed by just about anyone who can get out of the city (or even if you can’t actually speaking as a Londoner who found plenty to ride in the city). You also don’t need expensive kit. £300 (£200 if you’re very lucky/picky) second hand will get you something perfectly useable if not fashionable that you can have as much fun on as someone riding a £5k wonder bike.

It looks a far more expensive sport in comparison to 20 yrs ago than it needs to mainly because it is now possible to manufacture very expensive components out of exotic materials that simply were not available previously. The sport has also diversfied enough that it is possible to have bikes that are specialist enough that you need another (or 2,3,4 or 5!) to ride in different ways.

The truth is that a base model bought today is more capable at riding the sort of trails we were riding 20yrs ago than a mid range model from that time. Looked at in that context it is a cheaper sport now than ever before.

“It’s at least 15 miles for me in any direction to get to any trails”

it was between 8 and 20 to my 2 ‘local’ riding spots when i was getting into MTBs at around 12-13yrs old. we rode there, rode for a few hours, rode back. we owned £180-280 Raleighs for the first few years, upgraded a bit as things broke or wore out, and i bought most of the kit from a weekend gardening job i had.* After a while of racing, i had a £600 bike.

i don’t enjoy riding any more or less now, the only thing that’s changed is my ability to buy better kit and the level of kit out there to ‘aspire’ to.

So, no, it’s not a rich man’s sport. Cycling never has been and never will be, even if people will pay £4k + for a bike it’s a ‘can + want + why the hell not’ rather than ‘need’.

*this may be related to the fact one of my most ridden bikes these days is a rigid ss, but it does make me appreciate the HT / FS when i ride them!

PS edited to say, this isn’t mreant as a ‘we used to so you should’ comment, just to say that if funds and car access is limited but the desire is there you’ll find a way to have fun all the same, and it’s by no means limited by lack of money.

Couple of points to make.
First off, maybe not correct to term it a ‘rich mans sport’ as that’s a bit of cliche. But almost all of the serious bikers I know and ride with have made adjustments to their lifestyle so they can afford to ride their bikes in the manner they do and as frequently as they would like. That might mean buying vans for transportation, having more than one bike for different riding purposes, replacing worn and damaged kit, uplift days, fuel money, trips to France and Whistler etc etc. They are all on varying incomes, (some quite basic incomes) but they tailor their outgoings / lifestyle away from bikes accordingly to allow them enough disposable income to accomodate all of the above for their biking.

I hear the comments about £4-500 starter bikes. Yeah that’s an affordable way to take part in the sport. But I can’t help thinking from that how we all have such a different view of mountain biking – probably dependant on where we live and the terrain we ride/how we ride. If I took a £500.00 bike (like my brothers Spec’ Hardrock currently sitting in my garage) down the usual trails I ride it wouldn’t last very long. The rims and wheels would fail, the rear mech wouldn’t take much abuse and the brakes, although wouldn’t necessarily fail or fall apart, wouldn’t be able to stop the bike as needed. The suntour fork wouldn’t last very long either I don’t think!

Anyway, the point is that a sturdy bike with sturdy components will cost you around £1k (new) for a hardtail and £1500 for a FS? And even these ‘stronger’ components fail and break too so you find yourself shelling out for new rims, wheel trues, rebuilds, new mechs, brakes, fork servicing etc far more constantly than you’d like. But you find a way to do it because it’s part and parcel.

Rich man’s sport maybe not. But it’s bloody expensive if you take it seriously and ride full-on.

I wouldn’t say mountain biking is a rich man’s sport.

I spent far too many years racing on a crap’y second-hand low grade parts and doing quite well despite all the mechanicals and lead quite a few but due to bike failure never won any. My bike mush have cost me less that £200 (years ago) and every week it need a new part but couldn’t afford to buy good kit so I had to get rubbish or second hand or worse still rubbish second hand parts, So i vowed never to use cheap, crappy, or part that i had to get because they was cheap and i knew i didn’t want.

I am a great believer in spend £1 on something you don’t use it becomes expensive but spend £1000 on something you use a lot it then becomes good value.

i think that point ^ about terrain is big part of it. When more basic rigid bikes were the norm riding wasn’t portrayed as ‘extreme’ as it is now so basic modern bikes can be comparable for basic off-road riding, but not for DH or drops etc.

The truth is that as we aspire to ‘higher end’ bikes that often mean more travel, more capable, better brakes – ie safer at a given speed than a basic bike. so then we look for places to ride them that give us the buzz of ‘pushing it’.

You can have fun by simply feeling on the edge of what you can do on any bike. if you’ve tasted the speed and drops of DH, rigid XC may never seem the same.

So maybe the question is, has expensive technology ‘spoiled’ the majority of natural UK XC riding for many, meaning we need to look for more technical terrain, or in other words has it added an element of comfort and safety that removes the ‘on the edge’ feeling that a more basic bike provides so easily?

i’m a fan of back to basics XC as well as uplift holidays in the alps btw.. see it from both sides here.

Quite a few years ago I bought an ooold Marin Bear Valley off E-bay just replaces the cables and off I went with my wallet £70 lighter. Now after several other more expensive purchases the bike is still running well with most of the original parts. The bike is now being used for a college project with a group of supported studies students who are stripping the frame down cleaning, greasing, stripping the frame and respraying it. You make mountain biking as cheap or expensive as you want to or can. What I do have objection to though are riders who get criticised for having expensive kit and not many skills. It’s their decision to spend the money and if they get pleasure out of that so be it – they are still out on the trails enjoying what they do, surely that is all that does matter.

Haven’t read much of this thread so don’t know if this has been mentioned, but….hasn’t the technology surrounding cycling (especially mountain bikes) moved on considerably is the last 20 years? Should this technology be given away for free then?

But it’s bloody expensive if you take it seriously

Name me a sport which isn’t.

Should this technology be given away for free then?

Yes! nationalise the bike companies! 😀

The bike is now being used for a college project with a group of supported studies students who are stripping the frame down cleaning, greasing, stripping the frame and respraying it.

You’re getting some students to sort your bike out for you? Genius! 😛

You wouldn’t say that if you knew the students.

You might think so if your only exposure to MTBing was reading this forum – and particularly some of the “money is no object” bike advice threads.

But in reality I still see people riding all sorts of cheap, old tat in the woods.

Even passed some teenagers on BMXs who looked like they were having a great time out on the trails the other day.

And I’ve always thought it was quite affordable and accessible compared to surfing, windsurfing or snow sports where you have to travel hundreds of miles, perhaps to another country, to take part in your hobby.

it’s as expensive as you want it to be really. sure there’s loads of people with a disposable income with high end latest trend/technology bikes, other folk with all the gear and no idea, some people with ancient rigid kona/ss’s etc etc but if someone’s enjoying the outdoors and getting fit on a £200 halfords or old 2nd hand bike thats cool too. plus everyones got to start somewhere, i think the image that some of the mags give that you NEED a £2k bike just to ride off road puts many people off the sport and is a bit detrimental to the public image of mtb’ers. personally i have just as much fun on my old rigid raleigh as i do on my heckler – horses for courses really

at the end of the day we’re probably all over-biked for what we ride and there is a huge industry telling us we need new stuff in order to ride well but a lot of it is fashion. it wouldn’t surprise me if , after everybody has bought shiny anodised flat pedals that they bring out a new type of clip-in that everyone will need all of a suddenty

Golf typically requires a golf course which are generally private/expensive/etc. MTBing can be enjoyed by just about anyone who can get out of the city (or even if you can’t actually speaking as a Londoner who found plenty to ride in the city).

There are already loads of people who only ride mountainbikes at purpose built mtb trail centres

You also don’t need expensive kit. £300 (£200 if you’re very lucky/picky) second hand will get you something perfectly useable if not fashionable that you can have as much fun on as someone riding a £5k wonder bike.

how is that not exactly the same?

“It’s at least 15 miles for me in any direction to get to any trails”

I find that very hard to believe, I’ve never been anywhere in the UK where I haven’t spotted something I’d like to ride.

£1000/52 = £19.23 a week. So if you decide to spend £1000 a year on a bike then it’s comparable to going drinking in a cheap pub once a week. I defiantly spend less than £1000 a year, but I’m poor. I don’t have a big t.v or sky or a nice stereo so money saved there more than covers the bike. I don’t drink much any more either. My bigger expense is a addiction to evening courses!

£20 a week is not insignificant but hardly extravagant.

GW – yep, loads of people ride purpose made centres but what does it cost to do so? Cost of parking normally, so £3-4 a ride. My local municiple golf course is £22 a round and the local golf club is £995 per year with a £700 per person joining fee and it’s not that posh. The point the person you quoted was making is that the cost of the venue (free or minimal to the mtber) to the user is significantly different not that both have purpose designed venues.

There are already loads of people who only ride mountainbikes at purpose built mtb trail centres

Names and addresses please?

Or could that just be a myth perpetuated by snobbish STW users…

First off, maybe not correct to term it a ‘rich mans sport’ as that’s a bit of cliche. But almost all of the serious bikers I know and ride with have made adjustments to their lifestyle so they can afford to ride their bikes in the manner they do and as frequently as they would like. That might mean buying vans for transportation, having more than one bike for different riding purposes, replacing worn and damaged kit, uplift days, fuel money, trips to France and Whistler etc etc. They are all on varying incomes, (some quite basic incomes) but they tailor their outgoings / lifestyle away from bikes accordingly to allow them enough disposable income to accomodate all of the above for their biking.

So dose everyone depending on their interest, they just may not realise it. If your time off work is socialising you will have subconsciously budgeted for bear money. If your time off work is knitting you will have budgeted for equipment and supplies for knitting. If your hobby id wood work you will have put money and time aside for tools / materials e.t.c, it may have influenced the house you buy so that there is a good sized work shop.

There are already loads of people who only ride mountainbikes at purpose built mtb trail centres

It’s true, I know a few of them. My gf annoyingly doesn’t generally like biking apart from at trail centres – she’s just not into rocky stuff. There’s also quite a few that would probably like to explore more BWs etc but don’t really have the navigations skills/confidence.

Also the op seems to want to increase the popularity of MTBing. I con’t give a flying **** what the popularity of MTBing is, maybe he owns a shop or mtb related business?

I find that very hard to believe, I’ve never been anywhere in the UK where I haven’t spotted something I’d like to ride.

Never been to the East Midlands? It’s utter shit for off road riding round here. You have to stop every few minutes for gates and the bridleways are so boring I tend to prefer riding my road bike on which I can at least achieve a good speed! There are a few short singletracky bits (well under a mile long) which aren’t really worth the hassle of getting to on a mtb.

Nearest decent trails to me are at Woburn which is about 35 miles away.

The Brick – The point I was making is in context to the original question of ‘IS MTB NOW A RICH MAN’s SPORT’. Pointing out that MTB’ing at the extreme end is damn expensive but, even so, some poeple forego and sacrifice other desirable things in life to make sure they have enough money to dedicate to the sport. I’m talking about a significant %/proportion of their income in order to pursue it. Some might argue a ‘disproportionate’ amount of their income…but it’s their choice. So to answer the question it’s an expensive sport but not necessarily a ‘rich man’s’.

Yes, other sports are comparible or possibly worse (motor sport a prime example)…but I’m thinking beer money, knitting and woodworking are not comparible. 🙂

I find that very hard to believe, I’ve never been anywhere in the UK where I haven’t spotted something I’d like to ride.

There’s a few bridlepaths and a small wood (that you can’t legally ride your bike in anyway, its not a bridlepath) that I know of within about 3 miles, a small wood (of about 3 acres) about 5 miles away, everything else is a car journey sadly!

t was between 8 and 20 to my 2 ‘local’ riding spots when i was getting into MTBs at around 12-13yrs old. we rode there, rode for a few hours, rode back.

Yup, did the same when I was younger too, but definitely had more time on my hands then…

So maybe the question is, has expensive technology ‘spoiled’ the majority of natural UK XC riding for many, meaning we need to look for more technical terrain, or in other words has it added an element of comfort and safety that removes the ‘on the edge’ feeling that a more basic bike provides so easily?

Yes/No/Maybe, but I can tell you I’ve been considering buying a rigid fork (of all things!) to stick on my hardtail to bring back an element of that on the edge feeling for tamer trails. Technology has allowed us to ride more and more terrain, more competently/safely than ever before, and I think that then makes us have to search a bit harder for our buzz. You certainly don’t get much thrill riding a slack angled long travel full sus bike round the local woods, whereas riding a rigid hardtail brings a different element to it. After many many years of questioning it, I’m almost beginning to see why many people ride singlespeeds! 😉