‘Wales. Made For Bikes’ – but maybe not all mountain bikes?

Welsh Cycling has revealed its rebrand to ‘Beicio Cymru’ and a new ‘Wales. Made for bikes’ strategy. The strategy document reads like a bit of a mix o …

By stwhannah

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‘Wales. Made For Bikes’ – but maybe not all mountain bikes?

Top tier athlete funding for Olympic events only, I suspect.

Caroline Spanton, CEO of Beicio Cymru, shared her excitement about the rebranding

Jesus, what a crock of shit.

No support for Enduro or E-Enduro is wild considering how most of the local events (in South Wales) are basically exactly this.

+1 on its about Olympic sports, not cycling in general.

Which is odd as Wales isn’t (currently) an Olympic nation.

Commonwealth games follows the Olympics quite closely, there is XCO and many of the other same cycling categories at those as well. Also, Beicio Cymru will want to help Welsh athletes to reach the very highest level of competition, even if competing in “Team GB” colours.

Yes…that makes sense for Commonwealth Games … Although that is looking increasing creaky as an institution as time goes on!

Agreed. But the highest levels of athlete support in all this will have medals at these big multi discipline international competitions in mind.

Response received and post updated above!

That is the problem though (reading the response)…the funding stream is from competitive cycling and the funding is to win medals.

You don’t get medals for riding enduro and especially not for riding your bike for fun.
The governing body apparently aimed at everyone who bikes but really only cares about the disciplines whee medals can be won.

You can see why it struggles to attract new members as it simply doesn’t cater for most things.

Same issue with Scottish Cycling and British Cycling as a whole…

Can you cycle on the Welsh coastal paths?

MTB the poor relation – one day I hope that changes.

doubt it, the 180 mile long Pembs coastal path is footpath only

Yep, it’s chicken and egg time.

Funding for track, road, XC for medals = that’s the focus, the people they speak to, the events they get involved in, the staff they recruit.

Without focus and funding, most MTB and other disciplines show no interest on working with such organisations, feel cut out/unsupported, and so no one communicates back to the organisation even through consultations as what is the point.

And so two self perpetuating spirals are created – one upwards and one downwards.

Ok, a few points to add here.
1. The response from Caroline saying no one in the consultation groups mentioned Enduro is totally wrong. I was at the North Wales meeting and spoke about enduro, the WES and the need for support for trail associations as the ‘unofficial’ trails are where most folk, recreational mtbers that is, want to ride!
2. Beicio Cymru are very keen to be relevant to mtb and are supporting , facilitating and putting in some initial funding for the relaunch of MB Wales which we hope is going to ultimately be a DMBinS type organisation for Wales in which the trails are front and centre. It’s just the start of something which could be brilliant for mtb in Wales.
3. It’s incredibly difficult to compete for funding with Olympic and Commonwealth medal focused branches of cycling but, as Robin from UK MTB Trail Alliance said, surely funding should be allocated to where the majority of participants are actually riding? This is not the reality in UK sport in general though is it? We in mtb are going to have to rely on volunteers in trail associations and a combination of private and public funding to improve the landscape for recreational mountain biking.

So, yes, this rebrand of Welsh Cycling into Beicio Cymru is a positive in many ways, there’s still a hell of a lot of work to be done here in Wales if we are ever going to be at Scotland’s level in terms of sheer variety and quality of  mtb provision.

From a quick skim of their strategy document I see they’ve included at least three quotes that explicitly call out cycling as a mode of transport; yet there are barely any proposed actions that relate to this—only a couple of utterly nebulous items under “empowering a cycling culture” that mainly shift the onus onto other organisations, presumably in the way that a problem shared is a problem that can be circularly delegated Not even cycle touring or bikepacking seem to get a mention. From a non-athletic point of view the strategy largely seems to cement the popular view that cycling is a competitive sport that needs competitive sports equipment and organised events and that’s that—not a thing which is accessible and safe and normal and useful. A shiny new logotype maybe, but plus ça change.

https://www.beiciocymru.org/2024/07/22/mb-wales-is-now-recruiting-for-steering-group-positions-to-support-the-development-of-mtb-and-off-road-cycling-in-wales/?_gl=1*1vcu8lu*_up*MQ..*_ga*Nzk1OTA2Mjc1LjE3MjE2NjA5MjY.*_ga_M7126LV6G0*MTcyMTY2MDkyNS4xLjEuMTcyMTY2MDkzMS4wLjAuMA

Some more details on the stuff Kath is referring to above. Also a link to a strategy document, don’t know how long this has been about though.