Mountain Biking

Mountain biking is the sport of riding bicycles away from paved roads. It requires endurance, bike handling skills and self-reliance. It is an individual sport performed on dirt roads, fire roads, access roads, park trails and mountain trails.

There are aspects of mountain biking that are more similar to trail running than regular bicycling. Because riders are often far from civilisation, there is a strong ethic of self-reliance in the sport. Riders must learn to repair their broken bikes or flat tyres to avoid being stranded miles from help. This reliance on survival skills accounts for the group dynamics of the sport. Club rides and other forms of group rides are common, especially on longer treks.

Mountain biking is roughly broken down into three categories: cross country, downhill, and free riding. However all mountain bikes have a somewhat similar look, knobbly tyres, large round tubing, and usually some sort of suspension or shock absorbers. Mountain biking can be done anywhere from a back yard to a gravel road, but mountain bikers often prefer to ride trails they call singletrack, a narrow trail that winds through forest or fields.

The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) recognised the sport of mountain bike racing relatively late in 1990, when it sanctioned the world championships in Purgatory, Colorado. The first mountain biking World Cup series took place in 1991. Its nine-race circuit covered two continents - Europe and North America - and was sponsored by Grundig. In 1992, the Grundig-UCI world cup circuit expanded to ten races, and remained a trans-Atlantic series.

Cross-country racing was the only world cup sport at this time, then in 1993 a six-event downhill world cup was introduced. In 1996, cross country mountain biking events were added to the Olympic Games.