You Like Enduro MTB? Thank the Olympics
Give a sportocrat a hug if you’ve been enjoying that 160mm trail-slayer.
Olympic mountain bike racing (a.k.a. XCO) is weird, if you stop to think about it. The typical race track is pure Jekyll and Hyde — a vicious VO2 Max test to get up the short, punchy hills, then straight into the jaws of a glorified scree field. The loops are barely longer than four or five kilometers, requiring so many laps you’d lose track if it wasn’t for the gantry with a lap counter.
This makes for good TV, but really, have you ever gone on a mountain bike ride that resembled this contrived format? I haven’t.
In a way that only the Olympics can influence a sport, XCO has deviated far from a normal mountain biking experience in the 25-odd years it’s been in the Games. I’m not here to relitigate mountain biking’s inclusion in this notoriously corrupt global sports Goliath. Honestly, I kind of enjoy how XCO has evolved since the ‘96 Olympics because the races are now rather entertaining.
Instead of sniping at the Olympics, I’d like to thank the sportocracy that warped XC racing into an unnatural discipline. Because, I think that change contributed to the rise of another type of riding and racing that resembles real mountain biking: enduro. Fun, challenging trails plus kick-ass technology — what could be better?
Whether we’re talking about today’s gnarly, manmade XCO tracks or the glorified cyclocross courses of the early 2000s, pro-level cross-country has never felt very relatable. And little by little, XCO’s homogenization trickled down into national- and regional-caliber events, impacting all racing categories.
Participation tanked in the first decade of the new millennium. Mountain bikers who built their experience on the challenge of long, rugged, natural, old-school courses started losing interest in XC racing, especially in the U.S. You could point to a lot of reasons for that change, but I saw firsthand how people were fed up with boring, short courses. You paid $75 to race for 90 minutes and maybe take home a lucite trophy in the end. It was kind of a rip-off.
I’d like to thank the sportocracy that warped XC racing into an unnatural discipline.
Around that time, freeride mountain biking was getting a lot of industry and media attention. Plus, the guy from Texas was winning bike races in France. But for about a decade, the industry didn’t really have much to offer core mountain bikers.
Fortunately, around 2010, enduro provided an alternative to those who were left behind after cross-country evolved into a pure fitness test (ahem, speaking for myself). We were attracted to how enduro rewarded riding technique and a healthy dose of endurance. Why race on made-for-TV courses when no one is ever going to broadcast your 30-39 master’s race? Even former Olympians like Adam Craig and Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski got in on the action. It turns out that they too enjoyed the challenge of long days with difficult downhills. The rise of XCO, globally and locally, primed many recreational riders for a more adventurous, authentic experience.
One of the best things about enduro is that it gave people bikes they would actually enjoy riding.
Also unlike Olympic cross-country, enduro was a breeding ground for new technology — long, slack geometry, better suspension damping, reliable dropper seatposts, phenomenal tires and tubeless wheels. This stuff might have eventually come to market without enduro, but racing is the most fertile ground for product development. What did the last 20 years of XC technology give us? A marginally lighter carbon fiber layup? Tubular mountain bike tires?
One of the best things about enduro (whatever its slippery definition might be) is that it gave people bikes they would actually enjoy riding. It wasn’t long ago that we were all kind of stuck aboard bikes that, in one way or another, were designed for XCO racing. As we’ve already established, that kind of riding isn’t very fun or typical for most riders, no matter if we are talking about new-school or old-school XCO. Listen, I suffered through my first trip to Moab on a brutal XC bike; I know firsthand that a good cross-country race bike is mostly antithetical to a fun riding experience.
The old selling point for enduro racing was that the bike you wanted to ride on the daily was the right bike to bring to the races. I think that still holds true.
Ironically, you can even see enduro’s fingerprints on today’s XCO races.
That, to me, is the most meaningful change that’s come out of the proliferation of enduro — racing, riding, bikes, “lifestyle,” whatever. Our sport went to one extreme with XCO, and then, the pendulum swung back in the other direction and built an entire industry segment on the foundation of an authentic mountain biking experience. Even if you’ll never race an enduro or ride more than 130mm of travel, the technological and cultural influence that enduro has had in the last 20 years has been prolific.
Ironically, you can even see enduro’s fingerprints on today’s XCO races. A lot of those pros are riding with dropper posts and wide handlebars, aren’t they?