Can Road Bike Time Trialling Revive The TT Scene?

Vern Pitt reports on a new initiative to promote the sport.

- Vern Pitt

Proposals to arrest the stagnation in the number of people doing time trials by introducing a standardised road bike category are currently in development.

Time trialling has long been a stalwart of the British racing scene but the rising tide of cycling’s popularity — evidenced by a six-fold increase in British Cycling membership between 2007 and 2017 — has not lifted all parts of the sport equally. Track and cyclo-cross continue to grow but time trialling has remained largely flat. There were 168,896 time trial rides last year, up only 11 per cent on the 151,432 in 2007. The number of TTs ridden in recent years has even declined slightly from its peak of 189,702 in 2014.

This compares unfavourably with the growth in the number of BC racing licence holders, which has grown 168 per cent from 11,846 in 2007 to 31,940 in 2017.

That is where Xavier Disley, owner of AeroCoach, has a plan. He intends to bring forward new rules to his regional Cycling Time Trials committee later this autumn to introduce a road bike category for time trials, he hopes the proposals will be accepted and taken to a national level.

“If you take the number of people competing in sportives and triathlons and people buying bikes there is an enormous disconnect between the two. I think one of the things to arrest that downward trend is to make time trials more accessible to people,” he says. “I’m not trying to replace TT bike riding. The idea is to get more people doing TTs because the numbers are dwindling. Unless something happens now the sport will split between the super aero geeks and the people who just want to ride normal bikes. You need to get them now so you retain them for the future.”