STRAIGHT TORQUING - GUY KESTEVEN

Has tech taken the hard work and fun out of mountain biking, or should we embrace evolution and roll with it?

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Fake it so you don't make it

If you started riding in the late 1980s like I did, mountain biking is almost unrecognisable now in terms of what bikes are capable of, but also the trails we are riding them on. I get a regular reminder of how amazing it is that mtb caught on at all, thanks to a vintage Raleigh Memphis ATB that I still ride as an errand bike. Between the 15 non-indexed gears, tiny tan wall tyres, rigid steel forks and non-existent brakes, the whole experience is terrifying even on the mildest tracks.

It’s like going back to a predictive keypad phone and wondering how on earth texting took off when sending “C U L8R” took longer than ChatGPT will churn out an essay today. But get out into the wild we did, heading out for distances I’d be worried about now and cheerfully launching into descents that we knew we couldn’t stop on, and probably wouldn’t stay upright on either.