THE GREAT BIKE DROUGHT

Want a new bike? Then you’ll probably need to be patient. James Shrubsall investigates Covid-19’s plunder of bike stocks across the UK and Europe, and what the future looks like for the bike-buying public

- Simon Scarsbrook

A couple of weeks ago, having braved the Saturday morning shops to buy trainers for my eldest, I popped into the local bike store. It’s become a bit of a ritual – perusing rows of new bikes is chicken soup for the Sports Directaddled soul.

Or at least it might have been had there been any. The displays were not exactly bare, but it looked like a panic buying situation that reminded me of trying to buy flour in Sainsbury’s early in the pandemic — I was looking at the bicycle equivalent of a few random packets of speciality bread mix.

Not that this should have been a surprise. A shortage of bicycles and the associated kit has become as much a feature of the pandemic as clapping on the doorstep and facemask chic, and according to those in the industry that CW spoke to, stocks are still well down and could be for some time.

When we spoke to Tom Pidcock right at the start of lockdown he said that even he had had a lot of trouble sourcing a turbo trainer. If a multiple world champion can’t find a turbo, what hope did the rest of us have?

Selling like hardtails...

Had he wanted a hybrid or a hardtail mountain bike though, he may have been completely out of luck, for those were the bikes that began selling fast even as people could see lockdown approaching and they looked for an alternative, socially-distanced ways to get to work.