Cross-country mountain bike racing has come a very long way in the past 40-odd years. In many ways, the fast, high-flying XC racing of today is almost unrecognisable compared to the loose raggedness of the sport’s pioneering days. From the mid-1980s, the genre was carved out from scratch by a group of fun-loving, passionate, often ingenious souls in the UK and beyond.
Here, we’ll take a hazy look back at the evolution of XC racing in the UK and beyond, starting with the first officially recorded cross-country ATB (All Terrain Bike) races that took place some 42 years ago. It’s not a definitive timeline, and I’m sure some out there will remember slightly different fine details – the intention is to highlight the changes over the years, stuff younger generations likely know little of.
So, hold on to your Bula hat and enjoy the ride down rattly old memory lane…
In the beginning
“Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing,” wrote George Orwell in his famous dystopian novel 1984. Could he – just maybe – have been predicting the year that mountain bike racing would first come to the UK? Absolutely not, but that quote could well be applied to how the sport of cycling was reimagined in the ’80s when off-road riding really took off.
The first known organised cross-country mountain bike race in the UK took place in London in 1984. This was a short circuit cross-country race held at Eastway, which is now Lee Valley VeloPark. The race, called All Terrain Bike (ATB) was part of a pioneering attempt to launch a whole new genre that was yet to be defined. It was part of a planned series called ‘The Fat Tyre Five’, but my understanding is that only three ever took place.
Eastway would later go on to be home to the Beastway series, which is almost certainly the oldest UK MTB race series. A month after that came the first edition of the Wendover Bash, a weekend four-parter organised by the ‘grandad’ of British MTB, Geoff Apps (RIP). This legendary race was arguably one of the most influential in defining the direction of UK MTB racing through the 1980s.
Riders rode on a very different kind of mountain bike back then. The same bike would be used in a cross-country race, a hill climb, a downhill, and in observed trials – the winner was the fastest overall. Third in the series was a point-to-point XC race from Brecon to Hay-on-Wye.
The seeds were – quite randomly – sown. At this stage, mountain biking was still very much a fringe cycling discipline, and largely scorned by the old-school establishment. Riders here were not your normal serious racers, and were mostly there for the hell of it – the fun, the challenge, the rebellious community, with rules yet to be written. Naturally, though, the racing was taken seriously by those at the sharp end.
By 1985, things were hotting up for mountain biking, and the US organisation NORBA extended with a UK arm, and more races started to appear. It was still very much about the ride back then – trail info and resources were almost untapped and largely unwritten, and thus the challenge of competing in these events and exploring new terrain was a huge draw for regular riders.
In around 1986, bike maker Jeremy Torr and cycling journalist Max Glaskin launched the MBC (Mountain Bike Club), an organisation that took over from NORBA and launched its own events and series. In 1987, the MBC held its first national championships in Telford. The MBC was the predecessor of the National Points Series (NPS) we have today.
The sport was gaining mainstream cycling attention by the late 1980s. Brands and sponsors were starting to back the discipline, although their ideals differed somewhat from the original years. Many races back then, until the very early ’90s, included XC, downhill and trials, with riders racing all three on the same bike. By then, the BMBF (British Mountain Bike Federation, aka British Cycling) had been formed, and was taking a close interest in this thriving young rebel known as mountain biking.
Between 1987-1989 the sport went international with the Grundig World Series and both US and European World Championships, all still unrecognised by the UCI.
In the UK, things changed when Tim Gould and David Baker showed up and smashed the field at a round of the National Series. Torr and Glaskin’s work was done – the sport had a different flavour now, and they duly moved on. The BMBF took the reins then, and things got serious…
Becoming ‘official’
By the late 1980s, British riders Gould and Baker were global stars of the sport, particularly in the USA for Gould. The sport was still very US-dominated then, and many of the courses were held in the high mountains. Races sometimes lasted over three hours, more like marathon race distances of today.
In 1990, the sport got its first official UCI World Championships, and ‘official’ National Championships followed in the UK and elsewhere. By the early ’90s, American-style mountain bikes dominated the scene, and multi-discipline races started to fade towards specialisation. As the ‘official” World Cup and NPS evolved through the early ’90s, the sport thrived globally, including in the UK.
The Olympic dream
When it was announced that mountain biking would become an Olympic sport in 1996, things changed dramatically. The whole world – riders, sponsors, federations and more – took note, and things started to change, both for the better and worse.
In the UK, through the ’90s, the sport saw a rapid rise in popularity. Numerous race series and regional organisations appeared, such as NEMBA, NWMBA, MBCW, SAMS, and more.
In those days, races were still long and mostly on natural courses, with winning gaps often measured in minutes. Still, some riders mixed it up – including the likes of Steve Peat, who won the Sport category in the National Series, and raced downhill on a Kona hardtail. Even internationally, several racers still did both – Juli Furtado even became XC and DH World Champion in the early ’90s, but by the mid-90s that was done with.
Pits, rock gardens, short circuits, and outside assistance
By the early 2000s, the sport was getting more organised, more regulated, and more serious. Up until this point, riders had to be technically self-sufficient in races, which meant fixing any mechanicals or flats yourself. It was commonplace for riders to start with a part-inflated inner tube bulging out of their back pockets, and a multi-tool in a seat pack.
In 2005, that changed when the UCI allowed outside assistance and manned pits, which very much changed the original nature of the sport. The decision likely came around in part due to the increasing industry and sponsorship investment, and to reduce the mechanical risk element for riders in an increasingly high-stakes sport.
Through the second half of the 2000s, the UCI also cut lap distances and race durations, eventually hitting 80-90 minutes for elite XCO races. This transition gave the sport a whole different feel and style, leading to a noticeable shift from around 2010 away from natural courses to partially or fully constructed circuits – this has been de rigueur since the 2010 Dalby XCO World Cup and the 2012 London Olympic races. Perhaps the closest to an old school XC course on the World Cup circuit now is Mont Sainte Anne in Canada.
Going wide screen and big time
There’s no getting away from the fact that TV broadcasting holds a lot of power over mountain bike racing. The timing and logistics involved directly impacts the sport’s direction, format, and the courses. Shorter and more intense circuits are far easier for broadcasters to cover, and also make for more dramatic, closer, and entertaining racing.
TV coverage also brings in the lion’s share of sponsorship money. This coverage, and its importance, has increased dramatically in the past few years, especially since WBD (Warner Bros Discovery) took over the broadcasting of XC races.
All this ultimately means the sport is heading in a more professional, but arguably more elitist direction. Many currently involved with XC are all in favour of this, but there are plenty out there on and off track, old and young, who question the trail ahead.
There is no getting away from the fact that the races and coverage now are next level. The racing is so fast, close, technical, and intense when compared to ’90s racing. Though there was definitely something epic and romantic about watching Ned, Tomac, and Gould smashing seven bells out of each other on a wide-open mountainside for hours on end.
19 thoughts on “The revolution and evolution of XC: How cross-country racing has changed in the UK and beyond”
1984 was written by George Orwell not Orson Wells.
That’s what Big Brother tells you…
Would you like to take another run at that?
This is one of the worst written articles I have seen. Dozens of typos and grammatical errors. Did anyone proof read it?
@ajd As well as confusing George Orwell with Orson Wells – clearly not proof read (at least, not by a different person)
As I recall it made cycling more popular rather than doing for it…honestly, this article is an absolute dumpster fire of factual errors (Orson Welles did not write 1984 and Warner Bros do not organise MTB races) and grammatical and syntactical mistakes (“TV coverage is also, in no short order, what rings in the lion’s share of sponsorship money” – what?). What on earth happened?
Most puzzlingly:
Firstly for the closing off of parentheses twice, but also, who are these people “in the U”? Is this some kind of slang the kids are using that I’m not down with?
@mdavidford One assumes it’s referencing Nancy Mitford’s famous “Noblesse Oblige” with its concept of U and non-U language, U being upper class and non-U the more flowery attempts to sound posh from the middle classes. I recall her decreeing that bicycle and bike were U and cycle was non-U, though she was of course a little early to rule on the difference between ATB and MTB.
I heard she thought fixies were very lower class. She was once overheard saying “let them ride Campag”
On the subject of mountain biking, terrific rides by Tom Pidcock and Charlie Aldridge to take gold and silver in the UCI World Championships yesterday.
Suggest you pull this article, fix it, then bin it.
Well now, let’s not be hasty. We should get the views of a range of audiences first. For instance, how’s it gone down with readers in the Surrey area?
Well I’m in Cambridgeshire and I think it is poor. If I had written this sort of thing at school, I probably wouldn’t have been entered for O-level English Language.
I admit I’m not very knowledgeable in such matters, but would this article have been generated by AI?
I doubt it – the article would be better written.
I am sat drinking a beer a few miles up the road from Bikeland Val Di Sole having spent the last few days watching lots of racing. Pidcock and Charlie obviously topping off the weekend after a few silvers from GB Team. The weekend previously I was racing my 1991 Giant bike around the hills near back at the Malverns Classic which has a retro MTB section to the festival. The sport has indeed changed dramatically, yes due to TV companies promoting the sport and latterly milking us for every penny, the Olympics helped massively but more recently the national sports organisations have seen it as less risky to push more resources into MTB as they scrap for every result to justify their funding. The riders are so skilled it’s amazing what they are capable of, the chances of messing up a drop off or gap jump are so small. British Cycling had a large number of people here, my Son is a member and rode past there tent on many occasions in his club top, he also did the kids “event” here on Friday. Not one smile or “hello” from Team GB helpers. Sad reflection on what has become quite corporate and results driven British Cycling and I’m not sure they had any input on Pidcock and Aldridge results yesterday.
I’m not getting the disapproval here? Some of this is right up there with the best of Mark V. Shaney’s work on Usenet. It hovers, Dylanesque, between the trite and the incomprehensible:
And something of Led Zeppelin in “a whole lot of true, original, and relatable soul”?
Just dropping by to apologise for the errors in the first version of this article. It shouldn’t have been published when it was, and it’s now been edited. We’ll be better from now on, apologies again.
@Jack Sexty thanks for the quality control.
There would still be a few takers if you went in the more … artistic direction of course (for those of us who recall Boatsie).