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Over 2 million adults ride regularly, says Sport England

Growth in cycling driven by sportives and participation events

Over two million adults ride a bike at least once a week, according to the latest figures from Sport England’s Active People survey - and that doesn’t include bike rides undertaken solely for transport.

The survey shows that 137,000 more people rode a bike once a week in the period October 2012 to October 2013 than in the period April 2012 - April 2013. 

That makes cycling the third most popular sport in the UK after swimming and athletics, and the second most popular among people aged 26 and over.

Those extra 137,000 cyclists are the biggest increase in participation of all the sports surveyed, an increase three times larger than the rise for the equivalent periods to 2012.

Who are these new cyclists? British Cycling’s Chief Executive, Ian Drake, said: “Most of the increased demand for cycling has come from people doing recreational cycling, road cycling, and mountain biking.”

The Active People survey includes sport, recreational and fitness cycling, but specifically excludes rides undertaken solely as transport, so your Strava segments between the lights don't count.

Throwing off its former image as a fuddy-duddy racing governing body obsessed with rules about logos on jerseys, British Cycling has run numerous programmes in recent years aimed at increasing participation in all kinds of cycling.

The organisation sees the increase in cycling as the pay-off from that effort.

Ian Drake said: “We’re thrilled with today’s results. The fact that we’ve grown regular cycling numbers three times more this summer than during the summer of London 2012 shows that our legacy of increased participation is really kicking in.”

Drake credited help from British Cycling members, Sky, Sport England and local authorities as making the participation programmes possible.

He said: “The support ... has been amazing and we are confident that these newly-converted cyclists will have the dedication to stick with their bikes during the winter months.

“The continued high profile of cycling across Britain – thanks to the successes of the Great Britain Cycling Team and our network of local, accessible cycling opportunities for sport, fun and fitness – are inspiring thousands of people and we remain ambitious to grow cycling even further over the next three years.” 

It might be that this increase is down to other factors such as the better weather this summer compared to last. But the long-term trend also seems to be very positive.

The first Active People survey, for the period October 2005 to October 2006 found 1,634,800 UK adults had ridden a bike at least once a week. That figure in the latest survey is 2,003,000, an increase of 22.5%. Before we get too pleased with ourselves though, cycling can probably learn something from athletics, which has rocketed 49% from 1,353,800 to 2,016,400 in the same period.

British Cycling details the increased participation over the last six months as coming from:

17 Sky Rides attracting over 100,000 people
1,800 local guided rides
A 20% growth in competitive events
A 29% growth in sportives
47,000 more young people engaged in the Go-Ride Clubs network
Membership of British Cycling over 85,000 for the first time
Partnerships with over 60 local authorities

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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4 comments

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a.jumper | 10 years ago
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2million not including a larger number of transport/commuter/non-recreational cyclists.

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Guyz2010 | 10 years ago
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True but in stark reality impossible, in the UK.
Cars rule and at every junction cyclists would have to stop and give way. Nah I'll stick to the road.

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Guyz2010 | 10 years ago
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A proportion of the remainder are sceptical about the safety issues. I quote a medical consultant friend of mine "I would love to cycle but it is too dangerous, I don't know how you (me) do it".
In reality whilst it is possibly dangerous the risks if you ride properly are low. A perception that will be incredibly difficult to change.

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mrmo | 10 years ago
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so 2M are riding bikes, out of a total of c50M.

Maybe that explains why so many drivers don't care, they don't know any cyclists can not relate to them being someone they know etc.

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