It’s not all about racing: why the bike industry needs to take a chill pill

A lot of anecdotes presented as data and I can simply negate most with my equally meaningless anecdote...in all the years I've been in bike shops, I've never had anyone trying and upsell some me some racing bling or had staff make snide rmarks about my various bikes.  
Regardless of all that, just about all bike progres has come from racing. It's where making a better widget or bike can make a big difference. This trickles down to the rest of us in a multitude of way, even if we never race. My girlfriends bike cost less than a grand and weighs less than a pro's bike did when I was a kid. More comfortable and faster too.
Both MTBing and Gravel bikes only exist because these bikes emerged directly from folk racing bikes. MTB and traithlon races are also what drove so much of the innovations we have seen in bike tech in last few decades and more recently gravel and bikepacking/endurance racing. Road racing rules were there mostly to prevent innovation. My first proper road bike as a kid was pretty much the same as my mate's 40 year old road bike that his dad/grandpa originally had, and then passed down. Thank god folk racing bikes in other ways changed bikes for the better, so we all benefited and now have much much nicer bikes as a result. 
 

As a cyclist starting with a club in 1982 , even then like life in general, it was a very broad church.

Many cyclists are absorbed by performance powered by their egos and place great value on metrics power, speed,strava etc .This I think is largely down to societies  love for the 'corporatisation' ie measurement of anything for it to be worthy of comparison and validation of self.

Quantifiable metrics ie stiffness, aero,  weight, race plamares enables manufacturers to have, what might be considered by some to unveil the Emperor's new clothes every year in the form of the latest and greatest must have.

Its a personal choice of the individual to chose what to enjoy: wanderlust and escapisim or bragging over Strava stats as long as you enjoy what you do and are not overly attached to the outcome all is good.

I don't agree with the premise of this article. The belief that everyday cyclists are buying ridiculously expensive bikes, wheels, stems, bottle cages, ad nausium isnt about racing. This sort of thing never happened 20 years ago to the same degree yet racing was just as big then as it is today. The driving force is all down to that funky little app called STRAVA!

The average rider knows hes never going to be as good as a pro and no amount of upgrades is going to get them anwhere close to that level, but will it help them get that KOM or push their average speed up past 20mph? thats your contributing factor for the rise and rise of the performance bike industry. its not about being Froome or Pogacar. its about beating that guy who rides your route 5 seconds faster than you grrr. 

Great article. I find it frustratingly daunting to walk into some bike shops in London due to the perception that I'm not pro enough to ride the bike I own.

I love bikes, ride to stay fit and as I don't own a car I spend some money riding bikes that makes me smile as I ride. I have SPDs rather than road bike pedals, whilst I hate Lycra.

The bike brands can really irk some.
Turn up to a shop on my Surly LHT and everyone thinks it's cool. S works tarmac? Not so much... It's just one of those things but always disappointing. I just wanna chat about bikes and get stuff fixed when it's beyond my skill set or toolbox!

There are many brands, media outlets and even some shops more than happy to reinforce the connection between pro racing success and everyday riding. It's marketing, the 'Win on Sunday, sell on Monday' concept. We are all easily persuaded that we should purchase items we don't need but there no need to get hot under the collar about it.  If someone buys a fancy bike with blingy carbon and 12-speed wireless shifting it has no impact on me, I simply hope they enjoy it.

Using the term "prima donna" suggests that you view professional cyclists - who ride their bikes very fast for a living and may have very specific requirements - with the same disdain as the mechanic who slighted your cassette choice. But Lachlan Morton is a pro cyclist riding for a WorldTour team, he's just doing things a little differently to other professionals. Is it therefore more admirable? Can people relate more to his mind-blowing ride around France than the riders in the Tour? Or is it more that we just open-mouthed at the ridiculous distance and elevation he rode while wearing sandals?

Watching pro racing or taking part in competition yourself is fine. I do both. But that doesn't necessarily give me a blinkered view of what cycling should be. I wear lycra but I also ride into town in a t-shirt and jeans and am always happy to see anyone cycling, regardless of their speed, the distance or the number of gears they use. Is there not room for both?

Regarding frame builders, the dwindling numbers is more to do with the quality and cost of mass production in the Far East. Many skill-based industries have gone the same way. However, there has been a resurgence in frame building, as events like  Bespoked demonstrate but if custom builders were creating inexpensive bikes for pottering around they'd disappear just like their predecessors.

Edit: after posting the above I sat down with the latest copy of Cycling UK's magazine. 74 pages showing lots of 'normal' cycling and almost entirely devoid of lycra. Reviews of inexpensive folding bikes and the Oxford Bike Works 1E (£1,299 and the steel frame is made in Coventry). Perhaps get your news, reviews etc from sources less enamoured with racing and bling components. I think road.cc does quite well in this regard, though they can only review items they are sent.

It is not at all about racing..

I agree with you Steve, riding a bike is, for most, about getting out and about and getting from A to B. Simply, it is the joy of pedalling along in the fresh air and taking in everything around, and enjoying that freedom that only a bike can provide. My biggest bug bear is that cycle clothing is always too small a size for me, a short, thick waisted, broad shouldered welshcyclist. To get the right waist measurement I should be 6 feet 6 inches, while I am 5 feet 7 inches. I suppose it's similar to the haute couture of fashion, nothing to do with ordinary people. ( I hate that phrase, there are no such thing as ordinary people ). Still we can talk till we are blue in the face, it seems nothing is led by what the public want, let alone what the ordinary biking public want. Cheers.

Genuinely of all the many shops I've been to in the last 9 years in and around London (mostly chain shops but also a few indys)...not a single one has assumed I'd be interested in something racy and tried to upsell me.

The absolute fuckers!!!

Exploration not persperation and on a Litespeed Appalachian to boot, what's not to like?

Grant (Rivendell) Petersen wrote a whole book espousing the philosophy of being an Unracer and actively avoiding racing's influence on cycling-in-general.

Lots to agree with here... but I don't think you'll find Lachlan Morton is riding on 'a good old steel framed bike with wired gear shifting'. Wired gears, maybe, steel frame, definitely not
I haven't raced for donkey's years and I'm very much at the pootling around level these days, but still riding stuff that's tricky enough that I'm more than happy to have disc brakes, tubeless tyres, and (on my mountain bike at least) a dropper post - all innovations that weren't around when I started. On the gravel bike I'm also 100% happy to be on carbon frame and wheels; they haven't batted an eyelid at some pretty rough stuff, including a flight of stone steps on my last outing. And if it does come to hike-a-bike or hoicking it over a locked gate; then again I love carbon.
I'm sure there's some rebalancing needed in media coverage (I hate to see people kicking up sprays of dirt on every bend; you're not at Rampage today, matey) but competition has been a major driver behind all these innovations. 

Where is that bridge ?

Fantastic piece, one that I found really struck a note with me. Have just spent a reasonable amount of money on a steelie MTB. Not for performance, but cos I love it.

I used to hit all sports with the must-win mentality - only leads to disappointment and frustration, and many sports just don't need to be competitive to be rewarding - cycling, running, fell running, wild swimming for example are beautiful things to do of themselves, made more beautiful still without a stopwatch or heart monitor. Do it with a friend and that beauty is achieved and appreciated collaboratively, which again makes things much more fun. Your body will tell you whether you're putting enough effort in.

Obvs, those that enjoy competing can/will/should compete. It's interesting though as the OP says, that the market seems tailored for that end disproportionately

This is a really big subject Steve, and one I have always wondered about myself. I agree the marketing aspect is a big contributor but we are also complicit in the whole merry dance and this is perhaps where it gets a little difficult to be objective. I think all cyclists are (even a little bit) competitive by nature. Even if they're not born that way, stick them on a bike and they suddenly want to beat whoever happens to be nearby. Three decades of commuting by bike in London has shown this to be true. I don't get people 'race walking' past me giving me a sideways glance daring me to try and catch them by walking faster. But they do on a bike. Why is that I wonder? It's as if we cyclists all have a monkey on our back that we simply can't shake off.

And I'm just as bad. My racing days ended a couple of decades ago (apart from sportives which I refuse to call races) but I am still racing in my head, myself mostly, where I am my own biggest competitor. And that mindset (which I believe is common among cyclists) is ripe for being used against me by all the 'stiffness this, aero that' marketing claims in trying to sell me kit that would make a negligable difference to my performance but a huge dent in my wallet. Trying to keep on top of the ever improving equipment choices is like taking part in an arms race that you can never win. It's frankly a bit ridiculous if you believe that the bike makes THAT much of a difference.

So I'm lucky then that I love riding steel frames for the superb ride quality (with modern gearing it's like riding a modern bike). I also have over 20 bikes (luckily my wife doesn't read road.cc)  and none are carbon. I choose to spend money that could make me faster on bikes that are somewhat like classic cars. A bit slower perhaps but infinitely cooler. But that's a whole other story.