Mountain Biking, Culture and Society (Routledge Research in Sport, Culture and Society) [1 ed.] 1032421916, 9781032421919

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Mountain Biking, Culture and Society

This book represents the first critical examination of the social, cultural, and political significance of mountain biking in contemporary societies. Starting from the premise that cultures of mountain biking are diverse, complex, and at times contradictory, this book offers practical and theoretical insights into a range of embodied, material, and socio-­technical relationships. Featuring contributions from an interdisciplinary team of researchers, artists, and (Indigenous) community members with backgrounds in sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, community development, and coaching, chapters critically unpack the complex and contested nature of mountain biking identities, bodies, environments, and inequalities within specific settings. Via a range of international case studies from England, Scotland, America, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa, authors highlight how tensions and conflicts in the world of mountain biking initiate important conversations about climate change, colonialism, discrimination, and land-­use. This is essential reading for academics and practitioners in sociology, cultural studies, sport-­for-­development, and human geography. Jim Cherrington is Senior Lecturer in Physical Activity, Sport, and Health at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. His research explores how identity, bodies, knowledges, and objects are materialised in/through everyday life, with much of his recent work dedicated to investigating the socio-historical, sociotechnical, and onto-political conditions of mountain biking.

Routledge Research in Sport, Culture and Society

Sport, Performance and Sustainability Edited by Daniel Svensson, Erik Backman, Susanna Hedenborg and Sverker Sörlin The Future of Motorsports Business, Politics and Society Edited by Hans Erik Næss and Simon Chadwick Experiencing the Body in Yoga Practice Meanings and Knowledge Transfer Krzysztof T. Konecki, Aleksandra Płaczek, and Dagmara Tarasiuk Boxing, Narrative and Culture Critical Perspectives Edited by Sarah Crews and P. Solomon Lennox Cricket, Capitalism and Class From the Village Green to the Cricket Industry Chris McMillan Indigenous, Traditional, and Folk Sports Contesting Modernities Mariann Vaczi and Alan Bairner Doping and Anti-Doping in Africa Theory and Practice Edited by Yamikani Ndasauka and Simon Mathias Makwinja Mountain Biking, Culture and Society Edited by Jim Cherrington For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/routledgeresearchinsportcultureandsociety/book-series/RRSCS

Mountain Biking, Culture and Society

Edited by Jim Cherrington

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Jim Cherrington; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Jim Cherrington to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cherrington, Jim, editor. Title: Mountain biking, culture and society / edited by Jim Cherrington. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. | Series: Routledge research in sport, culture and society | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2023041304 | ISBN 9781032421919 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032421933 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003361626 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Mountain biking--Social aspects. Classification: LCC GV1056 .M69 2024 | DDC 796.63--dc23/eng/20231004 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023041304 ISBN: 978-1-032-42191-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-42193-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-36162-6 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003361626 Typeset in Optima by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

This book is dedicated to the trail builders in my local woods, whose artistic flair and unwavering dedication to their craft continue to inspire both my work and my play.

Contents

List of contributors

x

Introduction: mountain bike culture as a ‘structure of feeling’

1

JIM CHERRINGTON

PART I

Mountain biking identities

15

1 Exploring mountain bike coaches’ perceptions towards learning to coach through story completion: coaching happily ever after?

17

THOMAS M. LEEDER AND LEE C. BEAUMONT

2 Evaluating competitiveness as a personality trait among a sample of mountain bikers

34

KIEREN MCEWAN, NEIL WESTON, AND PAUL GORCZYNSKI

3 The motivations, identities, and environmental sensibilities of contemporary e-mountain bike users: the people behind the power LESLEY INGRAM-SILLS

49

viii Contents PART II

Mountain biking bodies

63

4 A sociology of how things go wrong in mountain biking: falling into place

65

MIKE LLOYD

5 An exploration into the sensory experience of pain in mountain biking

82

BENJAMIN MORELAND

6 Encounters with mountain bike trail centre spaces: experience landscapes

95

DAVID GIBBS AND LEWIS HOLLOWAY

PART III

Mountain biking environments

111

7 Downhill MTB, digital media, and DIY urbanism: riding with Red Bull

113

JACOB J. BUSTAD AND OLIVER J. C. RICK

8 Sustainable mountain bike trails: towards a holistic approach

125

TOM CAMPBELL

9 No dig, no ride: repairing and caring for DIY-designed mountain bike and BMX trails

141

LIAM HEALY

10 Air pollution as ‘slow violence’ during multi-day mountain bike trips CLARE NATTRESS

157

Contents ix PART IV

The cultural politics of mountain biking

171

11 Women and barriers to participation in mountain biking: the impossible climb

173

LOUISE BORDELON

12 Hegemonic masculinity and sexualisation in mountain bike trail naming practices: what’s in a name?

188

BENJAMIN MORELAND, ALICE LEMKES, JENNI MYERS, AND JACK REED

13 Portrayals of ideals of authenticity in mountain biking multimedia: escaping to find yourself

202

JEFF R. WARREN AND JOHN REID-HRESKO

14 Reflections on trails, mountain biking, and indigenoussettler relations in British Columbia: ride, (re)connect, and (re)build

216

TAVIS SMITH, PATRICK LUCAS, TOM EUSTACHE, AND THOMAS SCHOEN

Index 229

Contributors

Lee C. Beaumont is Associate Professor of Physical Education in the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. His research interests lie in physical education and sport pedagogy, with a particular emphasis on the promotion of healthy active lifestyles in young people, sport coaching, outdoor learning, and lifestyle sports. Louise Bordelon is Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Colorado, USA. Her research interests lie in cultural geographies, particularly how humans experience landscape, whether along historic trails, or when mountain biking. Jacob J. Bustad is Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Towson University, USA. His primary research and teaching interests are in the fields of sport management, physical cultural studies, the sociology of sport, and urban studies. Tom Campbell is Associate Lecturer at the Mountain Bike Centre of Scotland. His applied work centres around innovation and enterprise across the mountain bike sector and the field of dual-­career athletes. Most recently, Tom led the project DIRTT: Developing Inter-­European Resources for Trail-­ builder Training. Tom Eustache is a Secwépemc man, a member and the maintenance manager of Simpcw First Nation, and Director of the Indigenous Youth Mountain Bike Program. David Gibbs is Emeritus Professor of Human Geography in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of Hull, UK. His main research interests are focused on the political economy of the environment and on economy-­environment interrelationships. He is particularly interested in exploring the policy implications of these interrelationships at the local and regional level. Paul Gorczynski is Senior Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology at the University of Greenwich, UK. He is a Chartered Psychologist and

Contributors xi

Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and a Registered Practitioner Psychologist with the Health and Care Professions Council. Paul’s research mainly focuses on the development and implementation of mental health literacy strategies. Liam Healy is a Designer, Researcher, and Lecturer at the University of Sheffield School of Architecture, UK. Liam’s research interests focus around situated critical, speculative design practice and research, DIY design, care, the Anthropocene, and more-­than-­human entanglements with design. They are currently working on an AHRC-­funded research project exploring access to woodlands with Forestry England. Lewis Holloway is Professor of Human Geography in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of Hull, UK. His main research interests centre around issues of farming and food. He is also interested in wider issues to do with the use of rural space, especially for recreational and leisure uses. Lesley Ingram-­Sills is Lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University and Academic Lead for well-­being at the Mountain Bike Centre of Scotland, UK. She is a former World Cup cross-­country mountain bike racer. Lesley has a strong portfolio of research in the cycling industry involving sleep, immunity, and e-­bikes. Thomas M. Leeder is Lecturer in Physical Education & Sport Pedagogy in the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. His research interests focus on understanding and exploring coach learning, coach education and development, and coach mentoring, via the use of qualitative research methods and sociological frameworks. Alice Lemkes is a PhD candidate at the University of Leeds, UK. Her research focuses on the ways in which severe and multiple disadvantages are produced, regulated, and contested within policy and the lives of individuals. She advocates for equity and diversity of knowledge within policy and practice, drawing upon post-­structural and decolonisation literatures. Patrick Lucas is Founder and Director of the Indigenous Youth Mountain Bike Program, Canada, and a registered professional planner. Mike Lloyd is a Sociologist at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His research draws upon Ethnomethodology and aims to closely consider the fine details of social interaction. Along with work on mountain biking, recent publications have been on interaction in cycle-­lanes, e-­scootering, and professional tennis. Kieren McEwan is Senior Lecturer in Sport Management at the University of Portsmouth, UK. Kieren’s research centres on identity construction amongst adventure sports participants and how this is framed from a psychosocial

xii Contributors

perspective. Kieren is also pursuing research which connects mental well-­ being to the benefits of exercising in non-­urban environments. Benjamin Moreland is Lecturer in Sport Development and Coaching at Plymouth Marjon University, UK. His research interests centre on the experiences of individuals in sport and particularly non-­traditional activities. His current work and doctoral thesis examine the lived experiences of mountain bikers, focussing on their embodied and sensory dimensions. Jenni Myers has a PhD in Psychology and is the founder of the nature connection consultancy ‘The Nature Mind’. She has an NLP Master Practitioner Certificate, a Certificate in Counselling, and a fascination with people’s relationship with nature. Clare Nattress is an interdisciplinary artist and educator at York St John University, UK. Her works encompass data art, performance, photography, digital practices, and installation underpinned with conceptual rigour. Clare considers collaborations with scientists and other researchers to be a key element in her work. Jack Reed is a PhD candidate at The University of Edinburgh, UK. His research explores mobile technologies and social media in residential outdoor education as well as contemporary formulations of society and culture as they are developed and sustained in postdigital space. John Reid-­Hresko is Professor of Sociology at Quest University, located on the unceded and unsurrendered homelands of the Sk̲wx̱wú7mesh First Nation, Canada. His personal and professional work examines the intersections of settler colonialism, Indigenous resurgence and self-­determination, and settler understandings of place-­based belonging in relationship to recreation, tourism, and environmental governance. Oliver J. C. Rick is Assistant Professor in Sport Management at Regis College, USA. He graduated with a PhD in Kinesiology specialising in Physical Cultural Studies. He has developed a research agenda that has three main strands: critical analyses of sports media and communication, globalisation processes in sport, and urban physical activity cultures. Thomas Schoen is a Director of the Indigenous Youth Mountain Bike Program and the CEO of First Journey Trails, Canada. Tavis Smith is Lecturer at Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. His research sits at the intersection of sport, community development, and sustainability, with a particular emphasis on informal and lifestyle sports. Jeff R. Warren most recently served as Vice President Academic and Professor of Music and Humanities at Quest University in British Columbia,

Contributors xiii

Canada. His work examines the ethical implications of everyday musical experiences, including those evidenced in mountain biking culture. Elsewhere, he is also interested in collective singing, and the relationship between music, politics, and phenomenology. Neil Weston is Principal Lecturer in sport psychology in the School of Sport, Health and Exercise Science at the University of Portsmouth, UK. He is a British Psychological Society chartered sport and exercise psychologist and a Senior Fellow of Advanced HE. Neil’s research interests focus on examining the psychology of human performance, with particular interest in the impact of psychological skills training on sport performance.

Introduction Mountain bike culture as a ‘structure of feeling’ Jim Cherrington

The emergence (and divergence) of mountain bike culture Mountain bikes are built for off-road use and are typically ridden on mountain trails, purpose-built tracks, fire roads, and other unpaved surfaces (Huddart & Stott, 2019). This type of terrain comprises a mixture of ‘natural’ features, such as tree roots, loose dirt, rocky surfaces and steep grades, and ‘artificial’ obstacles such as log piles, banked ‘berms’, rock gardens, gap jumps, and wall rides (Gibbs & Holloway, 2018). To cope with the demands of these trails, mountain bikes feature components such as (front and rear) suspension, large knobby tyres, durable wheels/spokes, disc brakes, dropper seat posts, and lower gear ratios. Recently, the capabilities of mountain bikes have also been extended via electronic motors and data tracking devices which, though controversial, can increase the accessibility of outdoor spaces, allowing riders to cycle greater distances whilst providing opportunities for a larger range of people to enjoy the physical and mental health benefits of the activity (Cherrington & Black, 2023). Since the 1970s, mountain biking has steadily risen in popularity. In the United States, there are now approximately 9 million riders (Statista, 2022), and in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, it is estimated that 5% (UK) and 7.7% (NZ) of the population regularly cycle off-road (Sport England, 2023; Bayne et al., 2022). Furthermore, approximately 47,670 mountain bikes are now being sold around the world each day, which, when combined with tourism, media coverage, and organised competitions, contributes an estimated USD 7 billion to the global economy every year (Buning & Lamont, 2021). Unsurprisingly, this has led to a discernible growth in attempts to stimulate mountain bike tourism through the development of mountain bike trails and parks in countries such as Canada, New Zealand, France, and Scotland (Buning & Lamont, 2021). In accounting for this growth, many commentators have pointed to the unique appeal of mountain bike culture in 21st-century societies. In contrast to road cycling, which is seen as ‘both a product and constituent of capitalist

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361626-1

2  Jim Cherrington

modernity and hence embodies many of the archetypical disciplining constraints of modern sport’ (Falcous, 2017, p. 242), mountain bikers often align with a particular set of subcultural values (see McCormack 2017; McEwan et al., 2018) that allow participants to express a disenchantment with behavioural discipline, bodily conformity, and (highly regulated) indoor activities. Thus, mountain biking is conceptualised as being relatively informal (see Chapter 9); emphasising grassroots over professional participation (see Chapters 8, 9, and 14); incorporating the consumption of new objects and technologies (see Chapters 3 and 7); promoting aesthetic and artistic elements over those relating to outcomes or utility (see Chapter 1); performed by individuals rather than teams (see Chapter 2); valuing risky behaviours (see Chapters 4 and 5); and most often taking place in outdoor spaces (see Chapters 6, 8, and 10). Such typologies are helpful in identifying a particular ‘structure of feeling’ (Williams, 1977) that is performed, experienced, and habitually understood by individual mountain bikers. Yet, as Wheaton (2004) points out, it is problematic to assume that a relationship of difference exists between subculture and mainstream culture and that all members of a subculture subscribe to a singular identity (see Chapters 11–13). Indeed, though subcultural affiliations may be a helpful predicate for understanding people’s attachment to mountain biking, this focus can also obscure important differences in motivation, positioning, and orientation within, and between different types of mountain biker. This caveat is important in developing an understanding of culture, according to Williams (1977, p. 121), since: The complexity of a culture is to be found not only in its variable processes and their social definitions – traditions, institutions, and formations – but also in the dynamic interrelations, at every point in the process, of historically varied and variable elements. A structure of feeling in activities such as mountain biking is ‘always more than a handling of fixed forms and units’ (Williams, 1977, p. 130). There is frequent tension between the received interpretation (i.e., the ideologies of rationalised ‘sport’) and practical experience (i.e., riding mountain bikes and participating in mountain bike culture), and this tension is the symptom of an experiential form which can often be difficult to verbally articulate. Riding a mountain bike and participating in mountain bike culture can induce a feeling of togetherness, mutual belonging, and collective habitus, but it can also distance individuals from those practices that do not reflect their own world view. Thus, while it is tempting to imagine an overarching subculture, contemporary mountain bike cultures might be more appropriately characterised as consisting of disparate small groups of participants, or ‘idiocultures’ (McCormack, 2017, p. 346), each with their own set of motivations, goals, and identities.

Introduction 3

Rinehart’s (2000) adaptation of William’s (1977) categorisations of dominant, residual, and emergent cultures is prescient here, as it illustrates how more than one single structure of feeling can co-exist in the same social space, whilst at the same time allowing for overlap between attitudes, and different levels of the same sport. For example, as its popularity has increased, mountain biking has been transformed from an informal pastime to a highly specific organisation governed by unique rules, institutions, and formal codes of practice. It has its own recognised governing body (UCI), a dedicated world cup and world championship competition, and is now, somewhat controversially, included in the proceedings of the modern Olympiad (Savre et al., 2009). Despite its supposed counter-cultural leanings, such developments could be said to represent the dominant (or ‘mainstream’) aspects of mountain biking, as they reflect a general move towards the codification, rationalisation, and commercialisation of physical activity in the 21st-century sportscape. Yet despite, or perhaps, because of this sportisation process (Elias, 1971), mountain biking has at the same time witnessed a diversification of styles that reflects developments in attitudes and available technologies (McEwan et al., 2018). Many of these styles, such as those associated with cross country, downhill, or enduro riding, contain ‘residual’ cultural affiliations which, to quote William’s (1977: 122), ‘have been effectively formed in the past’ (i.e., the enclosure of space, colonialism, idealised notions of a reified ‘Nature’), but are ‘still active in the cultural process, not only and often not at all as an element of the past, but as an effective element of the present’ (ibid, p. 122). This has led mountain bikers to develop different orientations towards certain geopolitical considerations, including the relevance of purpose-build trail centres (Gibbs & Holloway, 2018), adherence to land-access laws (Brown, 2015), the safety of other land-users (Chiu & Kriwoken, 2003), acknowledgement of Indigeneity and recreational colonialism (Reid-Hresko & Warren, 2022), and the protection/maintenance of the ‘natural’ environment (Cherrington, 2021). Residual mountain bike cultures are thus retroactively constituted through an amalgam of past and present practices, whereby the associations between mountain biking and other socio-cultural formations are constituted by tense, antagonistic, and ambivalent relationships with particular people, objects, and events (Black, 2021). Here, Brown (2014) highlights the manifold ways in which respective mountain biking disciplines, from cross-country and bikepacking, to enduro and downhill, subscribe (or not) to the ideological significance of ‘the mountain’. In unpacking these residual understandings, she finds a wide continuum of associations that are more are less wedded to the rubric of isolation, selfsufficiency, and an appreciation of ‘nature’. For instance, whilst a professional enduro or downhill rider may have a more techno-centric interpretation of nature and the wilderness due to the assistance they receive from support staff, mechanics, and chairlifts, a bike-packer is likely to have a more romantic and

4  Jim Cherrington

idealised orientation, which privileges reified notions of solitude, nature exposure, and adventure. Equally, the challenge of negotiating steep, ‘natural’ terrain at high altitudes will be different between e-mountain bikers and non-e-mountain bikers, since the former provide the opportunity to ride further and to gain motorised assistance on technical uphills (Ingram-Sills et al., 2023). Mountain bike cultures thus involve both universal and particular dimensions, that is, they have a concrete universality (Zizek, 1999). This concrete universality is critical in locating mountain biking’s emergent cultural potentialities, as it offers scholars the tools to examine the manifold ways in which identities, bodies, ecologies, and social struggles are made and re-made through a process of local and global differentiation. In recognising this, contributors to this collection have been able to render an account of specific mountain biking identities, without reducing the broader, mountain bike community to a neutral empty container enveloping all particularities (Mueller, 2023). One of the great appeals of mountain bike culture is that it affords opportunities to differentiate oneself from the collective, whilst at the same time composing an orientation towards dominant rituals and behaviours that offer opportunities for personal and social change, and it is against this conceptual backdrop that the contributions herein have been gathered. Cultural politics and the (trans)individuation of mountain bikers As an activity which is dominated by residual and emergent forms of culture, the practice of mountain biking brings riders into routine conflict with ideological expressions of identity, embodiment, and the environment, and this comprises a critical part of mountain biking’s historical development. Here, Chiu and Kriwoken (2003) point to both the physical impact of mountain bike technology, including the compaction of soils under the weight of the wheels, the erosion of soils caused by heavy braking and skidding, the damage inflicted upon ‘natural’ habitats when riders detour from sanctioned trails, and the social implications relating to safety concerns and the disruption of other users’ experiences. In the case of the latter, objections to mountain biking range from the noise made by the bicycle (or the e-bike motor) to behavioural considerations such as riding in large groups, irresponsible or dangerous riding, and clothing choice (Brown, 2015). Resultantly, mountain bikers have been negatively positioned as the archetypal ‘outdoor anti-citizen’ signifying ‘all that is feckless and reckless in a countryside that is primed for quiet enjoyment’ (Pothecary et al., 2013, p. 13). In response to this, academics, practitioners, and activists have accused geologists, geographers, and the media of ignoring the cultural contexts in which these conflicts take place and have instead sought to (re) emphasise the significance of resource settings, power relations or property rights (Church & Ravenscroft, 2011). Here, an opposing body of research indicates that

Introduction 5

mountain bikers are frequently motivated by an appreciation of nature and the environment, and in many cases demonstrate the same care for habitats, landscapes, and environments as other users (see Chapters 8–10). In a study by Cherrington (2022), for instance, mountain bike trail building is shown to illicit important bonds with other objects and life forms, engendering new and emerging kinds of (onto)political subjectivity. Elsewhere, Cherrington and Black (2020) have also illustrated how a corporeal and symbolic attachment to dirt allows mountain bike trail builders to rescue soil from the functional connotations that it has been imbued with in modern, agricultural societies, replacing these with an attitude of urgency and care. Thus, whilst erosion and habitat damage remain important considerations for landowners and regulatory bodies, many of the conflicts between mountain bikers and other communities are underpinned by misconceptions regarding participants’ attitudes and beliefs (Campbell et al., 2021). Instead of seeing these inter-group conflicts as a hindrance to the progress of mountain biking, it is my belief that important lessons can be gleaned by following these processes and the trouble they entail. Like other outdoor activities, mountain biking is necessarily a relational activity involving both retention, the process of (local, embodied, subjective) exchange in which humans position themselves in relation to a collective consciousness, and protention, the process that allows participants in a specific culture to co-evolve by projecting their desires (for relationships with other humans, non-humans, and landscapes), onto a collective, but unknowable future (Cherrington, 2022). Appreciating the interactions between identities, objects, landscapes, and technologies without presupposing essentialist boundaries between activities such as mountain biking, rambling, horse-riding, and kayaking therefore presents an important opportunity for contributors to this collection, as it is from within associations that we can position the complex and shifting terrain of contemporary (lifestyle) sports. When approached in this way, the tensions and conflicts relating to mountain bike culture serve to highlight some of the most important planetary issues of our catastrophic times, including habitat disruption (Mitterwaller et al., 2021), climate change (POW, 2022), colonialism (Reid-Hresko and Warren 2022), the ecological, social, political and cultural impacts of tourism (Buning and Lamont, 2021), land enclosure (Cherrington, 2021), social inequalities (Huybers-Withers & Livingston, 2010), the commodification of sport (Rosen, 1993), the ethics of risk and responsibility (Pocecco et al., 2022), and the technologisation and datafication of outdoor spaces (Cherrington & Black, 2023; McCormack, 2018). In this sense, it is important that mountain bikers recognise and take responsibility for both the negative and positive aspects of their culture. Like all forms of outdoor leisure, mountain biking practices can be entropic (Stiegler, 2018), in the sense that they are harmful (i.e., to surfaces and animal/plant life), present-centred (i.e., chasing faster Strava times), and anti-social (ignoring needs of other land users). Yet, they

6  Jim Cherrington

also contain negentropic potential, inspiring public debate regarding moral virtue and public good, and these negentropic qualities facilitate more caring and responsible attachments to people, objects, and environments. In these moments of social, ecological, and political turmoil within and between different user groups, Morlat et al. (2021) highlight the importance of multiplying, rather than universalising these different (and differing) forms of knowledge, and it is this aspect of mountain bike culture which this collection seeks to emphasise. For as long as the contentions surrounding bikes, trails, bodies, and behaviours remain matters of concern, there exists the possibility that alternative socio-cultural, socio-techno-social, and onto-political relationships and understandings may emerge which empower the mountain bike community, whilst encouraging more inclusive and cooperative attitudes towards outdoor leisure (see Chapter 14). In sharing their (albeit opposing) views, different users of outdoor spaces can therefore: …collectively and intergenerationally connect together: they co-individuate and transindividuate by transmitting knowledge and develop singular capabilities through which they participate in the transformation of knowledge itself by causing it to bifurcate in new directions. These improbable bifurcations (which cannot be generated through performing calculations) come to enrich reality in a way that is not reducible to simple algorithms… producing diversification of behaviours and practices, and by transforming rules and institutions. (Morlat et al., 2021: 98) Presently, these positive, transindividuating exchanges are apparent in debates around e-mountain bike technology (see Chapter 2), which appears to offer unprecedented levels of freedom, whilst antagonising ideological notions of ‘nature’; challenging commonplace notions of what it means to move, and to leisure in the countryside (Mitterwaller et al., 2021). It is also manifest in concerns regarding ‘off-piste’ or unsanctionned mountain bike routes (see Chapters 6, 8, and 9) which are attractive to those riders who prefer wild, natural trails (Campbell et al., 2021). While these trails are no doubt contentious, it is from within these contentions, and subsequent attempts to find diplomatic solutions, that individuals and various interest groups can voice their respective concerns whilst, among other things, actively contesting the capitalist, neoliberal project of enclosure (Cherrington, 2021). Over the past five decades, mountain bike advocacy groups and various political organisations have been instrumental in mediating these different concerns whilst further legitimising mountain bikers’ participation in shared, outdoor spaces (Evju et al., 2020). For example, since the sport’s inception in the 1970s, the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) has worked tirelessly with national land managers in North America and Europe to grow the sport whilst recognising key management issues such as those

Introduction 7

relating to the design and implementation of sustainable trails. One outcome of this process has been the development of a set of guidelines relating to the protection of wildlife and the sustainability of future trail design, which has been driven by contemporary concerns relating to climate change and the loss of biodiversity. At the local and regional level, these frameworks and guidelines have been scrutinised by community groups and interest forums such as ‘Peak District MTB’ (UK), ‘Cape Mountain Bikers’ (Australia), and ‘California Mountain Bike Coalition’ (USA), who have built strong relationships with public and private land managers whilst managing any potential conflicts that may occur on a day-to-day basis. Yet, in its zeal to obtain better access rights and grow grassroots participation, mountain bike advocacy has failed to provide sufficient justification for why participants should be included in these spaces (Cherrington & Black, 2022a). This is reflected in the relative absence of critical, sociologically informed literature on this topic, as well as the lack of common understanding that is frequently reported between mountain bike policymakers and practitioners (Campbell & Kirkwood, 2020). It is also evident in many of the improvised, uncoordinated, and knee-jerk responses to contemporary trends and invitations, such as electric-assist technology, mountain bike tourism, wild trails, and unsanctioned trail building, in which mountain bike agencies and land managers are having to play ‘catchup with what’s happening on the ground, resulting in gaps between policies, facilities, and use of sites which can in turn contribute to conflict’ (Pickering & Leung, 2016, p. iv). Thus, it is my contention that contemporary mountain bike advocacy, such as that which is evidenced in community groups, (social) media, and national governance, is frequently marred by an ‘anti-theoretical edge’ (Zizek, 2008, p. 14) in which acting is prioritised over thinking. In the section that follows, I outline how this collection will address this deficit. Structure of the book: The identities, bodies, ecologies, and politics of contemporary mountain bike cultures In light of these criticisms, an important and ongoing challenge for the management and governance of mountain biking is how to assuage the concerns of different (local, regional, and national) user groups and landowners, whilst at the same time analysing, understanding, and (re) emphasising the conflicting embodied, spatial and geo-political conditions that furnish our relationship with the outdoors (Zajc & Berzelak, 2016). These concerns are set against the increasingly complex and volatile geo-political landscape in which there are a growing number of opportunities for people to be involved in myriad forms of outdoor and adventure tourism, but less and less spaces in which to pursue them (Cherrington, 2021). Consequently, mountain bikers are now subject to greater scrutiny; forced to weigh their own self-interests (and object relations) against a range of other user groups. Under these circumstances, it

8  Jim Cherrington

is more important than ever that any measures taken against, or in favour of, mountain biking in particular areas be subject to in-depth consultation with local stakeholders, and the long-term monitoring of attitudes and behaviours (Kleiner et al., 2022). Presently, this monitoring process is dominated by a ‘logic’ model of evaluation (Jeanes & Lindsey, 2014: 20) which uses quantitative data and ‘scientific’ methods to establish the legitimacy of mountain bike activity at the expense of understanding the experiences that occur ‘on the ground’. For example, research has focussed on the physiological composition of riders and riding styles in disciplines such as downhill and enduro (Kirkwood et al., 2019), the ecological consequences of mountain biking, in terms of landscape erosion and habitat destruction (Mitterwaller et al., 2021), and the economic benefits of mountain biking, such as those accrued through tourism, and local and provincial government agencies (Buning & Lamont, 2021). Evidence from these studies has been used by (neoliberal) land managers and governing bodies looking to create information management tools and regulatory measures for mountain bikers, including, among other things, the prohibition of certain technologies, universal codes of practice, rider education programmes, and trail standardisation guidelines. However, whilst these studies have largely been conducted in good faith and can influence decisions related to funding and consultation, the emphasis in this existing body of literature has been on ‘proving’ that certain objective conditions (i.e., decreases in environmental disruption, less anti-social behaviour) have been met, and in the process, important nuances of mountain bike culture have been lost. It is this lack of critical and interpretative thinking that is the inspiration for this collection. In opposing definitive causes and prescriptive solutions, the chapters in this book demonstrate that much of the existing discourse around mountain biking stems from conservative ideologies that situate mountain biking as a threat to romantic and anthropocentric notions of ‘nature’, whilst implicitly (and often violently) regulating and promoting idealised forms of movement and behaviour (Flemsaeter et al., 2015). By contrast, the chapters in this collection draw upon theoretical insights and empirical evidence to expand our understanding of mountain biking, whilst critically probing those ideologies that undermine the legitimacy of our culture. Via a range of international case studies written by an interdisciplinary team of researchers, artists, and (Indigenous) community members with backgrounds in geography, sociology, media studies, public policy, sport coaching and psychology, the mountain bike is positioned as a pharmacological object (Stiegler, 2013) that, whilst vehemently contested, can facilitate practices of care, attention, and activism within specific social, cultural and political systems. To do this, the chapters have been thematised according to the most culturally prescient, but politically contentious, issues in contemporary mountain bike cultures. Presented according to the order in which they will appear

Introduction 9

in the collection, these themes are listed as follows: (1) Mountain Biking Identities; (2) Mountain Biking Bodies; (3) Mountain Biking Environments; and (4) The Cultural Politics of Mountain Biking. In adopting this structure, the collection facilitates innovative readings of orthodox philosophical concepts such as identity, nature, sustainability, and inclusivity, whilst moving seamlessly, and interchangeably, between the different landscapes and contexts of mountain biking; the affective qualities of bikes and (experience) landscapes (i.e., dirt, mountains, bikes, components); and the conceptual, philosophical, and political contours of these analyses. Within each chapter of work, authors have attempted to stretch the reader’s understanding of each issue whilst critically unpacking, and imaginatively applying, their respective foci. In Part I, which has been titled, ‘Mountain Biking Identities’, chapters map the identities of mountain bikers across a range of contexts, roles, and technologies, and include the voices of coaches, e-mountain bikers, and traditional push bike riders. Though the contributions are diverse in their orientation, they have the same point of departure; they all acknowledge that ‘behavioural and motivational homogeneity within these types of populations should not be assumed’ (Roberts et al., 2018, p. 2) and that the various modes of participation in mountain biking appear to belong to several points along the subcultural continuum. In Chapter 1, Thomas Leeder and Lee Beaumont address these concerns in relation to the emerging (sub) discipline of mountain bike coaching, asking how coaches individualise practice and instil rider confidence, whilst managing certain subcultural expectations surrounding informality, performativity, and creativity. In Chapter 2, Kieren McEwan, Neil Weston, and Paul Gorczynski seek to establish whether competitiveness, as a stable personality trait, varies according to values that particular riders hold. The final chapter in this section, written by Lesley Ingram-Sills, illuminates contentions surrounding the e-mountain bike. Having done this, she then asks what contributions the e-mountain bike could make in the promotion of greener forms of leisure and mobility. In Part II, ‘Mountain Biking Bodies’, chapters are oriented around what has been variously described as the affective (Hagen and Boyes, 2016), phenomenological (Christensen et al., 2015), or somatic (Brown, 2017) qualities of mountain bike culture. Together, authors seek to expose how riders’ sense of pleasure, risk, pain, and place are felt, experienced, and acted upon through peoples’ ‘micro-level affective experiences of their mountain biking bodies’ (Hagen & Boyes, 2016, p. 89). In so doing, each chapter examines how certain identities, symbolic meanings, and social expectations, are lived out, and at times counteracted, by mountain bikers in the moment-to-moment and immediate interactions between the bike, the body, and the lived environment. In Chapter 4, Mike Lloyd draws on action captured from helmet-mounted cameras to analyse the everyday interactions that underpin crashes and conflicts. Benjamin Moreland also explores the sensory experience of crashing in Chapter 5, illustrating how various social and cultural influences might

10  Jim Cherrington

mediate experiences and expressions of pain. In Chapter 6, David Gibbs and Lewis Holloway examine how such corporeal practices might furnish an emerging demand for ‘experience landscapes’, whereby riders encounter specific trails varies according to their fitness, confidence, equipment, and experience. Concomitantly, they identify a heterogeneity of experience and practice in relation to the notion of a ‘trail centre’, highlighting some important implications for the future of trail building and trail centre management. In Part III, ‘Mountain Biking Environments’, attention turns to the relationships between social, political, and economic factors and ecological conditions and changes, representing what could otherwise be conceived of as a political ecology of mountain biking. Contributions in this section unpack and problematise mountain biking’s often contentious engagements with ‘nature’ as a construct, a concept, and a material and spatial location. In Chapter 7, for example, Jacob Bustad and Oliver Rick examine how the assemblage of digital media, urban sport, and contemporary leisure practices come to bear on contemporary urban downhill MTB racing, specifically the Cerro Abajo races in Valparaiso, Chile. Moving away from a focus on the urban but maintaining a focus on human-material interactions in Chapter 8, Tom Campbell turns to trail building to highlight how a more holistic conceptualisation of sustainability may be emerging within mountain bike culture that goes beyond concerns regarding localised erosion and damage to flora and fauna. Similar issues are also covered in Chapter 9 where, through an analysis of online videos and ethnographic data, Liam Healy shows how DIY trail builders repair, and care for, post-capitalist spaces. Following this, Clare Nattress contemplates how we might live-with, and adapt to, air pollution in Chapter 10, combining reflections from a multi-day mountain bike trip and a creative art project to imagine a more hopeful, and socially just, planetary future. In Part IV, ‘The Cultural Politics of Mountain Biking’, contributions explore what Park (2020, unpaginated) has described as mountain biking’s ‘accessibility problem’. Whilst the culture of mountain biking attracts a multicultural body of participants, from increasingly diverse geographic settings, it remains the preserve of affluent Western white men (Bordelon & Ferreira, 2019). Chapters in this section therefore ask: What are minority participants’ experiences of belonging and exclusion in mountain biking? How are dominant sporting identities, practices, spaces, and forms of embodiment positioned reproduced, and challenged? And in what ways might mountain bike culture include participants from a range of different backgrounds, including the least privileged? In Chapter 11, Louise Bordelon extends existing work on gender via an investigation of how women are initiated into, progress through, and challenge certain aspects of mountain bike culture in Stellenbosch, South Africa. In a related context, Chapter 12, written by Benjamin Moreland, Alice Lemkes, Jenni Myers, and Jack Reed, and Chapter 13, by John Reid-Hresko and Jeff Warren help to illuminate how gendered and colonial ideologies are mapped onto outdoor leisure spaces via trail naming and mountain bike

Introduction 11

multimedia, respectively. In closing the collection in Chapter 14, Tavis Smith, Patrick Lucas, and Tom Eustache offer personal insights from The Indigenous Youth Mountain Bike Program (IYMBP), a non-profit society with the aim of bringing Indigenous and non-Indigenous community members together to build mountain bike trails and foster reconciliation in BC, Canada. Collectively, these chapters serve to illustrate the ‘uncanniness’ (Morton, 2016) of the mountain bike, rendering an experience that is both constitutive of, and distanciated from, the surfaces, materials, and cultures with which bikes and mountain bikers interact. Furthermore, they show how mountain bikes allow us to materially connect with various, localised, landscapes, whilst at the same time feeling like a global citizen (Latour, 2018). In a world that is increasingly characterised by political apathy and social indifference, it is difficult to overstate the importance of such attachments, and in this respect, I feel that this book has made a novel contribution. Tuning to the nuances of human/non-human assemblages in mountain bike cultures helps cyclists to meaningfully connect to a range of planetary considerations, via a range of objects and media, which range in scale from the local (i.e., building and naming trails, painful crashes, poor air quality) to the global (i.e., climate change, colonialism, inequality, digitalisation, and commercialisation), and to do this in a way that ‘matters’, both personally and politically. In this way, despite its contemptible position within the mainstream, it is my hope that the fragile and uncertain relationships between bikes, people, social practices, and cultures represented in this book can, at the very least, help riders, trail builders, policy makers, and everyone in between, to experiment with more equitable socio-technical, socio-political, and socio-natural arrangements, opening novel possibilities for future forms of sociality, leisure, and activism. References Bayne, K.M., Scott, M.B., & Yao, R.T. (2022). Getting flow: The place of production forests in the rise of mountain biking. Forests, 13(8). 1–24. Black, J. (2021). Retroactive causation and the temporal construction of news: contingency and necessity, content and form. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 22(1), 44–59. Bordelon, L., & Ferreira, S. (2019). Mountain biking is for (white, wealthy, middle-aged) men: The Cape Epic mountain bike race. Journal of Sport & Tourism, 23(1), 41–59. Brown, K. (2014). Spaces of play, spaces of responsibility: Creating dichotomous geographies of outdoor citizenship. Geoforum, 55, 22–32. Brown, K. (2015). Leave only footprints? How traces of movement shape the appropriation of space. Cultural Geographies, 22(4), 659–687. Brown, K. (2017). The haptic pleasures of ground-feel: The role of textured terrain in motivating regular exercise. Health and Place, 46, 307–314. Buning, R., & Lamont, M. (2021). Mountain bike tourism economic impacts: A critical analysis of academic and practitioner studies. Tourism Economics, 27(3), 500–509.

12  Jim Cherrington Campbell, T., & Kirkwood, L. (2020). Trail sector stakeholder & consumer survey (DIRTT Project Report). International Mountain Bike Association. Last viewed October 2022. Available at: https://www.imba-europe.org/sites/default/files/ Stakeholder%20and%20consumer%20report%20DIRTT%20Project%23.pdf Campbell, T., Kirkwood, L., McLean, G., Torsius, M., & Florida-James, G. (2021). Trail use, motivations, and environmental attitudes of 3780 European mountain bikers: What is sustainable? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(24), 1–15. Cherrington, J. (2021). The ontopolitics of mountain bike trail building: Addressing issues of access and conflict in the more-than-human English countryside. Somatechnics, 11(3), 322–339. Cherrington, J. (2022). Mountain biking in the (Neg)Anthropocene: Encountering, witnessing, and reorienting to the end of the ‘Natural’ world, in Cherrington, J., & Black, J. (Eds.), Sport and physical activity in catastrophic environments (pp. 129– 147). London: Routledge. Cherrington, J., & Black, J. (2020). Mountain bike trail building, ‘dirty’ work and a new terrestrial politics. World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research, 76(1), 39–61. Cherrington, J., & Black, J. (2023). The electric mountain bike as pharmakon: Examining the problems and possibilities of an emerging technology, Mobilities. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2023.2186800?src= Chiu, L., & Kriwoken, L. (2003). Managing recreational mountain biking in Wellington Park, Tasmania, Australia. Annals of Leisure Research, 6(4), 339–361. Christensen, W., Bicknell, K., McIlwain, D., & Sutton, J. (2015). The sense of agency and its role in strategic control for expert mountain bikers. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 2(3), 340–353. Church, A. & Ravenscroft, N. (2011). Politics, research and the natural environment: The lifeworlds of water-based sport and recreation in Wales. Leisure Studies, 30(4), 383–386. Elias, N. (1971). The genesis of sport as a sociological problem, in Dunning, E. (Ed.), Sociology of sport: A selection of readings (pp. 88–115). London: Frank Cass. Evju, M., Hedger, R., Nowell, M., Vistad, O.I., Hagen, D., Jokerud, M., Olsen, S.L., Selvaag, S.K., & Wold, L.C. (2020). Wear and suitability for trails used for cycling. A field study and a GIS model. Trondheim: Norwegian Institute for Natural History. Falcous, M. (2017). Why we ride: Road cyclists, meaning, and lifestyles, Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 41(3), 239–255. Gibbs, D., & Holloway, L. (2018). From experience economy to experience landscape: The example of UK trail centres, Area, 50(2), 248–255. Hagen, S., & Boyes, M. (2016). Affective ride experiences on mountain bike terrain. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 15, 89–98. Huddart, D., & Stott, T. (2019). Outdoor recreation: Environmental impacts and management. Palgrave: Switzerland. Huybers-Withers, S., & Livingston, L. (2010). Mountain biking is for men: Consumption practices and identity portrayed by a niche magazine. Sport in Society, 13(7/8), 1204–1222. Ingram-Sills, L., Campbell, T., Kirkwood, L., & Florida-James, G. (2023). The future directions and trends for off road e-bike use and impact in Great Britain. Manchester: British Cycling.

Introduction 13 Jeanes, R., & Lindsey, I. (2014). Where’s the ‘evidence’? Reflecting on monitoring and evaluation within sport-for-development, In Young, K., & Okada, R (Eds.), Sport, social development and peace (pp. 197–218). Bingley: Emerald. Kleiner, A., Wanja-Freuler, B., Arnberger, A., & Hunziker, M. (2022). Biking-hiking conflicts and their mitigation in urban recreation areas: Results of a quasi-experimental long-term evaluation in the Zurich Forest. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 40, 100563. Latour, B. (2018). Down to earth: Politics in the new climatic regime. Cambridge, UK: Polity. McCormack, K. (2017). Inclusion and identity in the mountain biking community: Can subcultural identity and inclusivity coexist? Sociology of Sport Journal, 34(4), 344–353. McCormack, K. (2018). Building community online and on the trail: communication, coordination, and trust among mountain bikers. Information, Communication & Society, 21(4), 564–577. McEwan, K., Weston, N., & Gorczynski, P. (2018). Differentiating identities within an extreme sport: A case study of mountain biking print advertisements. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1668. Mitterwaller, V., Steinbauerac, J., Besolda, A. Dreitz, M. Karl, N. Wachsmuth, V. Zugler, P., & Audorff, V. (2021). Electrically assisted mountain biking: Riding faster, higher, farther in natural mountain systems. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 36, 10. Morlat, C., Landau, O., Sentis, T., Cormerais, F., Alomert, A., & Krzykawski, M. (2021). Contributory economy, territorial capacitation processes and new accounting methods, in Stiegler, B. (Ed.), Bifurcate: There is no alternative (pp. 96–119). London: Open Humanities Press. Morton, T. (2016). Dark ecology: For a logic of future coexistence. New York: Columbia University Press. Mueller, J.C. (2023). Universality, Black Lives Matter, and the George Floyd Uprising, Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory [online first]. https://doi.org/10.1080/16009 10X.2023.2168717 Park, B. (2020). Race & Accessibility in the Mountain Bike Community. PinkBike, 7 June. Available at: https://www.pinkbike.com/news/race-and-accessibility-in-themountain-bike-community.html (Accessed: 14 March 2023). Pickering, C., & Leung, Y.F. (2016). Editorial for the special issue of the Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism on mountain biking. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 15, 3–4. Pocecco, E., Wafa, H., Burtscher, J., Paal, P., Plattner, P., Posch, M., & Rued, G. (2022). Mortality in recreational mountain-biking in the Austrian alps: A retrospective Study over 16 years. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19 (19), 1–13. Pothecary, F., Brown, K.M., & Banks, E.A. (2013). Mountain biking in Scotland. Understanding & resolving land-use conflict, Vol 1. James Hutton Institute. Available at: https://www.satinonline.org/Documents/64-MTB-Brief_MASTER_ONLINE.pdf POW. (2022). Hot trail summer: The impact of a warming climate on climbing and trail sports. Protect Our Winters. Available at: https://protectourwinters.org/hot-trailsummer-the-impact-of-a-warming-climate-on-climbing-and-trail-sports/ Reid-Hresko, J., & Warren, J. (2022). ‘A lot of what we ride is their land’: White settler Canadian white settler Canadian understandings of mountain biking, indigeneity, and recreational colonialism. Sociology of Sport Journal, 39 (1), 108–117.

14  Jim Cherrington Rinehart, R. (2000). Emerging arriving sport, in Coakley, J., & Dunning, E. (Eds.), Handbook of sports studies (pp. 504–519). London: Sage. Roberts, L., Jones, G., & Brooks, R. (2018). Why do you ride?: A characterization of mountain bikers, their engagement methods, and perceived links to mental health and well-being. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1–18. Rosen, P. (1993). The social construction of mountain bikes: Technology and postmodernity in the cycle industry. Social Studies of Science, 23(3), 479–513. Savre, F., Saint-Martin, J., & Terret, T. (2009). An odyssey fulfilled: The entry of mountain biking into the Olympic Games. Olympika XVIII, 121–136. Sport England. (2023). Active lives online: Adult data. Available at: https://activelives. sportengland.org/Result?queryId=89803 Statista. (2022). Number of participants in mountain/non-paved surface bicycling in the United States from 2011 to 2021 (in millions). Retrieved March 27, 2023, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/763737/mountain-non-paved-surface-bicyclingparticipants-us/ Stiegler, B. (2013). What makes life worth living: On pharmacology. Translated by D. Ross, London: Polity Press. Stiegler, B. (2018). The Neganthropocene. London: Open Humanities Press. Wheaton, B. (2004). Introduction: Mapping the lifestyle sport-scape, in Wheaton, B. (Ed.), Understanding lifestyle sport: Consumption, identity, and difference (pp. 1– 28). London: Routledge. Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and literature, London: Oxford University Press. Zajc, P., & Berzelak, N. (2016). Riding styles and characteristics of rides among Slovenian mountain bikers and management challenges. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 15, 10–19. Zizek, S. (1999). The ticklish subject. London: Verso. Zizek, S. (2008). Violence: Six sideways reflections. New York: Picador.

Part I

Mountain biking identities

Chapter 1

Exploring mountain bike coaches’ perceptions towards learning to coach through story completion Coaching happily ever after? Thomas M. Leeder and Lee C. Beaumont Conceptualising MTB as an action and lifestyle sport Mountain biking (MTB) has grown in popularity within the United Kingdom (UK) in recent years, owing to its increasing appeal among both youth and adult populations (Barry & Collins, 2023; Wheaton & Townsend, 2023). Recent figures from Sport England (2023) suggest that between November 2020 and 2021, 5% of the population participated in MTB at least twice, equating to roughly 2.3 million people. Furthermore, there are currently over 130 cycling clubs in the UK which offer organised MTB and off-road riding opportunities (Cycling UK, 2023). These clubs involve several stakeholders in predominantly voluntary capacities, including site managers, club chairpersons and committee members, trail builders, development officers, and coaches1 (King & Church, 2017). Within the literature, MTB has been conceptualised as both an action (Ellmer & Rynne, 2016) and lifestyle sport (King & Church, 2017). In contrast to traditional team sports, action and lifestyle sports are predominantly individualistic, possess limited regulation within informal settings, and often emphasise anti-competition values where participants ascribe to socio-cultural norms (Wheaton & Townsend, 2023). This increased popularity has corresponded with a growth in professionalisation, exemplified through the inclusion of MTB at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta and the introduction of surfing, sport climbing, and skateboarding at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo (Wheaton & Thorpe, 2022). Inclusion at mega events such as the Olympic Games has resulted in a funding shift and a structural change in the nature and culture of action and lifestyle sports, with money being directed to support athlete and coach development (Ellmer & Rynne, 2019; Ojala & Thorpe, 2015). The move towards professionalisation has led to an enhanced recognition on the importance of accredited and qualified coaches (Wheaton & Townsend, 2023), who have traditionally been absent within action and lifestyle sports. Athletes have typically relied upon informal, self-regulated, and peer-learning methods, including the use of digital technologies (Ellmer & Rynne, 2016, 2019; Ojala & Thorpe, 2015). However, the current trend towards the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361626-3

18  Thomas M. Leeder and Lee C. Beaumont

professionalisation and ‘sportisation’ of action and lifestyle sports has significant implications for coaching practice and coach development, arising from heightened organisational scrutiny and formalisation (Ellmer & Rynne, 2019; Wheaton & Townsend, 2023). This has not always been the case within action and lifestyle sports, where limited developmental pathways exist for coaches, and accreditation and qualifications are often overlooked due to the perceived triviality of the coaching role (Ellmer & Rynne, 2019; Wheaton & Townsend, 2023). Despite resistance from practitioners who believe such governance challenges the broader discourses and values inherent within these sporting cultures (Wheaton & Townsend, 2023), formalised learning opportunities for action and lifestyle sport coaches have increased. Opportunities include undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, accredited apprenticeships, or national governing body (NGB) coach education qualifications (Barry & Collins, 2023). Nonetheless, while research exploring athlete learning within action and lifestyle sports has increased (e.g., Ellmer & Rynne, 2016; Ojala & Thorpe, 2015), the process of learning to coach within these environments has been neglected. Surprisingly, while an increase in formal coach education provision has arisen due to the growing professionalisation of action and lifestyle sports (Wheaton & Townsend, 2023), our understanding of coaches’ perceptions and attitudes towards their development remains embryonic. Learning and coaching in MTB Within action and lifestyle sports such as MTB, athlete learning is individualistic and self-regulated while occurring in the absence of structured training overseen by a coach (Collins et al., 2022; Ellmer & Rynne, 2016; Wheaton & Townsend, 2023). Without dedicated coaches, athletes draw upon cognitive skills such as imagery and visualisation while appointing informal leaders within community groups to co-construct shared knowledge and practice (Collins et al., 2022). As such, athlete learning within action and lifestyle sports is highly networked, stressing the value attached to communal learning cultures which shape accepted values, norms, and practices (Wheaton & Townsend, 2023). The role of informal learning is common within MTB as its enactment is ‘strongly influenced by the community of users occurring both across and within individual locations’ (King & Church, 2017, p. 114). Within these localised learning cultures, MTB riders develop a ‘sport-space bond’ and value the opportunity to develop ownership through self-regulated communities of local riders (King & Church, 2017). Hence, participation in MTB is frequently symbolised by a resistance to governance and formalisation, which goes against the ‘normalised’ ways of participating in sport (King & Church, 2020). Commodified and structured environments, such as local clubs epitomised by safety rules, membership regulations, and accredited coaches, are less valued. Even within club environments, riders, rather than coaches, take on the responsibility of ‘upskilling

Exploring mountain bike coaches’ perceptions  19

new riders and (informally) training users in these informal codes of practice’ (King & Church, 2017, p. 115). Still, when exploring the learning of a high-performance MTB trials athlete in Australia, Ellmer and Rynne (2016) argued that in conjunction with self-experimentation, observation, and digital technologies, MTB coaches play a central role in facilitating the understanding of sport-specific technical knowledge. Indeed, MTB coaches can support athlete learning through pedagogical practices such as direct instruction, feedback, safety management, alongside delivering a prescribed curriculum (i.e., coaching specific riding techniques) in a progressive manner (Rokenes et al., 2015). Within the UK, British Cycling has recently revamped its coach education pathway to offer qualifications to meet the needs of MTB coaches working across the ability spectrum and within different domains (see Table 1.1). However, most MTB coaches are volunteers who juggle multiple roles within Table 1.1  B ritish Cycling’s MTB-specific coaching qualifications Coaching qualification

Content and target audience

Duration

Fundamentals of MTB Leadership

Entry-level qualification for anyone who wants to lead groups using mixed road and off-road environments. Designed for individuals working in centres that provide outdoor activities, enabling them to lead introductory-level mountain bike rides on limited pre-determined routes. Aimed at experienced riders wanting to use their experience to safely guide others on off-road terrain. Ideal for anyone working in the outdoor sector, volunteering at a club, or looking to start up their own lead MTB rides. For recognised Level 2 MTB Leaders enabling them to include remote terrain and trails of severe technical difficulty and navigation in challenging mountain conditions to their remit.

3–4 hours £205–275 eLearning, 16 hours training and assessment. 1 day Up to £695 (for eight leaders)

Level 1 MTB Leadership Award

Level 2 MTB Leadership Award

Level 3 MTB Leadership Award

Source: Adapted from British Cycling (2023).

Indicative cost

3 days (2 days training, 1 day assessment)

£357–520

5 days (3 days training, 2 days assessment)

£525–755

20  Thomas M. Leeder and Lee C. Beaumont

their local club environment (King & Church, 2017), meaning the accessibility of coach education qualifications is sometimes problematic (Gurgis et al., 2020). MTB coaches might prefer to engage with informal as opposed to formal learning mechanisms to support their development; however, their preferences and perceptions towards coach learning remain unknown. Consequently, the aim of this chapter is twofold: (1) to understand and explore MTB coaches’ perceptions towards learning to coach; and (2) to utilise story completion as a novel qualitative method within sport coaching research. Methodology What is story completion? As opposed to self-report qualitative data collection methods such as interviews, story completion (SC) provides participants with the opportunity to respond to story stems (i.e., the start of a hypothetical story), enabling access to meaning-making on a specific topic area (Clarke et al., 2019). While traditionally underpinned by a positivist epistemology, SC has developed as a qualitative method which can be used to indirectly explore participants’ perceptions, beliefs, and dominant assumptions towards social phenomena (Braun & Clarke, 2013; Clarke et al., 2019; Kitzinger & Powell, 1995). SC asks participants to respond to a story stem, often written in the third person with some ambiguity to encourage imagination while addressing a ‘what happens next’ scenario (Braun & Clarke, 2013; Smith, 2019). Therefore, because participants’ views, experiences, and perspectives are not being asked directly, SC can reveal a range of social meanings and personal assumptions (sometimes socially undesirable) towards a designated topic (Clarke et al., 2019). As Kitzinger and Powell (1995, p. 348) suggest, story stems allow participants to ‘ascribe their own motivations, feelings, and behaviours to other persons in the stimulus material, externalising their own anxieties, concerns and actions through fantasy responses’. A significant challenge with developing story stems is maintaining a balance between providing direction to ensure focus while offering enough vagueness to avoid pre-determined story endings and encourage participant expression and creativity (Braun & Clarke, 2013). SC research may utilise multiple story stems for comparative purposes through understanding difference, as opposed to measurement (Clarke et al., 2019). SC as a method is best suited to exploring individuals’ perceptions, rather than direct experiences, as the topic area or issue at hand is addressed indirectly (Braun & Clarke, 2013). Therefore, to understand and explore MTB coaches’ perceptions towards learning to coach, SC offers a novel and engaging method to access coaches’ constructions of learning within MTB, while avoiding the social demands associated with self-report methods (Clarke et al., 2019). However, despite the potential of SC to explore participants’ meanings and perceptions within their storied responses, it remains an underutilised qualitative method, especially within the sport coaching literature.

Exploring mountain bike coaches’ perceptions  21

Procedure, sampling, and participants Following institutional ethical approval, the SC task was developed using an online survey software (i.e., Microsoft Forms) to allow efficient distribution to potential participants. Our inclusion criteria centred on UK-based participants over the age of 18 who hold at least a Level 2 MTB Leadership Award, which ensured any participants would have previously engaged with formal MTB coaching qualifications delivered by British Cycling. To recruit participants, the link to the SC task was shared via social media platforms and emailed directly to relevant MTB groups to encourage further dissemination. Therefore, sampling was purposive as participants needed to be a qualified MTB coach in the UK and over the age of 18. However, the sampling process included convenience-based (i.e., whoever completed the SC task was recruited) and snowballing (i.e., participants sharing the survey within their MTB networks) strategies to enhance the response rate (Braun & Clarke, 2013). When accessing the SC link, participants were provided with several information pages which highlighted the research background, while outlining participant confidentiality. Having read this information, participants were able to provide their informed consent. Once consent was given, participants were able to complete a short survey focusing on their demographic information and coaching background. Following this, participants were provided with two-story stems before being asked to describe ‘what happens next’. While these stems were brief, it was hoped they would give enough detail while remaining ambiguous enough to avoid an obvious ending (Clarke et al., 2019). To try and ensure participant responses were of adequate length and depth for analysis, completion instructions were provided as demonstrated below alongside both story stems: This section contains the story completion task. Below are two ‘story stems’ i.e., the introduction of a hypothetical story. Please choose just one story stem to write a response to. Both story stems finish by asking ‘what happens next?’. Please put ‘N/A’ in response to the story stem you have chosen not to respond to. You are free to write whatever you like, and we encourage you to avoid overthinking, however, please spend at least 10–15 minutes responding to your chosen story stem. More depth and detail will enable us to understand your perspectives towards learning as a mountain bike coach. Story stem 1: John has been a mountain bike coach for roughly 7 years now, coaching on a regular basis with mixed-ability riders at his local riding club. To continue in his current coaching role, John has been told he needs to complete the next coaching qualification on the pathway. John feels frustrated as he has a significant amount of coaching experience and doesn’t know what to expect on the course. What happens next?

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Story stem 2: Sarah is a Level 3 qualified mountain bike coach and is currently working with advanced riders, helping them to prepare for national and international events. Over the past few weeks, Sarah has encountered some challenges within her coaching practice and is beginning to doubt her ability as a high-performance coach. Sarah wants to access further support but is unsure where to go and who to talk to. What happens next? Overall, 21 participants (18 males and 3 females) completed the SC task, resulting in 29 responses2 to the story stems (18 completed John’s story, 11 completed Sarah’s story), which took on average 22.5 minutes to complete. All participants identified as White British and were located across the United Kingdom (13 England, 5 Scotland, 3 Wales), with an average age of 50 years old. Most participants coached MTB riders aged 5–17 years (42%) within a participation coaching domain (48%), delivering on average three sessions a week. Most participants had been coaching MTB for almost nine years, with 69% holding a minimum Level 2 MTB Leadership Award coaching qualification from British Cycling. Analysing the story stems Analysing SC tasks can be difficult as the data represents storied responses rather than self-reported experiences, with the analysis process complicated further by the variable length and quality of story stem responses (Braun & Clarke, 2013). Nonetheless, an adapted version of thematic analysis is generally used to identify horizontal patterning (i.e., common themes across the entire data set or specific stems) or vertical patterning, which is sometimes described as story mapping (Braun & Clarke, 2013; Clarke et al., 2019). Within this research, a vertical patterning approach was adopted which identifies how specific themes within the stories develop, while retaining ‘a sense of the storied nature of the data’ (Clarke et al., 2019, p. 13). For example, vertical patterning identifies frequent story beginning, middle, and end components within participant responses, helping to ‘map’ how each story unfolds and the potential routes it could follow (Clarke et al., 2019). Braun and Clarke’s (2022) reflexive approach to thematic analysis was broadly followed, involving progression and regression through the six distinct phases of: familiarisation; coding; generating initial themes; reviewing and developing themes; refining, defining, and naming themes; and writing up. Initially, the lead author immersed themselves within the data through reading all story stem responses multiple times to identify tentative ideas and patterns (Braun & Clarke, 2022). Next, story stem responses were inductively coded in an unstructured and subjective manner, resulting in both latent and semantic codes which were clustered together to generate candidate themes, demonstrating vertical patterns of meaning as the stories developed (Braun & Clarke, 2022; Clarke et al., 2019). Tentative thematic ideas followed further

Exploring mountain bike coaches’ perceptions  23

analytical processes of refining, defining, and naming to capture participants’ perceptions, before the story maps were produced and writing up occurred (Braun & Clarke, 2022; Clarke et al., 2019). Findings: Analysing John’s story There were 18 responses to John’s story stem, averaging 90 words per response, ranging from 11 to 238 words in length. John’s stories generally began with feelings of vulnerability and frustration, where he questioned his coaching ability and desired clarity from his club regarding why he needs to enrol on the next formal coaching qualification. Following these initial feelings, John engaged in a period of consultation, where he endeavoured to obtain further information about the formal coaching qualification he has been told to complete. This process involved John talking to his fellow coaches within his local riding club, or alternatively accessing British Cycling’s website to understand the qualification’s content and structure. There were common themes within the beginning and middle sections of John’s story, however, through vertical patterning analysis three distinct story endings became apparent. While frequency counts contradict the paradigmatic assumptions of qualitative research, they are often used when analysing SC data and can support the process of identifying patterns as stories unfold (Clarke et al., 2019). Accordingly, when analysing the 18 responses to John’s story, three endings were identified: (1) Giving up coaching and seeking alternative routes; (2) Indecision and desiring further information; and (3) Enhanced knowledge and practice through qualification completion. These story endings are discussed below and illustrated with example extracts from participants’ responses and a story map (see Figure 1.1). Story ending 1:

Story middle 1: Despite his research, John feels frustrated and is still unsure as to why he needs to complete the next coaching qualification.

Story beginning: John feels confused and vulnerable. He researches what the next coaching qualification entails through looking online and talking to other coaches.

John does not complete the course, believing he will waste his time and money. John stops coaching or seeks alternative development routes.

Story ending 2: John still remains undecided about whether to pursue the next qualification, requiring further research and consultation with other coaches.

Story middle 2:

Story ending 3:

While retaining some nerves, John understands the importance of professional development as a coach and wants to further his coaching career and knowledge.

John completes the coach education qualification, valuing the opportunity to share ideas with others and develop new coaching knowledge.

Figure 1.1 John’s story map through vertical patterning.

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Story ending 1: Giving up coaching and seeking alternative routes Story endings related to this theme were identified in five out of the 18 responses to John’s story stem. This theme is reflective of a ‘negative’ story ending, where John does not complete the coach education qualification proposed by the club due to his perception that this will be a waste of time and money, instead opting for alternative qualifications beyond those offered by British Cycling: John will look at coaching opportunities on the British Cycling website and find that the only ones available are in Scotland or in the Southwest. He is worried that if he attends the course he will be in a situation where he knows more of the coaching MTB reality than the coaches delivering the course and so is worried, he will end up wasting his time and money. He decides to look into Mountain bike leadership to get a broader experience and input. (Participant 8) In building upon Participant 8’s story, the notion of seeking alternative pathways or organisations to obtain coaching qualifications was echoed by Participant 15. Within this story, John is presented with two options: either complete the British Cycling or alternative qualification and continue coaching, or give up altogether: He becomes frustrated with the situation and feels that needing to complete the next step is unnecessary. He investigates alternative pathways/organisations for coaching qualifications. He either completes the course successfully and continues in his present position, finds an alternative route and continues or is unsuccessful and gives up coaching in his local club. (Participant 15) Furthermore, this story ending is captured by John’s frustration and resentment towards British Cycling, where the push to complete additional qualifications within the coaching pathway is driven by the NGB, rather than John’s personal desire. John gives up coaching as he does not have the time and is not interested in additional qualifications given that his current qualifications and experience are more than sufficient. (Participant 12) John carries on until those that tell him he needs to complete the next stage remove him or he gives up. The continual drive to upgrade is driven by the NGBs and not by the coaches. John will engage with the next level if he wants, when he wants. (Participant 14)

Exploring mountain bike coaches’ perceptions  25

This story ending paints a somewhat sobering picture for British Cycling, where John as a relatively experienced MTB coach would rather give up coaching altogether or source alternate provision, than engage in the formal qualification pathway delivered by the NGB. Story ending 2: Indecision and desiring further information This theme encapsulates the most frequent story ending, which was identified in seven out of the 18 responses to John’s story stem. The story ending is slightly ambiguous, with John yet to decide whether to enrol on the coach education qualification or not. Instead, the responses to this story stem offered a balanced perspective, highlighting some of the decisions and factors John needs to reflect upon: As it always does, it depends. With a closed mindset John may stagnate and remain ‘where he feels he is’ for the foreseeable. Lots of experience doing the same thing repeatedly year after year is not the same as a diverse coaching career in a range of fields. Perhaps contacting organisers of the course or the person who said he needed to do it could explain more details. For example, the course may contain safeguarding content that needs updating. Perhaps he’ll have the opportunity to gain new ideas from the content delivered, share resolutions to common problems with other coaches both junior/senior to his current role. Final point would be that John should feel committed to moving to the next coaching level and not just a ‘hoop jumping’ exercise. The courses can be a big commitment of time and resources to complete successfully. (Participant 11) A conversation with a trusted friend to discuss if he needs more experience/qualifications to progress and a discussion on what next step is the best fit for him. Once next course is clear try to link John up with either a course tutor or someone who has done the course very recently. Also, a discussion on why the club thinks he needs to be more qualified to continue as he is… this doesn’t add up and there is something missing… why is he not good enough to continue now? Is he deficient or has the club moved the goalposts? (and why?). (Participant 16) These stories demonstrate an element of indecision where John is still contemplating the possible benefits of enrolling on the qualification, while being cognisant of the reasons why his MTB club is making this request. Therefore, these stories do not end in a definitive manner and reiterate John’s attempts to obtain further information.

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John discusses his concerns about the next step on the coaching pathway with the other coaches in the club. He asks them how they got on with the course and why they believe he should go down that path. (Participant 19) John researches what’s involved in gaining this qualification. Despite his misgivings he must decide whether he is prepared to obtain this qualification to continue or resign and look for other options. He also needs to be open to further learning opportunities and accept that he may learn something new. (Participant 20)

Story ending 3: Enhanced knowledge and practice through qualification completion This theme was identified in five out of the 18 responses to John’s story stem, representing a ‘positive’ story ending where John completes the coach education qualification and values the opportunity to network, share ideas, and develop new perspectives. These story endings acknowledge John’s frustration at being asked to enrol on the next qualification, but emphasise the importance of professional development as an MTB coach: While it is understandable to feel frustrated at the level of experience, I feel there is always something to be gained from further education, even if it’s confirming what you already know. MTB is a field where explanation of technique is important and seeing/watching other coaches deliver will always be a learning opportunity… it is an opportunity for John to share his knowledge with newer coaches. But in short, there is so much to be learnt through watching a range of new and experienced coaches coach, good and bad. We don’t get better in a vacuum. (Participant 4) John would begin to question if he is a good coach even though he has many years of experience. However, as a coach, he realises that personal development is a part of the process. From his client first perspective, he thinks that his riders deserve the best version of himself as a coach, and he agrees to continue to the next coaching pathway. As he does not know what to expect from the course, he seeks help from a friend/colleague that has already completed the course. They tell him that it is difficult, but they learned many new ways of coaching from a new perspective. They also found new ways to develop their own mountain biking when participating in other coaches’ sessions who attended the course. This makes John feel excited to attend a new course with the opportunity to look at coaching in a new, fresh light. (Participant 7)

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As opposed to feeling pressured by British Cycling to enrol on the next coaching qualification for bureaucratic reasons, John feels enthused about the potential benefits of this formal learning opportunity. Additional story endings within this theme provide a clear rationale as to why the club asked John to enrol on the qualification, highlighting the holistic benefits beyond John’s personal development. John talks to the club to find out why they need him to take the next qualification. The club tells him that a L2 MTB specific qualification will enable him to coach on more technical terrain, and coach more advanced riders. The L3 qualification will enable him to move into prescribing physical training. They also point out that it will enhance his knowledge as a coach and make him more highly respected as a coach by riders, parents, and other coaches. Also, he may be able to mentor, or help nurture more junior coaches within the club. If John wants to further his career as a coach, he will be encouraged by this information and understand that it would be in everyone’s interest if he up-qualified… John talks to other coaches who have done the course, to find out about their experiences, and talks to BC Coaching to find out up to date details of the course. John finds a suitable course date and venue via the BC website, talks to the club, and gets it organised. (Participant 10) The story above demonstrates that through clear dialogue between coach and club, the holistic value of formal coaching qualifications can be explained, moving beyond the perception that they serve only an administrative role. Findings: Analysing Sarah’s story There were 11 responses to Sarah’s story stem, which were shorter in length when compared to John’s, averaging 59 words with a range of 8 to 221. The responses to Sarah’s story stem started with Sarah engaging in a period of reflection to understand and identify who and where she could access support. However, through the process of vertical patterning analysis, Sarah’s story unfolded in two distinct ways, highlighting two primary support mechanisms: (1) formal support through British Cycling; and (2) the importance of knowledge exchange and informal networks. Once again, these story endings are highlighted below, accompanied by example extracts from participants’ responses and a story map (see Figure 1.2). Story ending 1: Formal support through British Cycling Sarah formally contacting British Cycling occurred in 6 of the 11 story stem responses. These stories represent a positive ending, where ultimately Sarah

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Story beginning: After an initial process of reflecting on her coaching struggles, Sarah believes she has two primary options: Reach out to her informal coaching network or formally contact British Cycling.

Story middle 1:

Story ending 2:

Sarah contacts British Cycling to discuss further formal learning and development opportunities that might be available to her as a high-performance coach.

The story ends with Sarah contacting British Cycling, who outline further formal courses and mentoring opportunities she can engage with.

Story middle 2:

Story ending 2:

Sarah decides to engage with informal learning opportunities through social media, her club, or other MTB coaches within her network.

The story ends with Sarah accessing her informal networks and organising observations, discussions, and idea sharing with other MTB coaches.

Figure 1.2 Sarah’s story map through vertical patterning.

accessed formalised support to help with her current coaching challenges. Specifically, these stories ended with Sarah connecting with other high-performance MTB coaches through British Cycling’s facilitation, enabling her to receive feedback and share ideas, or access further training: Sarah contacts the British Cycling coaching team to discuss options for additional training. She would love it if a more experience performance coach was able to give her 1-2-1 feedback after attending one of her sessions. (Participant 12) Sarah needs to contact British Cycling and speak to someone about coaching. Sarah could also look on British Cycling at coaches in her area and find another coach to chat through her thoughts. (Participant 13) Some stories emphasised how more specific formalised mentoring opportunities are available for high-performance coaches in Sarah’s position. This mentoring support is available beyond coach education qualifications, with Sarah being provided the chance to observe and shadow experienced coaches. Another coach contact suggests she should contact her NGB (British, Scottish or Welsh Cycling) to see if the regional manager can assist with some additional support and development. The manager suggests some of the talent pathways and explains about the scholarships available through British Cycling where she will receive mentorship and additional opportunities to attend pathway programmes to shadow, coach and observe other coaches. Sarah looks at this on the website and decides to apply to the scheme when the applications open later that year. (Participant 3)

Exploring mountain bike coaches’ perceptions  29

When Sarah studied for her Level 3 mountain bike coaching certificate, she was allocated a mentor, that mentorship is offered beyond the initial training and examination. Keeping the door open for further help and advice is a key component of the British Cycling training and mentorship programme. (Participant 21) These stories demonstrate that to some extent the responsibility for facilitating formal mentoring opportunities comes from British Cycling. Hence, for Sarah the NGB should still be considered the first formal point of contact to access coach development support. Story ending 2: The importance of knowledge exchange and informal networks This theme captures the second story ending and was identified in 5 out of the 18 responses to Sarah’s story stem. Rather than suggesting British Cycling holds responsibility for facilitating formalised mentoring opportunities, these stories outline the value of informal support networks. As opposed to contacting British Cycling, Sarah reaches out to her coaching peers to discuss the issues she is confronting: …She should really consider working alongside other coaches from different levels to develop a network of people who she can talk to and join in with as exposure to what others are doing and helping them with their doubts and concerns is a fantastic way to begin to understand our own self-doubt, get feedback on our own practice and find pathways that can help, develop, and improve our coaching practice and development. (Participant 2) Sarah contacts other coaches she knows to discuss the challenges she has had; she knows several coaches who she has worked with and think they can help her. She arranges to meet them and discuss the challenges she has had. One coach she speaks to… who is local to her agrees to come along and observe her session. Sarah and this coach decide to discuss the observation immediately after the session. Sarah finds this beneficial being able to discuss other ways to approach the challenges but also highlighting some of their strengths in the sessions. Sarah agrees to working more closely with this other coach and offers to observe their sessions. (Participant 3) Rather than formalised mentorship overseen by British Cycling, within these stories Sarah engages with informal mentoring, reaching out to ‘critical

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friends’ for advice and guidance to support her practice. In some instances, Sarah reflected on tangible outcomes related to her riders’ goals, before consulting her peers for help. In the first instance she could look at her rider’s progress to establish whether they are achieving their goals. This should go some way towards confirming whether she has good abilities as a coach. If this does not help, she could consult other coaches for moral support. (Participant 20) This story ending emphasises the importance of social networks and informal learning for MTB coaches, where development opportunities can be facilitated beyond the governance of an NGB. Discussion and concluding thoughts When reflecting on the responses to John and Sarah’s story stems, several connections can be made to the existing action and lifestyle sport literature. For example, accredited development pathways for coaches in action and lifestyle sports have traditionally been both absent and undervalued, resulting in individuals who classify themselves as coaches relying uncritically upon embodied knowledge derived from practitioner experience and informal sources (Ellmer & Rynne, 2016, 2019; Wheaton & Townsend, 2023). In the context of John’s story, formal coaching qualifications delivered by British Cycling faced resistance and were perceived to have a limited impact on coaching practice, existing primarily for bureaucratic and administrative purposes (Piggott, 2012). Moreover, Sarah’s stories highlighted how informal learning sources such as observations and discussions with other MTB coaches were sometimes prioritised ahead of formal learning opportunities when seeking advice on coaching issues. Indeed, athlete learning within action and lifestyle sports is conceptualised as being informal, self-regulated, and beyond organisational control (Ellmer & Rynne, 2019; Wheaton & Townsend, 2023); perhaps the same can be said of MTB coaches’ preferences and perceptions towards learning within these contexts. Specifically, whether occurring naturally or overseen by British Cycling, a persistent theme across both John and Sarah’s stories was the perceived importance of MTB coaches’ collaborating and working with others, potentially within a cognitive apprenticeship format (Barry & Collins, 2023). Cognitive apprenticeship is akin to mentoring, where coaches act as critical friends to one another through processes of observation, shadowing, and reflective discussions in situ (Barry & Collins, 2023). Therefore, whether formalised by British Cycling or not, cognitive apprenticeship opportunities will help to produce contextualised learning for MTB coaches and help build networks of communal support (Barry & Collins, 2023). Nevertheless, while

Exploring mountain bike coaches’ perceptions  31

appreciating coach learning is idiosyncratic and assumptions towards professional development will always vary, it would still appear that MTB coaches’ perceptions towards informal cognitive apprenticeship opportunities are more favourable when compared to formal provision delivered by British Cycling. To conclude, the aim of this chapter was twofold: (1) to understand and explore MTB coaches’ perceptions towards learning to coach; and (2) to utilise SC as a novel qualitative method within sport coaching research. MTB is characterised by informal and self-regulated community learning, yet in recent years it has been the subject of increased governance from British Cycling regarding coach development accreditation. Hence, the analysis of the story stem responses suggests that while opportunities for formalised coaching qualifications have increased, MTB coaches’ perceptions towards these remain sceptical. Nonetheless, some MTB coaches’ perceptions towards formal coaching qualifications were positive and seem to provide an opportunity to share knowledge and ideas, with British Cycling also possessing the capacity to organise and oversee formal mentoring opportunities. In contrast, the bureaucratic and audit-driven culture of coaching qualifications was condemned (Piggott, 2012), with MTB coaches attaching greater value to informal interactions within their social networks or alternative training routes (Cushion et al., 2010). While this chapter explores MTB coaches’ perceptions, it can be argued that the findings are generalisable across action and lifestyle sport contexts through the concept of transferability (Smith, 2018). Transferability refers to the extent to which research findings can be applied to other settings and is particularly pertinent through the process and practice of storytelling (Smith 2018). Indeed, while considered an innovative method for exploring individuals’ opinions towards a topic, SC has the potential to produce naturalistic generalisability with story stem responses resonating with readers’ personal thoughts and experiences (Smith, 2018). Thus, there is an argument for British Cycling and other NGBs to consider the advantages of using stories in one form or another within formal coach education provision to stimulate critical reflection on coaching practice (Douglas & Carless, 2008). In summary, this chapter has contributed to the growing literature base on action and lifestyle sports by exploring MTB coaches’ perceptions towards their learning and development, an area which has been largely neglected until now. Notes 1 While acknowledging that the terms instructor, leader, guide, and coach are often used interchangeably within MTB, for consistency we are using the term coach. 2 While instructing participants to respond to one story stem out of the two, some participants responded to both, resulting in the total of 29 responses from 21 participants.

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References Barry, M., & Collins, L. (2023). Learning the trade – Recognising the needs of aspiring adventure sports professionals. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 23 (2), 120–131. Advanced online publication. Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2013). Successful qualitative research: A practical guide for beginners. London: Sage. Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2022). Thematic analysis: A practical guide. London: Sage. British Cycling. (2023). British Mountain Bike Leadership Awards overview. Available at: https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/mtbleadership/article/20140226-mtb-leadershipMountain-Bike-Leadership-Awards-Overview-0 Clarke, V., Braun, V., Frith, H., & Moller, N. (2019). Editorial introduction to the special issue: Using story completion methods in qualitative research. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 16 (1), 1–20. Collins, R., Collins, D., & Carson, H.J. (2022). Show me, tell me: An investigation into learning processes within skateboarding as an informal coaching environment. Frontiers in Psychology, 13 (812068), 1–12. Cushion, C., Nelson, L., Armour, K., Lyle, J., Jones, R., Sandford, R., & O’Callaghan, C. (2010). Coach learning and development: A review of literature. Leeds: Sports Coach UK. Cycling UK. (2023). Find your local cycling group. Available at: https://www. cyclinguk.org/groups-listing Douglas, K., & Carless, D. (2008). Using stories in coach education. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 3 (1), 33–49. Ellmer, E. & Rynne, S. (2016). Learning in action and adventure sports. Asia-Pacific Journal of Health, Sport and Physical Education, 7 (2), 107–119. Ellmer, E., & Rynne, S.B. (2019). Professionalisation of action sports in Australia. Sport in Society, 22 (10), 1742–1757. Gurgis, J.J., Kerr, G.A., & Stirling, A.E. (2020). Investigating the barriers and facilitators to achieving coaching certification. International Sport Coaching Journal, 7 (2), 189–199. King, K., & Church, A. (2017). Lifestyle sports delivery and sustainability: Clubs, communities and user-managers. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 9 (1), 107–119. King, K., & Church, A. (2020). Beyond transgression: Mountain biking, young people and managing green spaces. Annals of Leisure Research, 23 (2), 203–222. Kitzinger, C., & Powell, D. (1995). Engendering infidelity: Essentialist and social constructionist readings of a story completion task. Feminism & Psychology, 5 (3), 345–372. Ojala, A.L., & Thorpe, H. (2015). The role of the coach in action sports: Using a problem-based learning approach. International Sports Coaching Journal, 2 (1), 64–71. Piggott, D. (2012). Coaches’ experiences of formal coach education: A critical sociological investigation. Sport, Education and Society, 17 (4), 535–554. Rokenes, A., Schumann, S., & Rose, J. (2015). The art of guiding in nature-based adventure tourism – How guides can create client value and positive experiences on mountain bike and backcountry ski tours. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 15 (1), 62–82.

Exploring mountain bike coaches’ perceptions  33 Smith, B. (2018). Generalizability in qualitative research: Misunderstandings, opportunities and recommendations for the sport and exercise sciences. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 10 (1), 137–149. Smith, B. (2019). Some modest thoughts on story completion methods in qualitative research. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 16 (1), 156–159. Sport England. (2023). Active lives online: Adult data. Available at: https://activelives. sportengland.org/Result?queryId=89803 Wheaton, B., & Thorpe, H. (2022). Action sports and the Olympic games: Past, present, future. London: Routledge. Wheaton, B., & Townsend, R. (2023). The learning cultures of informal self organised action sports: Implications for child and youth coaching, in Toms, M., & Jeanes, R. (Eds.), Routledge handbook of coaching children in sport (pp. 440–451). London: Routledge.

Chapter 2

Evaluating competitiveness as a personality trait among a sample of mountain bikers Kieren McEwan, Neil Weston, and Paul Gorczynski

Introduction Competitiveness has been a focus of academic study for over 100 years (see Triplett, 1897) but has gained increasing attention over the last decade and a half (e.g., Fletcher & Nusbaum, 2008; Harris & Houston, 2010; Hibbard & Buhrmester, 2010; Newby & Klein, 2014; Swab & Johnson, 2019; Urbig, et al., 2021). As a psychological trait, competitiveness represents a meaningful component of personality, and it also allows for the observation and the exploration of individual difference (Bing, 1999). It has also been characterised as an individual’s desire to succeed over others (Franken & Brown, 1995, 1996). However, it is also a trait which is variable within individuals, with some people being motivated by the ‘need to be superior to others’ (Franken & Brown, 1996, p.808), whereas others are not, despite remaining motivated and committed to self-improvement. In its traditional sense, sport is a competitively focused social construction that, by necessity, distinguishes the winner from the loser (see Guttman, 1978). In this respect, modern sports emerged as competitive pursuits as a reflection of the increasingly rational and structured society which developed throughout the industrial revolution (Guttman, 1978; Gruneau, 1983; Elias, 1986a, 1986b). At its heart, this characteristic defines modern sports. It also fundamentally aligns those modern sports that were predominantly codified around the time of the industrial revolution to the psychological conceptualisation of mastery which was developed by Freud and described in his ground-breaking text, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1924). For Guttmann (1978) however, sport is Weberian in nature and centres on the notion of the development of a controlling narrative, rationalism, that took root in society during the industrial revolution. As society became increasingly organised and structured, all areas of social and cultural life became subject, in varying degrees and at differing paces, to rationalisation. Recreational and leisure activities, including those that could be identified as ‘folk sports’ followed suit, becoming structured, codified and rule bound, as

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361626-4

Evaluating competitiveness as a personality trait  35

well as competitive. It was at this point that modern sport as a social, cultural, and economic institution was born. In stark contrast to the description and indeed the more generalised common perception of modern sport, research on extreme and postmodern sports has historically sought to highlight their anti-competitive nature (Beal, 1995; Wheaton & Beal, 2003; Wheaton, 2004, 2007, 2013; Donnelly, 2006). Viewed with hindsight, this could be seen as being the reflection of a reactionary subcultural movement which would later be described as lifestyle sports (Wheaton, 2004) and more commonly known as extreme sports. The purpose of developing a divergent cultural narrative arose from the need among participants in extreme sports to differentiate themselves from older more established pursuits which were seen as institutional, restrictive, and old-fashioned in nature. Equally, the attempt to create a unique cultural narrative within extreme sports can be considered as a deviant movement away from the tying boundaries of the mainstream sporting establishment. It could be seen as being culturally driven, as well as an attempt to solidify cultural authenticity (Wheaton & Beal, 2003; Donnelly, 2006) and develop a habitus framework for participants (Bourdieu, 1977, 1990) within the emerging subcultures connected to sports like skateboarding, mountain biking, and BMX. In this respect, the emergence of extreme sports is fundamentally linked to the nature and values of the societies which fostered and underpinned the development in the late 1960s and through into the late 1970s. This has neatly been described by Dyreson (2008) as the process by which extreme sports become developed and culturally sculpted through the process of Californication. During this time, California was experiencing a shift in terms of social values and this was a period where rebelliousness took hold in the form of counter-cultural movements that challenged cultural hegemony (Rorabaugh, 1989). Such changes provided fertile ground for counter-normative social practices to emerge and one example of this is the development of sports which symbolically challenged the orthodox and normative narratives present within the institution of modern sport. Sports such as skateboarding became popular as a rebellious counter-culture (Borden, 2001; Peralta, 2001) and older activities such as surfing experienced a change in image from that reflected within the preppy, Beach Boy-esque identity to one with arguably more edge (Peralta, 2001) and soulfulness (Booth, 1995). This, in itself, reflected the wider counter-cultural position being taken towards the prevailing social and cultural norms and practices within Californian society. Therefore, it is not surprising that sports that presented opposing values to those of the established and arguably more competitive modern sports evolved within this cultural setting. In particular, the emergence of the so-called extreme sports encapsulates a deliberate departure and expression of deviance from a modern sporting identity. It was into this same dynamic social space that the sport of mountain biking was born (Savre, 2013).

36  Kieren McEwan et al.

The conceptualisation of the development of extreme sports as anti-competitive is, in itself, somewhat dubious. It must be pointed out that in skateboarding the Z-Boys skate ‘team’ entered competitions as an act of performative deviance designed to shake up the establishment of the sport through demonstration of different skills, identities, and values (Peralta, 2001). Likewise, in his history of the development of mountain biking, Berto (1999) describes riders in Marin County competing with one another at events like the Repack Race, even if only on a loose and friendly basis. Savre et al. (2010) go further on this point and state that mountain biking in its earliest forms was not only competitive, but also fundamentally aligned to the principles of modern sport, as described by Guttmann (1978). Indeed, mountain biking was the first extreme sport to appear at the summer Olympic Games when it debuted in 1998 (Savre et al., 2009). So, despite its subcultural affiliations, mountain biking does have a historic connection to competitiveness that should not be ignored. More recent work on mountain biking (see McEwan, 2016; McEwan, Weston & Gorczynski, 2018) has concluded that while some formats of the sport are competitive in nature, some also are not, thus demonstrating the complexity of characteristics present within mountain biking as a pluralised and arguably fragmented sport. This represents a trend in mountain biking which also extends to the emergence of different segments within the mountain bike market (McEwan & Weston, 2017), thus evidencing a justifiable rationale for investigating this area in order to better understand the differences within the customer base for the mountain bike industry, particularly in relation to participant identity and personality traits of the industries core consumers. While the research of McEwan and colleagues appears to challenge the orthodox belief that extreme sport’s participants universally reject competition (Beal, 1995; Wheaton & Beal, 2003; Wheaton, 2004, 2007, 2013; Donnelly, 2006), it must be noted that other work has also highlighted a similar trend in extreme sport (see Thorpe & Wheaton, 2011; Ojala; 2014). In this sense, there is a notable difference between the ‘neo-sportsman’ developed by McEwan (2016) and the ‘alternative competitiveness’ frameworks that other researchers have made use of. These include the analysis of competition in extreme sports in areas such as commercialism (Bennett et al., 2002; Ko et al., 2008), the incorporation of particular extreme sports in the Olympics (Thorpe & Wheaton, 2011) or even the development of the X-Games themselves (Rinehart, 2008). However, this ignores the presence of traditional forms of competition in extreme and emerging sports like mountain biking, as previously described above. It also fails to reflect the fact that among any group of people some will be more competitive than others and will actively seek out competition, be it formal or informal in nature. While the tendency in the research identified above is to look for and establish areas of ‘alternative’ competitiveness or highlight the showpiece

Evaluating competitiveness as a personality trait  37

structured contests that are open to only elite performers, McEwan (2016) highlights how traditional forms of competition are still prevalent in a sport such as mountain biking and crucially occur across all ability ranges. Intriguingly it has also been demonstrated that participants within particular forms of mountain biking have observably varying associations with competition as a factor in identity construction (McEwan et al., 2018). This is also a construct used by McEwan (2016) to divergently classify participants in mountain biking as either sportsmen or neo-sportsmen. McEwan’s (2016) distinction between sportsmen (who compete with others in the traditional sense) or neo-sportsmen (who seek achievement through other means) was only possible via the exploration of differing sub-group characteristic and how they relate directly to interpersonal behaviours and relationships with other riders. This corresponds with the findings presented in later work (see McEwan et al., 2018) which saw the proposal of a model of mountain biker identity based upon the varying association to risk-taking and competitiveness (see Figure 2.1). In this conceptualisation of mountain biker identity, riders fall into one of four archetypes:

Increasing Association to Risk

1 The Competitor – Riders who like to engage in racing but without excessive risk (e.g., Cross Country and Marathon Racing) 2 The Risk Competitor – Riders who race in formats where there is a significantly heightened associated risk (e.g., Downhill and Enduro Racing) 3 The Aesthlete – Riders engaged in expressive and artistic forms of mountain biking which often present a heightened element of risk (e.g., Dirt Jumping, Street Riding and Slopestyle) 4 The Recreationalist – Riders who engage in lower-risk riding for pleasure rather than competition (e.g., Trail Riding and All-Mountain)

Risk Competitors

Aesthletes

Mountain Biking

Recreationalists

Competitors

Increasing Association with Competition

Figure 2.1 M odel of mountain biking identity archetypes  (Adapted from McEwan, et al., 2018).

38  Kieren McEwan et al.

Taken collectively, this allows us to position particular forms of mountain biking on the basis of participants’ willingness to seek out and engage in competition with others. In the same way that competitive individuals have been shown to be attracted to competitive workplaces (Houston, Harris, Howansky, & Houston, 2015), the study presented in this chapter sought to establish if participants in mountain bike racing are more competitive than those involved in non-racing forms of the sport. Competitiveness has been found to be a factor that differentiates between formats of mountain biking in relation to identity (McEwan et al., 2018) and values (McEwan, 2016). However, the study presented here sought to extend this into an investigation of participant trait characteristics and thus move into the field of psychosocial analysis. McEwan (2016) details the emergence of two identity narratives within the sport of mountain biking: the competitor who represents the traditional sporting narrative and the ‘Neo-Sportsman’ who rejects externalised competition with others. On a basic level, this would appear to be a dynamic operating around the juxtaposition of ego and task orientation which links to an established area of literature in connection to sport (Duda, 1989, 2001; Newton & Duda, 1993; Roberts, 2001). Further to this, as shown in Figure 2.1, McEwan et al. (2018) used competitiveness (along with risk-taking) to produce a model of mountain biking categories, which in the broadest sense fitted with four categories on mountain biking format. These being cross county (XC) and downhill (DH) which were described as fitting the traditional sporting archetype while freestyle (FS) and trail riding (TR) reject competitiveness. This suggests a gap within the research and also a challenge to test the competitiveness component of the model proposed by McEwan et al. (2018, see Figure 2.1). Specifically, it could be asked: if competitiveness was analysed through an observation of personality traits among mountain bikers, then would the phenomena described by McEwan (2016) and developed in further detail by McEwan et al. (2018), be observed within those taking part in the sport? Therefore, the aim of this study was to establish if participants in XC and DH formats of mountain biking possessed higher competitiveness traits than those in FS and TR. To achieve this, the study made use of the Revised Competitiveness Index (CI-R, Houston et al., 2002) as the preeminent academic instrument to assess competitiveness as a trait characteristic. Method and approach In order to conduct this investigation, a group of 167 committed mountain bikers were recruited to complete the CI-R index (Houston et al., 2002) which was posted as an online questionnaire and promoted via social media. The respondents collectively had an average age of 27 years and were 77% male and 33% female. All had more than two years’ experience of mountain biking and rode once a week or more. Each rider was also asked to identify the style

Evaluating competitiveness as a personality trait  39

of riding they participated in and where they took part in more than one form of mountain biking, they were asked which they participated in most. They were then grouped into one of the four categories established as aligning with the Model of Mountain Biking Identity Archetypes (McEwan, et al., 2018) shown in Figure 2.1 (XC, DH, TR, and FS). By using a psychosocial index such as the CI-R index (Houston et al., 2002), with its Likert (1932) scale format, it became possible to judge the competitiveness of the riders who responded to the questionnaire and assess this as a personality trait more broadly reflected amongst the participants within the four riding categories previously identified (XC, DH, TR, and FS). What is particularly interesting about the CI-R index (Houston et al., 2002) is that it not only allows an insight into competitiveness more generally, but also more specifically through its constituent subscales, which are Enjoyment of Competition (nine questions with a total score of between 9 and 45) and Contentiousness (five questions with a total score of between 5 and 25) (Figure 2.2). The reason that this is important here is due to the differing nature of these subscales. On one hand, individuals showing higher levels within the Enjoyment of Competition subscale will be more willing to enter into formalised competitive situations such as those we see within traditional forms of sport, and as have been classified within Guttmann’s (1978) characterisation of modern sport. Indeed, from a psychosocial perspective, individuals with such traits would arguably be more intrinsically motivated to engage in ‘mastery-based’ activities such as sport (Freud, 1924). Conversely however, Contentiousness represents the willingness of an individual to forcefully engage with others to win a point, such as during an argument or discussion for

Percentage of Respondents

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

XC

DH

Riding Styles

FS

TR

Figure 2.2 Percentage of respondents in each category of mountain biking as established by McEwan et al. (2018).

40  Kieren McEwan et al.

instance. However, only when these two subscales are combined (with total CI-R scores ranging from 14 to 70) does an individual’s psychological trait characteristics around competitiveness become clear. In analysing the data that were collected through the online question, tests of difference were performed related to each of the formats of mountain biking and accounting for the over all CI-R score as well as that of the two subscales (Enjoyment of Competition and Contentiousness). As the CI-R index (Houston et al., 2002) itself is made up of Likert (1932) scale questions, this meant that non-parametric tests were required (see Jamieson, 2004). In practice, this meant a two-stage approach was used. First, the data were tested holistically using a Kruskal–Wallis test (Kruskal & Wallis, 1952) to see if difference existed amongst the four groups. Then as a second step, where differences were found, a series of Mann–Whitney tests (Mann & Whitney, 1947) were performed to establish exactly where difference existed between specific riding groups. In order to protect the integrity of the results in the second stage, the significance level was reduced to p=.017 in line with the approach described by Fields (2013). Results and evaluation As an initial point of analysis, the basic statistics relating to different styles of mountain biking were illuminating and, as can be seen in Table 2.1, there appears to be an obvious level of difference between styles relating to overall CI-R scores and Enjoyment of competition. However, this did not initially seem to extend to Contentiousness subscale with median scores for each style of riding falling at either 13 or 14 points. This was also borne out by the first

Table 2.1  D escriptive statistics for CI-R score and individual subscales for styles of mountain biking Styles of Mountain Biking

N Total CI-R Score Median Range Enjoyment of Competition Median Range Contentiousness Scale Median Range

Cross Country

Downhill

Freestyle

Trail Riding

All

37

31

53

46

167

55 26

55 12

41 29

42 15

44 32

42 13

41 6

27 16

29 13

30 23

14 14

14 9

14 16

13 7

14 17

Evaluating competitiveness as a personality trait  41

statistical test performed on the data set, where the Kruskal–Wallis (Kruskal & Wallis, 1952) test found a significant difference between the four respondent groups (XC, DH, TR, and FS). Which reflects the four identity architypes described by McEwan et al. (2018). Interestingly it was found that the Enjoyment of Competition subscale was different between the groups (p < .001), but not Contentiousness (p = .327). It was also established that CI-R scores also differed significantly between the four categories of mountain biking (p < .001). The fact that Contentiousness did not differ significantly across styles of mountain biking, but the overall CI-R scores does, highlights the importance of the Enjoyment of Competition subscale in differentiating between mountain bike participants. It is clear from these findings that some mountain bikers enjoy engaging in competition rather than reject it, and this further exposes an issue with both the conventional definition of sport and extreme sports as divergent and dichotomous competitive/anti-competitive activities. Traditional sports, with a rationale based on achievement (Eichberg, 1998) and that exist within a regulated, rule-bound, and ultimately governed structure are a well-established social construct (see Guttman, 1978). As a perspective however, this becomes challenged when extreme sports are examined with their ‘counter cultural philosophies’ (Donnelly, 1988, p.74) and deviant rejection of traditional forms of competition (Beal, 1995; Humphreys, 2003; Wheaton & Beal, 2003). However, this view of extreme sports as being anti-competitive has also been challenged within recent research on mountain biking (see McEwan, 2016; McEwan & Weston, 2017; McEwan, et al., 2018). The initial statistical analysis performed here suggests this is correct and something subtler is in fact occurring in mountain biking in relation to the competitive/anti-competitive dynamic. In order to engage with this more fully, the follow-up statistical tests were equally insightful. The Mann–Whitney (Mann & Whitney, 1947) for total CI-R scores are shown in Figure 2.1 and demonstrate that when comparing riders in the DH and XC groups no differences were found (p = .311), as was also the case for respondents from the TR and FS categories (p = .155). However, where this relationship starts to differ is where the riders grouped within the DH and XC categories are compared to TR and FS. As can be seen in Figure 2.3, these tests resulted in highly significant results when these categories of riders were compared (p < .001). Equally, it is notable that they also show an extremely large magnitude of difference as shown by the effect size (shown as r in Figure 2.3). A similar relationship was also observed when testing the data for each category of mountain biking related to the Enjoyment of Competition subscale. Again, XC and DH displayed significantly higher subscale scores than both TR and FS (p < .001) but they did not differ significantly from each other (p = .687) as was the case when comparing TR to FS also (p = .026). This provides further corroborative evidence to suggest that riders within two of

42  Kieren McEwan et al.

r=-.12

DH

XC

r=-.81**

r=-.80** r=-.85**

r=-.77**

FS

r=-.09

TR

Figure 2.3 Comparative analysis of CI-R scores across the four riding styles. *Significant at p < .017, **significant at p < .001

the mountain biking categories established by McEwan et al. (2018), XC and DH, have higher competitiveness traits than those in the TR and FS groups, a fact supported again by extremely large effect sizes. This creates a philosophical point to consider in relation to the perceived challenge to achievement culture presented by extreme sport (Maguire, 1999). The findings of this study along with previous research on mountain biking (McEwan, 2016; McEwan & Weston, 2017; McEwan, et al., 2018) further question the universality of the anti-competitive ethos in extreme sports and particularly in the case of mountain biking. These findings fundamentally align with recent research on mountain biking which suggests that race-oriented styles of the sport (XC and DH) are populated by individuals who possess a more competitive nature, and this is supported here within the analysis of their psychosocial trait characteristics presented. Indeed, there is an important distinction to be made here between the subscales of the CI-R index (Houston et al., 2002) and the relationship being highlighted by these data. While there was no difference in Contentiousness between the four categories of mountain biking, one was observed for overall CI-R scores. Therefore, it can be concluded that the key differences between the mountain biking participants who were respondents in this investigation were driven by the Enjoyment of competition subscale. Based on this, it could be hypothesised that the fact that individuals with higher competitiveness traits have been drawn towards competitive forms of mountain biking provides some level of indication regarding the motives underpinning their desire to take part in competitive, or correspondingly non-competitive forms of mountain biking. In practice, this means that XC and DH riders are more driven to engage in formalised competitive situations, as are present within traditional forms of sport. Therefore, this aligns such individuals with the nature of sport described by Guttman (1978) as well as the concept of mastery (Freud, 1924). Furthermore,

Evaluating competitiveness as a personality trait  43

it has been argued that respect for competitive frameworks and, by extension, the opponent an individual face in sport facilitates the highest kind of achievement, thus linking to the work of Friedrich Nietzsche (see Solomon, 2003). This rather complex philosophical formation is, however, more easily understood through the concept of the sportsman (Delaney, 2016). In Nietzsche’s philosophy, winning fairly presents a pure sense of achievement (Delaney & Madigan, 2009) and cheating detracts from this. However, what happens where sports become non-competitive in the traditional sense and under those circumstances what does achievement begin to look like? This is where the concept of the ‘Neo-Sportsman’ (McEwan, 2016) becomes most applicable. The concept of the anti-competitive ‘Neo-Sportsman’ (McEwan, 2016) represents individuals who seek to engage in self-development processes while also being able to share in the achievements of others, without it becoming an exercise in status building and therefore pseudo-competition. The construction of achievement as an internalised process sits conformably alongside a task-orientated goal achievement framework (Duda, 2001) for participants. The findings of this study suggest that for some participants’ competition is enjoyable, hinting at a possible difference in achievement motivation, given the fact that they have been drawn to formats with a more ego-orientated focus (XC and DH). The examples given by McEwan (2016) of mountain bikers demonstrate the fact that sporting goals for participants can align to either skill development and personal improvement (task orientation) or a comparison to, and mastery over others (ego orientation). Equally, the conceptualisation of achievement itself could be questioned and indeed the idea of ‘achievement’ could arguably also be a constructed concept in its own right. In sport, achievement is usually framed around contest and the idea of winning and losing. However, how does this modern mindset continue to sit comfortably within a world where culture has become post-industrialised and increasingly postmodern? As stated previously mountain biking along side other extreme sport born through the process of Californication (Dyreson, 2008) and the culture it represented (Savre, 2013). So to attempt to shoehorn the sport into a homogenous narrative framed by either a competitive or non-competitive dynamic would be an error. In essence, the push within academic writing during the 2000s was to view the postmodern nature of extreme sports as being a factor which shaped lifestyle, subcultural values, and identity (e.g., Wheaton, 2004; Rinehart, 2007) and where this was broadly homogeneous at the time this was undoubtedly true. However, postmodernity and its impact on extreme sports such as mountain biking arguably means that since then such activities have become much more complex and pluralised in their nature. In a sense, this can clearly be seen in the evolution of mountain biking where differing formats have emerged meaning the sport has something to offer to everyone (see McEwan, 2016; McEwan & Weston, 2017; McEwan, et al., 2018; McEwan & Muller, 2020).

44  Kieren McEwan et al.

The conceptualisation described above links to the ideals of motivation. While for some, competition is what draws them to mountain biking, as has been shown here. While for others it is a different pull fact that they experience. This could include escaping everyday life for exercise, the ability to commune with nature, the ability to visit new places, or spend time with friends. Indeed, another factor could be the challenge of engaging in riding that is more risk orientated and this was the other axis of difference proposed within the Model of Mountain Biking Identity Archetypes (McEwan, et al., 2018, see Figure 2.1). A possible further avenue of investigation would be to measure motivations for participating in mountain biking in order to observe the predilection towards task or egocentric goal achievement, again making use of psychosocial indexes such as the Task and Ego Orientation in Sports Questionnaire (Duda, 1989) or the Behavioral Regulation in Sport Questionnaire (Lonsdale, et al., 2008). This recommendation accounts for the key limitation of this investigation, in that it only shows that riders who take part in competitive forms of mountain biking possess higher competitiveness traits than those participating in non-competitive formats. What it does not show is whether or not it is the competition with others that motivates their participation in mountain biking. By conducting further analysis of this area, it will then be possible to provide greater insight into what motivates participation in the sport of mountain biking. Implications for the mountain bike industry As a final point of analysis, it must be noted that this knowledge may be of great benefit to those facilitating mountain biking through resource management and the marketing of products and services due to holding a greater understanding of their consumers. Bhattacharjee et al. (2014) highlight how products and brands are required to fit with the consumer’s identity, particularly when those products hold subcultural value and lifestyle relevance for individuals. Therefore, if mountain bike products are attached to subcultural identities as socially constructed technologies (Rosen, 1993), there is a significant danger of products underperforming within the marketplace when manufacturers fail to consider levels of competitive values into account. McEwan and Weston’s (2017) work which explored the nature and structure of the mountain bike market is a good example of the dynamic described above. In their research, they established that the ‘gravity market’ that exists within the sport is made up of bikes that the industry describes as usable either for freeride or downhill mountain biking. However, McEwan et al. (2018) found that freeriding presented similar identities to those styles that also formed the FS grouping in (freeride, dirt jumping, street, and slopestyle), therefore differing from those present within the DH category. Therefore, there is a risk of presenting conflicting identity narrative when marketing

Evaluating competitiveness as a personality trait  45

products that occupy the same space within the consumer market but are being promoted to consumers with fundamentally differing identity narratives. Therefore, the mountain bike industry should be aware of this when marketing products to the rider and ensure that the social construction of the products fits with the subcultural identity narrative that exists within that particular format of mountain biking. Conclusion The findings of this study represent a unique contribution to knowledge by further developing the concepts presented by McEwan and co-authors (McEwan, 2016; McEwan et al., 2018). This investigation concludes that XC and DH mountain bike riders were found to be more competitive than those involved in TR or FS formats of the sport, corroborating other discourse in this area (McEwan et al., 2018). Furthermore, it provides evidence to suggest that individuals who have been characterised as ‘Neo-Sportsman’ by McEwan (2016) possess lower competitiveness trait characteristics. However, it is also important to note that this difference occurred as a direct result of the Enjoyment of Competition subscale and that no intergroup difference was found within the Contentiousness subscale. It is therefore concluded that Enjoyment of Competition can be used to differentiate between those participating in racing and non-racing formats of mountain biking. References Beal, B. (1995). Disqualifying the official: An exploration of social resistance through The subculture of skateboarding. Sociology of Sport Journal, 12(3), 252–252. Bennett, G., Henson, R., & Zhang, J. (2002). Action sports sponsorship recognition. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 11(3), 174–185. Berto, F. J. (1999). The birth of dirt: The origins of mountain biking, Van Der Plas. Bhattacharjee, A., Berger, J., & Menon, G. (2014). When identity marketing backfires: Consumer agency in identity expression. Journal of Consumer Research, 41(2), 294–309. Bing, M.N. (1999). Hypercompetitiveness in academia: Achieving criterion-related validity from item context specificity. Journal of Personality Assessment, 73(1), 80–99. Booth, D. (1995). Ambiguities in pleasure and discipline: The development of competitive surfing. Journal of Sport History, 22(3), 189–206. Borden, I. (2001). Skateboarding, space and the city: Architecture and the body. Oxford: Berg. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Cambridge: Polity Press. Delaney, T. (Ed.). (2016). Sportsmanship: Multidisciplinary perspectives. McFarland. Delaney, T., & Madigan, T. (2009). Sports: Why people love them. Maryland: University Press of America.

46  Kieren McEwan et al. Donnelly, M. (2006). Studying extreme sports beyond the core participants. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 30(2), 219–224. Donnelly P (1988). Sport as a site for ‘popular’ resistance. In: R. Gruneau (Ed.), Popular Cultures and Political Practices (pp. 69–82). Garamond Press. Duda, J.L. (1989). Relationship between task and ego orientation and the perceived purpose of sport among high school athletes. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 11(3), 318–335. Duda, J.L. (2001). Goal perspectives research in sport: Pushing boundaries and clarifying some misunderstandings, in Roberts, G.C. (Ed.), Advances in sport and exercise motivation (pp.129–182). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Dyreson, M. (2008). Crafting patriotism: Meditations on ‘Californication’ and other trends. International Journal of the History of Sport, 25(2), 307–311. Eichberg, H. (1998). Body cultures: Essays on sport, space and identity. London: Routledge. Elias, N. (1986a). Introduction, in Elias, N., & Dunning, E. (Eds.), Quest for excitement (pp.126–149). Oxford: Blackwell. Elias, N. (1986b). The Genesis of sport as a sociological problem, in Elias, N, & Dunning, E. (Eds.), Quest for excitement (pp. 126–149). Oxford: Blackwell. Fields, A. (2013). Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS statistics. London: Sage. Fletcher, T.D., & Nusbaum, D.N. (2008). Trait competitiveness as a composite variable: Linkages with facets of the big-five. Personality and Individual Differences, 45(4), 312–317. Franken, R.E., & Brown, D.J. (1995). Why do people like competition? The motivation For winning, putting forth effort, improving one’s performance, performing well, being instrumental, and expressing forceful/aggressive behavior. Personality and Individual Differences, 19(2), 175–184. Franken, R.E., & Brown, D.J. (1996). The need to win is not adaptive: The need to win, Coping strategies, hope and self-esteem. Personality and Individual Differences, 20(6), 805–808. Freud, S. (1924). Beyond the pleasure principle. London: Hogarth Press. Gruneau, R. (1983). Class, sport and social development. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Guttman, A. (1978). From ritual to records: The nature of modern sports. New York: Columbia Press. Harris, P.B., & Houston, J.M. (2010). A reliability analysis of the revised competitiveness index. Psychological Reports, 106 (3), 870–874. Hibbard, D.R., & Buhrmester, D. (2010). Competitiveness, gender, and adjustment among adolescents. Sex Roles, 63(5–6), 412–424. Houston, J.M., Harris, P., McIntire, S., & Francis, D. (2002). Revising the Competitiveness Index using Factor Analysis. Psychological Reports, 90(1), 31–34. Houston, J.M., Harris, P.B., Howansky, K., & Houston, S.M. (2015). Winning at work: Trait competitiveness, personality types, and occupational interests. Personality and Individual Difference, 76, 49–51. Humphreys, D. (2003). Selling out snowboarding, in Rinehart, R. E. & Sydnor, S. (Eds.), To the extreme: Alternative sports inside and out (pp. 407–428). New York: SUNY Press. Jamieson, S. (2004). Likert scales: How to (ab)use them. Medical Education, 38(12), 1217–1218.

Evaluating competitiveness as a personality trait  47 Ko, Y.J., Park, H., & Claussen, C.L. (2008). Action sports participation: Consumer motivation. International Journal of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship, 9(2), 111–125. Kruskal, W.H., & Wallis, W.A. (1952). Use of ranks in one-criterion variance analysis. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 47(260), 583–621. Likert, R. (1932). A technique for the measurement of attitudes. New York: Columbia University Press. Lonsdale, C., Hodge, K., & Rose, E.A. (2008). The Behavioural Regulation in Sport Questionnaire (BRSQ): Instrument development and initial validity evidence. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 30(3), 323–355. Maguire, J. (1999). Global sport: Identities, societies, civilizations. Cambridge: Polity Press. Mann, H.B., & Whitney, D.R. (1947). On a test of whether one of two random variables is stochastically larger than the other. The Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 18(1), 50–60. McEwan, K. (2016). The future of sportsmanship: A narrative expression of in-group support and respect in the postmodern sport of mountain biking, in Delaney, T (Ed.), Sportsmanship: Multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 269–280). Jefferson (NC): McFarland. McEwan, K., & Muller, J. (2020). Cycling, in Nauright, J., & Zipp, S. (Eds.), Routledge handbook of global sport (pp. 273–288). London: Routledge. McEwan, K., & Weston, N. (2017). Different spokes: A multidimensional scale analysis of market segmentation in mountain biking. International Journal of Sports Management and Marketing, 17(3), 162–181. McEwan K, Weston, N., & Gorczynski, P. (2018). Differentiating identities within an extreme sport: A case study of mountain biking print advertisements. Frontiers in Psychology, 9(1668). doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01668 Newby, J.L., & Klein, R.G. (2014). Competitiveness reconceptualized: Psychometric development of the competitiveness orientation measure as a unified measure of trait competitiveness. The Psychological Record, 64(4), 879–895. Newton, M., & Duda, J.L. (1993). The relationship of task and ego orientation to performance: Cognitive content, affect, and attributions in bowling. Journal of Sport Behavior, 16(4), 209–220. Ojala, A.L. (2014). Institutionalisation in professional freestyle snowboarding–Finnish professional riders’ perceptions. European journal for Sport and Society, 11(2), 103–126. Peralta, S. (Director). (2001). Dogtown and the Z-Boys. United States: AGI Oris. Rinehart, R. (2007). Emerging arriving sport: Alternatives to formal sports, in Coakley, J., & Dunning, E. (Eds.), Handbook of sports studies (3rd ed.; pp. 504–520). Los Angeles: Sage. Rinehart, R. (2008). ESPN’s X games, contests of opposition, resistance, co-option, and negotiation. Tribal play: Subcultural journeys through sport, 4, 175–195. Roberts, G.C. (2001). Understanding the dynamics of motivation in physical activity: The influence of achievement goals on motivational processes, in Roberts, G. C. (Ed.), Advances in sport and exercise motivation (pp. 1–50). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Rorabaugh, W.J. (1989). Berkeley at war: The 1960s. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosen, P. (1993). The social construction of mountain bikes: Technology and Postmodernity in the cycling industry. Social Studies of Science, 23(3), 479–513.

48  Kieren McEwan et al. Savre, F. (2013). Mountain bike: Californians reinvent the bicycle, in Coombs, D.S. & Batchelor, B. (Eds.), American history through American sport: From colonial lacrosse To extreme sports (pp. 281–296). Santa Barbara: Praeger. Savre, F, Saint-Martin, J and Terret, T. (2009). An odyssey fulfilled: The entry of Mountain biking into the Olympic Games, Olympika, 18, 121–136. Savre, F., Saint-Martin, J., & Terret, T. (2010). From Marin County's seventies clunker to the Durango World Championship 1990: A history of mountain biking in the USA’. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 27(11), 1942–1967. Solomon, R.C. (2003). Living with Nietzsche: What the great ‘Immoralist’ has to teach us. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Swab, R.G., & Johnson, P.D. (2019). Steel sharpens steel: A review of multilevel competition and competitiveness in organizations. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 40(2), 147–165. Thorpe, H., & Wheaton, B. (2011). ‘Generation X Games’, action sports and the Olympic movement: Understanding the cultural politics of incorporation. Sociology, 45 (5), 830–847. Morganstown, WV: FIT Publishing. Triplett, N. (1897). The dynamogenic factors in pacemaking and competition. American Journal of Psychology, 9(4), 507–533. Urbig, D., Bönte, W., Schmutzler, J., Curcio, A.F.Z., & Andonova, V. (2021). Diverging associations of dimensions of competitiveness with gender and personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 176, 110775. Wheaton, B. (2004). Mapping the lifestyle Sport-Scape, in Wheaton, B. (Ed.), Understanding lifestyle sports: Consumption identity and difference (pp. 1–28). Abingdon: Routledge. Wheaton, B. (2007). After sport culture: Rethinking sport and post-subcultural theory. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 31(3), 283–307. Wheaton, B. (2013). The cultural politics of lifestyle sports. Abingdon: Routledge. Wheaton, B., & Beal, B. (2003). Keeping it real: Subcultural media and the discourses of authenticity in alternative sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 38(2), 155–176.

Chapter 3

The motivations, identities, and environmental sensibilities of contemporary e-mountain bike users The people behind the power Lesley Ingram-Sills The contemporary e-bike industry Electric bikes have an inbuilt motor that is powered by an on-board battery, which aids the rider by reducing the physical output required to propel the bicycle (Rérat, 2021). The rider can select from a range of modes that offer varying amounts of assistance, thus developing a symbiotic relationship between the rider and bicycle. In the UK, riding an electric bike is legal, provided they meet the governments’ specific criteria, which dictate that (1) users must be older than 14 years; (2) the pedals must propel the bike; (3) the continuous rate of power of the motor must be less than 250 W with a speed limit of 15.5 mph; and (4) when a speed of 15.5 mph is reached the motor must cut out removing any assistance provided to the rider (UK Government, 2021). Having met these conditions, electric bikes can be ridden on all cycle paths and other areas where pedal bikes are permitted (UK Government, 2021). A multitude of terms have evolved in order to describe e-bikes and their non-electric counterparts, but for the duration of this chapter an electric bike will be referred to as an ‘e-bike’, electric mountain bikes will be referred to as ‘e-mountain bikes’, and those that have no electrical assistance will be described through the vernacular of a ‘pedal bike’. Globally the demand for e-bikes is demonstrated by the market worth 26.73 billion US dollars in 2021, with a forecasted growth to 53.53 billion dollars in 2027 (Statista, 2023). Europe is demonstrating similar trends with e-bike sales increasing by 52% in 2020, generating €10.6 billion (CONEBI, 2021). In the UK e-bikes outsold electric cars in 2020 (160K e-bikes vs 108K electric cars), resulting in an e-bike being sold every 3 minutes (Bicycle Association, 2020). Furthermore, 2022 data suggest that 165K e-bikes are now sold annually; however, this figure has remained constant since 2019 suggesting a stall in the market growth (Bicycle Association, 2022). Currently, the market does not break down the sale of e-bikes by discipline; however, as the cycling industry continues to evolve, e-bikes are being designed for a multitude of purposes, including but not limited to commuting

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361626-5

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bikes, folding bikes, racing bikes, mountain bikes, gravel bikes, and cargo bikes. As the diversification of e-cycling design continues, it is likely that retailers will begin to stock and sell more specialist bikes, such as e-mountain bikes, which have the potential to attract both new and a more diverse range of consumers to the market, resulting in increased sales. A recent study by Shimano (2022) revealed that 52% of Europeans believe that e-bikes are for individuals who are conscious about the environment. In addition, governments increasingly believe that e-bikes are the solution that will enable cities and countries to meet the challenging reductions in carbon required to limit global warming to the targeted 1.5°C (UNFCC, 2022). Moving forward, it is important that the cycling industry must solidify these links to demonstrate its carbon-reducing potential. In the UK, it is widely recognised that transport is a heavy contributor of carbon into the atmosphere, accounting for 24% of emissions responsible for deteriorating air quality (Department for Transport, 2022). The economic cost of compromised air quality has been extensively assessed in the UK, resulting in an estimated annual cost of £20 billion whilst tragically contributing to approximately 25000 deaths (ADPH, 2017). Against this backdrop, e-bikes provide a non-harmful means of travel, and if more participants convert to this method of travel, it could be a plausible way of reducing emissions. Yet, in order for the bike industry to fully capitalise on this green movement, it is important to move beyond a focus on carbon output, and towards the manufacturing, transportation, and sustainability of all processes, all of which are vital if they are to make realistic contributions to circular economy. Accordingly, it should be noted that the moral imperative to ‘go green’ shouldn’t fall solely on the cycling industry, since the government has a role to play in the development of cycling infrastructure, subsidies to help buyers purchase bikes, and safe spaces for the bikes to be stored in both rural and urban environments (Shimano, 2022). Cycling levels are starting to reduce in the UK specifically in terms of commuters, with most individuals now cycling for recreational purposes (Department for Transport, 2021), and many users believe that e-bike uptake would increase if infrastructure was built to ensure safety in the UK (Shimano, 2022). E-mountain bikes could make important contributors in this space where natural routes could be created in urban and rural settings to help reduce car journeys and increase the fun factor of mobilisation. Within this chapter, the identity of the e-mountain biker will be explored along with their motivations to ride and any environmental considerations the individuals identify with. From the data that are currently available, we will explore the benefits and challenges that e-mountain bikes present in rural and often remote landscapes, before looking at ways to integrate this technology in a safe and responsible manner to increase health, transport, and diversity issues associated with the sport.

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Electric mountain bikes (e-mountain bikes) Mountain biking is characterised as an off-road outdoor activity where the rider successfully pilots a bicycle over challenging topography and terrain featuring obstacles such as roots, trees, rocks, drops, jumps, and berms (Roberts et al., 2018). Research on European mountain bikers suggests that the majority of riders are white (96%), male (60%), had been participating in the sport for over a decade (53%), rode at intermediate (50%) or expert level (43%), and were predominately aged between 26 and 45 years old (59%) (Campbell et al., 2021). Research suggests that there is a lack of diversity present within the sport of mountain biking, with white, wealthy males often dominating the hillside (Bordelon & Ferreira, 2019). Different areas and tracks provide differing challenges to the rider and there are now several recognised disciplines attached to the sport, including downhill, enduro, cross country, and recreational, with crossover apparent between the disciplines. Mountain biking may be classified as a rural activity; however, in recent years we have witnessed the sport blur the lines between urban and rural. In contemporary manifestations of the sport, downhill races occur in the streets, Olympic and Commonwealth games racetracks are built in the suburbs of large cities, and towns have been designed around trail networks to attract employees (Heil, 2021). Mountain bike trails provide an alternative to the built-up environment and busy filled traffic roads of our cities replacing this with green, natural spaces. It is estimated that 5% of the population in England currently ride mountain bikes on a regular basis (Sport England, 2021). Whilst research on traditional forms of mountain biking is growing (see Black & Cherrington, 2022; Campbell et al., 2021; Kirkwood et al., 2021), there remains an absence of critical academic scholarship on e-mountain bikes. To address this lacuna, we surveyed 1341 e-mountain bike riders in Great Britain to gain a better understanding of this population of riders. Data from the research indicate that most riders are white (96%), male (79%), have been mountain biking for over a decade (65%), ride at an intermediate level (63%), and are predominately aged between 35 and 64 years old (77%) (Ingram-Sills et al., 2023). This suggests that a slightly older demographic of riders ride e-mountain bikes compared to pedal bikes, which is concurrent with findings from existing e-bike (Melia & Bartle, 2021) and e-mountain bike research (Cherrington & Black, 2023). Demographic factors such as gender suggest that geographical location has an influence on the number of individuals cycling in different countries. It is reported that e-bike use varies in countries with low numbers of cycling trips (Australia, the USA, and the UK) and where male riders predominate (Aldred et al., 2015; Heesch et al., 2012; Heinen et al., 2010, 2011), whereas in countries where cycling frequency is high (the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark) there are an increased number of female cyclists (Aldred et al., 2015; Garrard, 2003). Furthermore, female riders are more likely to buy an

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e-bike due to a lack of physical fitness required to power a pedal bike, with hills the most commonly cited problem feature (Melia & Bartle, 2021). Currently, e-mountain bike data suggest that mountain bike riders are able to prolong their cycling lifespan; however, if the e-mountain bike rider wants to challenge the rural hillside demographic and fully encapsulate diversity and inclusion then further work is needed in this space. Due to the fast-paced nature of mountain biking on steep and rugged terrain, it is generally classified as an extreme sport, whereby participants seek risk and thrill (Brymer & Schweitzer, 2017). Research indicates that mountain bike rider’s motivation is similar to most outdoor enthusiasts, whereby connection to nature, health, and exercise (Campbell et al., 2021), fulfilling experiences (Dodson, 1996), challenge (Lynch & Dibben, 2015), and mental health and well-being (Roberts et al., 2018) are the primary reported motivators. Despite the high adrenaline thrill-seeking appearance of mountain bike riding, risk has not been reported as a primary motivator (Campbell et al., 2021). E-mountain bike riders indicate that play (39%) and benefits to mental health (39%) are the main motivators to ride, with females reporting that riding with family and friends is extremely important in comparison to their male counterparts (Ingram-Sills et al., 2023). As this discipline evolves and grows, it will be interesting to continue to research the motivations of the culture and sub-cultures that form. Early data indicate that e-mountain bikes can alter rider habits, with individuals cycling further (83%) and faster (59%), whilst incorporating a greater number of technical uphills and laps of the same trail (63%) when compared to riding a pedal bike (Ingram-Sills et al., 2023). Other habits reported include more cycling in a shorter timeframe, being able to cycle for longer periods of time, and having the ability to explore alternative routes (Cherrington & Black, 2023). There is also a promising movement within research indicating that e-mountain bikes reduce some of the barriers related to individual fitness levels and the challenges presented by the topography of undulating landscapes, thus enabling riders to cycle routes or greater distances with a reduced physical output (Castro et al., 2019; Fishman & Cherry, 2016; Hall et al., 2019). The reduction in physical output still falls within a moderate intensity and thus provides both physical and mental health benefits to the individual (Berntsen et al., 2017; Fishman & Cherry, 2016; Gojanovic et al., 2011). This tends to be attractive to older individuals (Ingram-Sills et al., 2023), and there is growing evidence across a range of e-bike and e-mountain bike use that they can help to keep older individuals engaged and active whilst prolonging their cycling life, a salubrious benefit to an ageing population (Cherrington & Black, 2023; Melia & Bartle, 2021; van Cauwenberg et al., 2018). Data from our research indicate that e-mountain bike riders are more likely to access more remote environments on an e-mountain bike (67%); however, the majority of riders (56%) stated that they avoid environments that they consider to be fragile (Ingram-Sills et al., 2023). Similar research indicates

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mountain bike riders have an adventurous side where they seek the natural mountain experience rather than the purpose-built trail centres, with care and compassion for the environment evident when they visit such spaces (Cherrington & Black, 2023). The majority of e-mountain bikers can access the type of trail that they want to ride, with forest/gravel access roads and multi-use trails/paths the most ridden type of terrain (Ingram-Sills et al., 2023). This creates a potential point of contention between e-mountain bikers and more traditional users of the countryside. Indeed, the culture of the e-mountain bike rider is continually evolving, and as the sport matures, and adventurers seek their next challenge, it is important to educate all users and non-users in these spaces about access codes, trail etiquette, and responsibility on the trail. In our study, 15% of e-mountain bike respondents reported living with a disability or long-term health condition, with the three most reported conditions being long-term pain, chronic health condition, and mobility issues (Ingram-Sills et al., 2023). Cost and the weight of the bike are the greatest barriers for this population and a significantly greater proportion of these riders entered the sport because of injury or illness, when compared to those living without a disability or long-term health condition. Cross country and trail were the most popular disciplines within this population, and the majority of riders were not partaking in the sport for risk or thrill-seeking experiences (Ingram-Sills et al., 2023). E-mountain bikes have been described as a ‘physical leveller’ enabling pilots not having to rely solely on the physical attributes that we so commonly associated with exercise, allowing the pilots to enjoy the sport to the same degree as an able-bodied individual (Cherrington, 2022). This interaction with technology is revalidating disabled rider’s identities as mountain bike riders and it is great to see that this symbiotic relationship is evolving in natural settings (Cherrington, 2022). This further highlights how e-mountain bikes can serve to break down barriers associated with disabilities and long-term health conditions by empowering the individual whilst facilitating rural mobility to many who may believe that this was a thing of the past. The impact of mountain biking and e-mountain bikes It has long been recognised that the natural environment provides a sanctuary to many, with research indicating enhancements in health and/or well-being when nature is visited (Bowler et al., 2010). When people live or visit natural spaces, individuals report feeling energised, healthy, and full of purpose, and it is therefore of no surprise that individuals from different backgrounds, beliefs, and sports flock to these regions to experience the escapism felt in the first lungful of fresh air. Where this merger occurs, there is a space and opportunity for conflict to arise, since these spaces are often not as vast as we would like to believe. Here, the walker, cyclist, runner, dog walker, horse rider, and other users of the countryside want to lay claim to the space to ensure that

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they can continue to use and appreciate the space for years to come (Brown, 2014). Here, the impact of mountain bikes is often split into two key areas: (1) perceptions of social impact and (2) environmental impact, and it is important to consider the role of the e-mountain bike within these (Cessford, 2003). Perceptions of social impact Previous research has indicated that conflicts are apparent between mountain bikers and other outdoor users relating to, but not limited to, mass participation, the speed and noise of the bikes on what is naturally quiet and peaceful terrain, and the potential to cause irreplaceable environmental damage (Carothers et al., 2010; Heer et al., 2003; Ravenscroft, 2016). In the 1970s, when mountain bike riders embraced the natural outdoor playground, they were often viewed as bold and noisy, with a questionable fashion sense that was littered with bright colours, thus heightening annoyance in other, more conservative users of that space (Ruff & Mellors, 2007). There is a thread of literature that indicates a negative perception of mountain bikers from walkers, that does not appear to be as strongly shared in the cycling fraternity (Carothers et al., 2001). As suggested in previous sections, the demographic of mountain bike riders in this space is often young, white, males, different from that observed in walkers who tend to be older (Cessford, 2003). By contrast, e-mountain bike demographics through time might have the ability to bridge the age gap between these groups provided that their integration is well managed in these spaces for all users involved. While conflict has been reported between walkers and cyclists, most studies report similarities within these groups. Cessford (2003) surveyed 370 walkers in New Zealand to understand if bikers influenced their enjoyment when they cross paths on a track. 69% of his respondents reported that there was no effect on enjoyment, while 10% reported a positive influence. The remaining 21% reported a negative effect. The negative perceptions from this group came from walkers that had not encountered bikers whilst on track, reflecting perceptions perhaps based on wider social values (Carothers et al., 2001). Whilst many individuals in this case reported positive influences of sharing tracks with other users, the negative 21% does indicate that trail management and etiquette are important considerations in this space (Cessford, 2003). In our recent research, 11% of riders reported that they had been involved in more conflict since riding an e-mountain bike. Curiously, riders have experienced allegations of cheating and other negative comments from other cyclists on pedal bikes. The most commonly reported issue that led to conflict was the speed differential between users in the shared space. Since e-mountain bikes are so quiet, there were reports of other cyclists and shared space users being caught unaware and being frightened by the speed at which e-mountain bikes can travel, or the riders lack of trail etiquette cutting in front of other users in an attempt to get to the trail head first (Ingram-Sills et al., 2023). This

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is a delicate relationship, and it is important that e-mountain bikers are made to feel welcome in natural spaces. Again, this is a key consideration for industry if the aim of the e-mountain bike it to attract new users and different demographics who may have not have an understanding of trail etiquette. Perceptions of environmental impact Purpose-built trail centres are a common trail form and are characterised by waymarked trails that have been designed for the sole purpose of mountain bike riding. Trails are graded by difficulty (green, blue, red, black, orange) and risk assessed in accordance with these expectations (Brown, 2014). Currently in the UK, e-mountain bikes are permitted on all of these routes, with no trail alterations apparent for this type of riding. However, current trends in participation indicate that individuals may not only be seeking such urban nature sites, but rather, the opportunity to experience escapism further afield on less man-made trail areas (Cherrington & Black, 2023; Ingram-Sills et al., 2023). The popularity of such riding has increased exponentially over the years as bikes become lighter, e-mountain bikes open ranges of riding once considered impossible and will help to enable the user to visit more remote locations if desired. Industry also plays a role here by publishing articles relating to the best MTB routes in the UK, featuring no trail centres (Milner, 2021). There is a draw of humans to the mountains, and this should be no different for e-mountain bike riders; however, it is important to carefully consider the environmental, behavioural, and educational roles within this to ensure rider’s safety and enjoyment. While off-road cycling is widely accepted to be of benefit to the mental and physical health of the participant and to the wider economy (Pröbstl-Haider et al., 2018), the impact on the environment is a more controversial subject. For the purpose of this chapter, ‘off-road’ terrain is defined by a lack of a sealed tarmac or concrete surface primarily designed for, and used by, motor vehicles. Off-road cycling therefore includes gravel access routes primarily designed and engineered for motor vehicle access for purposes such as forestry work and windfarm sites to name a few. However, a lack of research on the impact of cycling on these routes suggests any impact is overshadowed by the impact of motor vehicle access (IMBA, 2015) and the environmental cost associated with initial construction (Boston, 2016). Environmental concerns are frequently reported in areas where mountain bikers participate (Chavez, 1996; Chavez et al., 1993). However, it is interesting to note that these concerns are often limited to the tracks in which the bikes are ridden rather than the wider environmental impact of the surrounding ecosystem (Cessford, 2003). Vegetation loss within these sites normally occurs during the original construction of the trail (Ballantyne & Pickering, 2015; Pickering & Norman, 2017); however, trail widening can also occur at a later date following events of mass participation such as races or festivals (Evju et al., 2021; Goeft & Alder, 2001).

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E-mountain bikes can increase participation and allow the rider to navigate over more challenging terrain, creating new desire lines in such spaces and potentially disrupting the balance of native and non-native species in the vicinity (Barros et al., 2020). For instance, Weiss et al. (2016) propose that e-mountain bike activity could potentially disperse unwanted seeds in such environments due to the increased distance covered by the bikes through different environments. If not managed appropriately, this could disperse seeds from weeds into fragile and protected areas of land (Weiss et al., 2016). However, current evidence also suggests that soil erosion related to mountain biking is comparable to (Chiu & Kriwoken, 2003; Olive & Marion, 2009; Pickering et al., 2010) or greater than hiking (Evju et al., 2021; Pickering et al., 2011) particularly in wet conditions or high uses cases (>500 passes). Interestingly, this impact is also reported to be significantly less than horse riding (Pickering et al., 2010), motorised all-terrain vehicles (Olive & Marion, 2009), or motorcycles (International Mountain Bicycling Association, 2015), which appear to garner much less attention. The development of the e-mountain bike has sparked debate regarding its erosive potential believed to be driven by the increased weight and speed of the bike. Soil erosion caused by cycling is typically greater on steeper tracks that exceed an 11% grade (Pickering et al., 2011). This is likely to be a result of riders skidding down them and spinning out when riding up them (Chiu & Kriwoken, 2003; Hardiman & Burgin, 2013). It could be postulated that rider technique has a role to play here as inexperienced e-mountain bike riders will have to learn how to cope with the power generated by the motor and this is certainly an area for coach educators to develop. IMBA (2015) commissioned a survey in a Western Oregon forest whereby 500 laps of motor, pedal, and e-mountain bike data were collected in different scenarios (uphill gravel access route, corner entry, corner exit) in very dry conditions. The study concluded that the motorcycle was the most damaging to the soil (only 200 laps occurred due to trail damage), whereas e-mountain bikes and pedal bikes demonstrated similar soil erosion. In our research, trail builders and land managers reiterated that skill level and the increased power of the bike may have a role to play in soil erosion at sites (Ingram-Sills et al., 2023). The riders of e-mountain bikes also reported cycling faster and this has led to reports of changes to desire line and braking zones around obstacles. This highlights the role of coaching for new e-mountain bike riders to reduce spinout related to motor torque and weight of the bike and consider entry and exit speeds for upcoming obstacles. IMBA (2016) surveyed 129 land managers to understand their perceptions of environmental impact, reporting that few land managers have had interactions with e-mountain bikes and that sound scientific research must be conducted in this field to determine how e-mountain bikes compare with pedal bikes. Such research should also consider specific testing sites and monitoring that occurs on a number of different conditions including gradient, soil type,

The motivations, identities, and environmental sensibilities  57

weather, and trail conditions. It is also imperative that the sport is well managed during the integration phase to limit negative track alterations (IngramSills et al., 2023). Overall, our research indicates that the environmental impact of e-mountain bikes is not limited to the trail, and many of the participant’s responses highlighted the problems associated with lithium batteries, which are used to power the bikes. The life expectancy and recycling of old batteries is an important consideration for the industry. E-bike batteries are classified as industrial and the producer must take back the battery free of charge from the end user to ensure safe disposal (Bicycle Association, 2021). In 2023 a battery collection and recycling scheme will emerge in the UK (Bicycle Association, 2021), which demonstrates how the industry is beginning to demonstrate greater corporate social responsibility (Spratt, 2021). However, battery fires are also providing an environmental challenge for e-bikes with 88 related fires reported by London firefighters in 2022 (CTSI, 2023). If this risk continues to present itself, we could see e-bikes banned from public transport, and residential and business premises in the very near future (Bicycle Association, 2022). Reports from the fire service suggest that the fires are being driven by online purchases of batteries, e-bikes, chargers, and conversion kits rather than e-bikes that have been purchased from reputable suppliers that have adhered to product safety laws (Bicycle Association, 2023; CTSI, 2023), and this is a legitimate concern for the future viability of the global e-bicycle industry. Therefore, education about safe and reliable industrial companies is pertinent to the e-mountain bike user. Conclusion: Empowerment, inclusion, and responsibility This research mirrors existing studies on e-bikes, which suggest that users are typically older, well-educated, male and purchase their e-bike as a means of cycling further and faster (Melia & Bartle, 2021). At the same time, it has also pointed to the many ways that e-mountain bikes empower an array of different users, including those with physical disabilities, to explore the countryside in ways that would otherwise be accessible to them. The e-mountain bike can therefore be influential in breaking down diversity and inclusion issues that are currently widespread within the sport (Bordelon & Ferreira, 2019). For this to happen, it is imperative that e-mountain bike riders feel welcomed into the space from fellow riders, space users, and land operators. Specifically, e-mountain bike riders have a responsibility to manage speed differentials between different users and to develop appropriate forms of trail etiquette to this effect (Brown, 2014). There is also no getting away from the fact that e-mountain bikes are prohibitively expensive, which contributes to the lack of inclusion in the sport. Therefore, it is important that subsidies for e-bikes and e-mountain bikes are carefully considered at the governmental level (Marion & Wimpey, 2017; Salesa & Cerdà, 2020).

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In addition, this chapter illustrates how e-mountain bikes can help individuals and communities to connect to nature and visit unmanicured natural areas (Cherrington & Black, 2023). Indeed, alongside mental health and physical fitness, this appears to be the greatest motivator for riding an e-mountain bike. In this sense, there is a potential for e-mountain bikes to open up the wider countryside, providing a wider range of physical and mental stimuli than those that are offered by more urban environments. Notwithstanding these benefits, this raises some important environmental considerations in relation to e-mountain bike use, including those relating to erosion and habitat destruction, but also risk management and rider responsibility in wild or unpopulated areas, and these have yet to be fully considered in the literature. Thus, though e-mountain bike riders are increasingly being encouraged by land managers, governing bodies, bike brands, and media outlets to consider the actions that their activities may have on the surrounding environment, it is important that these strategies and interventions are subject to more rigorous evaluation and assessment. References ADPH. (2017). The Association of Directors of public health policy position: Outdoor air quality key messages. Association of Directors of Public Health. Available at: www.adph.org.uk Aldred, R., Woodcock, J., & Goodman, A. (2015). Does more cycling mean more diversity in cycling? Transport Reviews, 36(1), 28–44. Ballantyne, M., & Pickering, C.M. (2015). The impacts of trail infrastructure on vegetation and soils: Current literature and future directions. Journal of Environmental Management, 164, 53–64. Barros, A., Aschero, V., Mazzolari, A., Cavieres, L.A., & Pickering, C.M. (2020). Going off trails: How dispersed visitor use affects alpine vegetation. Journal of Environmental Management, 267, 110546. Berntsen, S., Malnes, L., Langåker, A., & Bere, E. (2017). Physical activity when riding an electric assisted bicycle. The International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 14(55), 1–7. Bicycle Association. (2020). Bicycle Association year in review. Bicycle Association. Available at: https://www.bicycleassociation.org.uk/annualreport2020/ Bicycle Association. (2021). BA guide - E-bike batteries. Bicycle Association. Available at: https://www.bicycleassociation.org.uk/download/ba-guide-e-bike-batteries/ Bicycle Association. (2022). Bicycle Association Market Data Service. Available at: https://www.bicycleassociation.org.uk/market-data/ Black, J., & Cherrington, J. (2022). Sport and Physical Activity in Catastrophic Environments. London: Routledge. Bordelon, L.A., & Ferreira, S.L.A. (2019). Mountain biking is for (white, wealthy, middle-aged) men: |The Cape Epic mountain bike race. Journal of Sport & Tourism, 23(1), 41–59. Boston, K. (2016). The potential effects of forest roads on the environment and mitigating their impacts. Current Forestry Reports, 2(4), 215–222.

The motivations, identities, and environmental sensibilities  59 Bowler, D.E., Buyung-Ali, L.M., Knight, T.M., & Pullin, A.S. (2010). A systematic review of evidence for the added benefits to health of exposure to natural environments. BMC Public Health, 10(456), 1–10. Brown, K.M. (2014). Spaces of play, spaces of responsibility: Creating dichotomous geographies of outdoor citizenship. Geoforum, 55, 22–32. Brymer, E., & Schweitzer, R. (2017). Phenomenology and the extreme sport experience. London: Routledge. Campbell, T., Kirkwood, L., McLean, G., Torsius, M., & Florida-James, G. (2021). Trail use, motivations, and environmental attitudes of 3780 European mountain bikers: What is sustainable? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(24). 12971. Carothers, P., Vaske, J.J., & Donnelly, M.P. (2001). Social values versus interpersonal conflict among Hikers and Mountain Bikers. Leisure Sciences, 23(1), 47–61. Castro, A., Gaupp-Berghausen, M., Dons, E., Standaert, A., Laeremans, M., Clark, A., Anaya-Boig, E., Cole-Hunter, T., Avila-Palencia, I., Rojas-Rueda, D., Nieuwenhuijsen, M., Gerike, R., Panis, L.I., de Nazelle, A., Brand, C., Raser, E., Kahlmeier, S., & Götschi, T. (2019). Physical activity of electric bicycle users compared to conventional bicycle users and non-cyclists: Insights based on health and transport data from an online survey in seven European cities. Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 1, 100017. Cessford, G. (2003). Perception and reality of conflict: Walkers and mountain bikes on the Queen Charlotte Track in New Zealand. Journal for Nature Conservation, 11(4), 310–316. Chavez, D.J. (1996). Mountain biking: Direct, indirect, and bridge building management styles. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, 14(4), 21–35. Chavez, D.J., Winter, P.L., & Baas, J. (1993). Recreational mountain biking: A management perspective. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, 11(3), 29–36. Cherrington, J. (2022). Electric mountain bikes, ableism, and ‘enwheelment’ in Outdoor Leisure, in Carr, N., & Baker, M. (Eds.), Inclusion and equity in outdoor leisure: Whose body belongs? (pp. 22–28). Wallingford, UK: CABI. Cherrington, J., & Black, J. (2023). The electric mountain bike as pharmakon: examining the problems and possibilities of an emerging technology. Mobilities. https://doi. org/10.1080/17450101.2023.2186800 Chiu, L., & Kriwoken, L. (2003). Managing recreational mountain biking in Wellington Park, Tasmania, Australia. Annals of Leisure Research, 6(4), 339–361. CONEBI. (2021). European bicycle industry booming. Conebi. Available at: https:// www.conebi.eu/european-bicycle-industry-booming/ CTSI. (2023). CTSI issues warning about e-bike and e-scooter fires. Available at: https:// www.tradingstandards.uk/news-policy/news-room/2023/ctsi-issues-warningabout-e-bike-and-e-scooter-battery-fires/ Department for Transport. (2021). Walking and cycling statistics, England: 2021, GOV. UK. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/walking-and-cyclingstatistics-england-2021/walking-and-cycling-statistics-england-2021 Department for Transport. (2022). Transport and environment statistics 2022. GOV. UK. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/transport-andenvironment-statistics-2022/transport-and-environment-statistics-2022

60  Lesley Ingram-Sills Dodson, K. (1996). Peak experiences and mountain biking: Incorporating the bike into the extended self. Advances in Consumer Research, 23, 317–322. Evju, M., Hagen, D., Jokerud, M., Olsen, S.L., Selvaag, S.K., & Vistad, O.I. (2021). Effects of mountain biking versus hiking on trails under different environmental conditions. Journal of Environmental Management, 278, 111554. Fishman, E., & Cherry, C. (2016). E-bikes in the mainstream: Reviewing a decade of research. Transport Reviews, 36(1), 72–91. Garrard, J. (2003). Healthy revolutions: Promoting cycling among women. Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 14(3), 213–215. Goeft, U., & Alder, J. (2001). Sustainable mountain Biking: A case study from the Southwest of Western Australia. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 9(3), 193–211. Gojanovic, B., Welker, J., Iglesias, K., Daucourt, C., & Gremion, G. (2011). Electric bicycles as a new active transportation modality to promote health. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 43(11), 2204–2210. Hall, C., Hoj, T.H., Julian, C., Wright, G., Chaney, R.A., Crookston, B., & West, J. (2019). Pedal-assist mountain bikes: A pilot study comparison of the exercise response, perceptions, and beliefs of experienced mountain bikers. JMIR Formative Research, 3(3), e13643. Hardiman, N., & Burgin, S. (2013). Mountain biking: Downhill for the environment or chance to up a gear? International Journal of Environmental Studies, 70(6), 976–986. Heer, C., Rusterholz, H.P., & Baur, B. (2003). Forest perception and knowledge of hikers and mountain bikers in two different areas in Northwestern Switzerland. Environmental Management, 31(6), 709–723. Heesch, K.C., Sahlqvist, S., & Garrard, J. (2012). Gender differences in recreational and transport cycling: A cross-sectional mixed-methods comparison of cycling patterns, motivators, and constraints. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 9(1), 1–12. Heil, G. (2021). Northwest Arkansas: This is what $13 million can build. Singletracks Mountain Bike News. Available at: https://www.singletracks.com/mtb-trails/ northwest-arkansas-13-million-can-build/ Heinen, E., Maat, K., & van Wee, B. (2011). The role of attitudes toward characteristics of bicycle commuting on the choice to cycle to work over various distances. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 16(2), 102–109. Heinen, E., van Wee, B., & Maat, K. (2010). Commuting by bicycle: An overview of the literature. Transport Reviews, 30(1), 59–96. IMBA. (2015). A comparison of environmental impacts from mountain bicycles, class 1 electric mountain bicycles, and motorcycles: Soil displacement and erosion on bike-optimized trails in a Western Oregon forest. The International Mountain Bicycling Association. Available at: https://prismic-io.s3.amazonaws.com/peoplefor bikes/b178ccd2-e6bc-4837-a4c3-064f71c6605d_ebike-soil-erosion-study.pdf IMBA. (2016). Trail use and management of electric mountain bikes: Land manager survey results. The International Mountain Bicycling Association. Available at: https://www.americantrails.org/resources/trail-use-and-management-of-electricmountain-bikes-land-manager-survey-results Ingram-Sills, L., Kirkwood, L., Campbell, T., & Florida-James, G. (2023). The future directions and trends for off road e-bike use and impact in Great Britain. British Cycling. Available at: https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/emtbstudy

The motivations, identities, and environmental sensibilities  61 Kirkwood, L., Ingram-Sills, L., Taylor, M.D., Malone, E., & Florida-James, G. (2021). Immune response of elite enduro racers to laboratory and racing environments: The influence of training impulse and vibration. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(9), 4603. Lynch, P., & Dibben, M. (2015). Exploring motivations for adventure recreation events: a New Zealand study. Annals of Leisure Research, 19(1), 80–97. Melia, S., & Bartle, C. (2021). Who uses e-bikes in the UK and why? International Journal of Sustainable Transportation. 16(11), 965–977. Milner, D. (2021). Best mountain bike routes: 21 great rides in the UK. MBR. Available at: https://www.mbr.co.uk/news/best-mountain-bike-routes-322684 Olive, N.D., & Marion, J.L. (2009). The influence of use-related, environmental, and managerial factors on soil loss from recreational trails. Journal of Environmental Management, 90(3), 1483–1493. Pickering, C.M., Hill, W., Newsome, D., & Leung, Y.-F. (2010). Comparing hiking, mountain biking and horse riding impacts on vegetation and soils in Australia and the United States of America. Journal of Environmental Management, 91(3), 551–562. Pickering, C.M., & Norman, P. (2017). Comparing impacts between formal and informal recreational trails. Journal of Environmental Management, 193, 270–279. Pickering, C.M., Rossi, S., & Barros, A. (2011). Assessing the impacts of mountain biking and hiking on subalpine grassland in Australia using an experimental protocol. Journal of Environmental Management, 92(12), 3049–3057. Pröbstl-Haider, U., Lund-Durlacher, D., Antonschmidt, H., & Hödl, C. (2018). Mountain bike tourism in Austria and the Alpine region – Towards a sustainable model for multi-stakeholder product development. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 26(4), 567–582. Ravenscroft, N. (2016). Tales from the tracks: Discourses of constraint in the use of mixed cycle and walking routes. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 39(1), 27–44. Rérat, P. (2021). The rise of the e-bike: Towards an extension of the practice of cycling? Mobilities, 16(3), 423–439. Roberts, L., Jones, G., & Brooks, R. (2018). Why do you ride?: A characterization of mountain bikers, their engagement methods, and perceived links to mental health and well-being. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1642. Ruff, A.R., & Mellors, O. (2007). The mountain bike - The dream machine? Landscape Research, 18(3), 104–109. Shimano. (2022). Examining attitudes towards e-bike usage in 12 European countries. Shimano. Available at: https://lifestylebike.shimano.com/_assets/images/stories/ 2022/state-of-the-nation/shimano-state-of-the-nation-2022.pdf Spratt, E. (2021). 6 environmental initiatives in the bike industry: Recycled batteries, carbon neutral production & more. Pinkbike. Available at: https://www.pinkbike. com/news/6-environmental-initiatives-in-the-bike-industry-recycled-batteries-carbonneutral-production-and-more.html Statista. (2023). E-bikes: Worldwide sales 2023. Statista. Available at: https://www. statista.com/statistics/255653/worldwide-sales-of-electric-bicycles/ UK Government. (2021). Electric bikes: Licensing, tax and insurance. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/electric-bike-rules

62  Lesley Ingram-Sills UNFCC. (2022). Maintaining a clear intention to keep 1.5°C within reach | UNFCCC. Available at: https://unfccc.int/maintaining-a-clear-intention-to-keep-15degc-withinreach van Cauwenberg, J., de Bourdeaudhuij, I., Clarys, P., de Geus, B., & Deforche, B. (2018). Older e-bike users: Demographic, health, mobility characteristics, and cycling levels. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 50(9), 1780–1789. Weiss, F., Brummer, T.J., & Pufal, G. (2016). Mountain bikes as seed dispersers and their potential socio-ecological consequences. Journal of Environmental Management, 181, 326–332.

Part II

Mountain biking bodies

Chapter 4

A sociology of how things go wrong in mountain biking Falling into place Mike Lloyd

Introduction Videos showing professional or highly skilled mountain bikers are freely available on the Internet in large numbers. In the early days of mountain biking these were often directly created by riders themselves using action cameras like the GoPro. The growing monetisation of social media has bolstered moves to professionally film and edit such videos (see Thorpe, 2017); nevertheless, the GoPro remains a popular filming device, especially amongst ‘ordinary’ mountain bikers. Furthermore, the rough and ready nature of lay-produced mountain biking videos does not stop them from gaining significant viewership on social media platforms, as the two videos featured below exemplify. One is no longer publicly available, but when the event it captured was current it did go ‘viral’, whereas the second is still available on YouTube (‘over the bars …’), and at the time of writing has over six million views. It should be noted that both events have been used as case studies for separate articles in social science journals (see Lloyd, 2017, 2019), so the discussion below is considerably condensed; nevertheless, there is value in taking the two together. As the chapter’s title indicates, the focus here is on ‘how things go wrong’, and whereas the nature of the wrong outcomes differs in the two videos both have the advantage of showing how mundane social processes underlie events that are far from ordinary. The first video shows what in retrospect seems a silly, easily avoided conflict. Two male mountain bikers are separately riding an exciting downhill track, but as one is slightly faster, they soon come together, whereupon they argue about how any overtaking should be facilitated. They cannot reach agreement, and at the end of the track there is a physical scuffle, heated enough for the filming rider to take the video to the police to press a charge of assault, which is successful. The second video shows a larger number of riders of varied ability out for a weekend ride, where the difference in skill levels is highlighted at an innocuous-looking ‘gap jump’. Three of the men gather in an unplanned manner beside the jump, forming a spectating group as the fifth rider approaches the jump. Unfortunately, the rider fails to clear

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361626-7

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the jump and is knocked unconscious from a hard face-first landing, whereupon the three other riders rush to his aid. As he comes to consciousness, they tell him what happened, and since he has no memory of the crash, the rider seems to accept lack of speed as the central explanatory factor. Choosing to focus on a fight and a crash is not driven by the appeal of the spectacular, rather it stems from an interactionist approach within the socalled mobility turn that is interested, as Smith (2021) has cogently summarised, in the co-constitutive organisation of action, space, and movement as embodied phenomena. More specifically, the approach here is heavily influenced by the sociological tradition of ethnomethodology. Harold Garfinkel, its founder,1 set out the logic as follows: In accounting for the persistence and continuity of the features of concerted actions, sociologists commonly select some set of stable features of an organization of activities and ask for the variables that contribute to their stability. An alternative procedure would appear to be more economical: to start with a system with stable features and ask what can be done to make for trouble. (1963, p.187) Garfinkel devised several infamous ‘breaching demonstrations’ that made trouble in the social order, the point being that manufactured breaks in the order of interaction tell us much about the taken-for-granted practices sustaining intersubjectivity. This precedent provides good reason for focussing on cases of mountain biking that showcase failure or ruptures of the ordinary. Consistent with Garfinkel’s ethnomethodological inquiry, this chapter examines presuppositions, tacit knowledges, and pre-cognitive corporeal processes that are part of mountain biking action, but rather than specifying this generally there will be an attempt to find empirical data that make these identifiable within specific kinds of interaction. The latter point has led to ethnomethodology’s strong preference for ‘naturalistic data’, which in turn has meant a strong tradition of work with video data (Ball & Smith, 2011; Heath et al., 2010). Within such work, there is some commentary on the technical aspects and methodology of video analysis (e.g., Laurier, 2010a), but there is usually more emphasis on showing the worth of this approach through actual empirical analysis. The ethnomethodological approach differs from well-known discussion of video and cycling research (Brown & Spinney, 2010; Spinney, 2015), despite apparent similarities.2 For example, Brown and Spinney (2010) are critical of the dominance of transport geography in cycling research, suggesting that it relies on a limited tool kit emphasising rationality and prediction. In contrast, they argue there is a need for methods that unlock the ‘unspeakable’ meanings of cycling residing in the sensory, embodied, and social nature of its performance. They suggest that mobile video data are one such means to help ‘understand and

A sociology of how things go wrong in mountain biking  67

represent the embodied, the momentary, the emotional and the sensual’ (Brown & Spinney, 2010, p.141). This is broadly compatible with the ethnomethodological approach, however, it lacks ethnomethodology’s single-minded focus on the social, which as Livingston has put it wishes to describe ‘what is social about the social world’ (2008, p.123). Moreover, ethnomethodology is not so much interested in ‘unspeakable meanings’, arguing that despite the theoretical uncertainty of interaction, in practice amidst the ‘and so on’ of social life, uncertainties are repaired, and recognisable action is accomplished. The above points have been explicated in theoretical discussions (see Heritage & Maynard, 2022), but the strength of the ethnomethodological approach in the context of mountain biking lies in its thoroughgoing emphasis on empirical inquiry, hence the reliance below on two case studies. The goal here is to focus on visible social interaction seen in the two action-camera videos. Through close attention to sequential detail, we see how what happens ‘falls into place’, that is, we gain a close feel for how a fight on a mountain bike track and a crash at a gap jump occur as situated social events. A limited number of graphic transcripts are used to visually supplement what can be said in words. The video case studies Hereafter the first video is referred to as ‘the Fight’ and the second as ‘Andy’s Crash’. The Fight captures just over five minutes of mountain biking that occurred in 2012. The action camera video of the Fight was posted on social media in an attempt to gain the name of a mountain biker who the recording rider wished the police to prosecute over an alleged assault. Gaining the name was successful and a well-reported court case ensued (see Lloyd, 2017); because of the publicity over the event, the actual names of the two riders are used below. I was given a copy of the video by VitalMTB who had it posted among numerous mountain biking videos for several years (unfortunately the video is no longer posted, but readers keen to view the video can contact the author who will arrange to share a copy). The Andy’s Crash video is still available on YouTube (see ‘Over the Bars Mountainbike Crash’, 2023). I became aware of it through my regular viewing of mountain biking videos and made a quick decision that it was worthy of sociological analysis (for the full analysis see Lloyd, 2019). The fight This event features two male mountain bikers riding the Flying Nun track on the Port Hills, Christchurch, New Zealand. Jordan Brizzell, in his 20s, rides a full-suspension bike and wears a helmet-mounted camera, turning it on at the beginning of the track. Aaron Dalton, in his 40s, rides an older ‘hardtail’

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mountain bike, and as Brizzell begins filming at the track’s start, Dalton is already riding ahead of him. Brizzell sets out, quickly gaining pace, enjoying the ride as he descends the dry track, taking turns at speed, and getting airborne from the track’s rocks and humps. After just over a minute’s riding, he comes upon Dalton riding ahead of him. Even in the first few seconds something significant happens, as glimpsed in Figure 4.1. Panel 1 of Figure 4.1 shows the clear silhouette of Brizzell with the camera on his helmet riding down upon Dalton. The two are strangers to each other and at first contact there is no talk; nevertheless, their situation is explicable at-a-glance. Brizzell has available the self-typification ‘faster rider’, which simultaneously places Dalton into a ‘slower rider’ category. In panels 2 and 3, we see Dalton approach and ride a corner, taking the outside line as opposed to the inner divergent line. Importantly, from panels 3 and 4, we can see that when Brizzell gets to the corner he takes the inner line, effectively accomplishing a ‘slow and show’ action. The inner line could be marginally quicker, but in this case, Brizzell’s rightward steer (panel 4) shows he has slowed his momentum, at the same time showing his presence to Dalton. At about panel 4, Dalton’s head turns in Brizzell’s direction, so it is likely here he is aware of Brizzell’s presence. In panel 5, just after the corner we see that a space of about two bike lengths opens between the men. Although this constitutes only four seconds of riding together, in it we see conformity to the moral order of ‘mobile formations’ (see McIlvenny, 2014). That is, a faster rider does not simply rush up onto a front rider’s back wheel and attempt to pass; there is first a form of civil entrainment to the front rider’s existing pace. Dalton is concentrating on the track ahead of him, probably aware of Brizzell riding behind him; but a normal course of action in this case is not for him to immediately stop, rather it is common to wait and see what will transpire, especially because he is riding at a decent pace on a narrow and tricky track, and this takes most of his concentration. In contrast, Brizzell is looking forward to the space between him and Dalton, it is his riding pace and direction that mainly determines the nature of this following space. At the same time, every moment behind Dalton is time spent not riding the track in the style and pace that Brizzell desires. Perhaps because of this, Brizzell begins to press forward on Dalton, beginning their movement into a disputed mobile formation. From his position following closely behind, Brizzell then calls out to Dalton, ‘do you mind if I speed past?’ There is no audible response, so Brizzell yells ‘HEY’, then repeats his request, ‘do you mind if I overtake?’, to which we hear Dalton say ‘nah, go for it’. This unexpected response invites an elaboration of the original request: ‘give me a spot otherwise we’ll have an accident’; however, Dalton does not offer this. In this limbo position, Brizzell resorts to ‘tailgating’ Dalton as a means to reiterate his position as the faster rider wishing to pass. Moreover, here he invokes a rule to amplify what he clearly believes is his natural right to pass. He says to Dalton, ‘it’s called trail courtesy,

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Figure 4.1 First contact.

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you let people who are faster go around ya’. This also gains no immediate response, and in consequence it is very clear that Brizzell is significantly frustrated and agitated about not being let past. This is demonstrated, for example, by Brizzell riding onto rocks above Dalton and landing very close to his back wheel. The next significant development occurs after just over two minutes of riding in this disputed formation. Again, it deserves a figure to capture the detail of the event. Consider Figure 4.2. This figure needs to be considered in relation to the first contact between Brizzell and Dalton. There, Brizzell was able to control the speed and position of his bike in order to politely show his presence to Dalton. In the four seconds of action seen in Figure 4.2, we can assume that Brizzell has not suddenly lost the ability to control his speed and position. Now, later than he would have liked, Brizzell gets what he has asked for: Dalton pulls aside giving him ready access to the lead position on the track. In the first two panels of Figure 4.2, we see there are about three bike lengths between the two riders, and in this position, Brizzell can clearly see Dalton slow, unclip his left foot from the pedal, and take a shortcut to the left of the main track direction (a loop). Brizzell directly follows Dalton’s route into the shortcut. The third panel is the most interesting here. We see that Dalton has gone off-track and with his left foot out is just about to stop. This means that right here Brizzell can take the space offered and easily accomplish his requested pass. It is no surprise then, with over two metres separating them, that Brizzell directs his wheel left to the open track, appearing ready to go into the opening provided by Dalton. The big surprise, however, is the abrupt change in direction to the right, with Brizzell instead riding directly at where Dalton is stopping (see panels 4 and 5). After panel 5 of the figure, Brizzell rides into Dalton’s left foot as he stops. Dalton reacts by turning to face Brizzell, grabbing his bike’s handlebar, which slightly alarms Brizzell as he says, ‘Jeez, what are you doing?’ Nothing untoward happens as Dalton simply turns his head away and explains he is ‘letting you go’. Brizzell does indeed move here into lead position on the track, but what we cannot see is that while this occurs Dalton leaves the track and rides onto a road which is close by. It is from here, about a minute later, that Dalton re-enters the track in front of Brizzell, meaning that once again the ‘faster rider’ has to ride behind Dalton. Given the layout of road and track below it, Dalton’s re-entry and return to the lead was most probably coincidental. Brizzell was not to know this as he was busy riding the track, however, there is good reason to suggest that he very easily could have assumed it was intentional. Garfinkel’s well-known work on the documentary method of interpretation (Garfinkel, 1967) alerts us to the way that meaning is given to a collection of pieces from a flow of action, then as the action is characterised, subsequent individual pieces align with the initial characterisation. Thus, Brizzell may have built a picture of Dalton as an uncooperative rule-breaker,

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Figure 4.2 Space ceded but not taken.

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whereby his dropping back into the lead is interpreted as consistent with this rule-breaking nature that was there right from the beginning. When both men reach the end of the track, Brizzell’s anger is still strong. As Dalton dismounts and begins moving to the road, Brizzell immediately complains that in not letting him pass, Dalton was being ‘really rude’. Equally, it becomes apparent that Dalton has his own complaints about Brizzell’s actions. Perhaps this relates to the fact that even if not immediately, Dalton did cede space to Brizzell, an offering that was not taken, resulting in a minor collision between the two. Dalton’s response to Brizzell’s reiterated complaint is to directly rebut it, saying that it was Brizzell who was ‘fucken rude’, elaborating and amplifying with, ‘I don’t need a fucken lecture while I’m doing a ride’. He suggests Brizzell shut his mouth or risk having it shut for him, and we see Dalton’s arm come out to flick Brizzell, who immediately exclaims ‘that’s assault mate!’ This only prompts Dalton into some shoving, after which he is seen leaving the track. As he leaves, Brizzell shouts to his back, ‘it’s on video, mate, it’s on video, every second of it’, whereupon Dalton returns down the track, with his hands coming towards Brizzell’s helmet. As the view from the helmet-mounted camera tips skyward, we hear Brizzell exclaim, ‘argh, don’t, fuck off’, then the video goes blank. It is clear from the still-running sound recording though, that a scuffle is taking place, and we hear these sounds for several seconds before the video ends. In retrospect, the conflict was very easily avoided, but the advantage of hindsight is clearly not manifest when you are travelling at speeds over 30 kilometres per hour on a narrow and relatively challenging track. In trying to understand this fascinating event, we should not forget that the experience the track affords is significant. The two men were there for the buzz of a fast and flowy ride, with some technical challenges, but before they knew it both had disrupted the other’s access to the experience riding the track would usually afford (on ‘haptic pleasures’ of mountain biking, see Brown, 2017). Brizzell obviously could not proceed at the pace he desired; but equally obviously, Dalton rode with a tailgating rider breathing down his neck. It might seem obvious that this was partly his own fault in that he did not stop early to let Brizzell pass, but in fact there is no clearly written rule of mountain biking conduct that explains how such overtaking should be facilitated. In this case, the invocation of a rule of mountain biking etiquette was not helpful, rather it led to a sense of annoyance in Dalton about being ‘lectured’ while trying to enjoy his ride. The switch from the ‘slow and show’ move, to the shortening of the accountable gap between the two, and then into tailgating, occurred remarkably quickly, simultaneously producing dangerous emotions in both men. Violence surfaced at the end of the track partly because of the verbal pursuit of some recognition of wrongdoing; however, this should not be seen as a prime cause of the violence, but as one element of the multimodal and embodied organisation of action in space while mobile.

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As Laurier (2010b) has importantly noted regarding automobile driving, a great deal of mobile action is ‘pre-cognitive’ in nature. This is apt for the current case: even when Dalton did eventually cede space for Brizzell to pass, it seems that the power of pursuing an account of Dalton’s ‘wrongdoing’ took over Brizzell’s intentionality, redirecting him toward the wrongdoer, further complicating their troubled experience on the track. This is worth reflecting on given the common characterisation of ethnomethodology as a promotion of subjectivism. As Hilbert has cogently argued, ethnomethodology is not individualistic in focus, rather it argues that ‘nobody is ever ‘free’ to do just anything and have it count as competent membership. There is just as much constraint, on everyone, as Durkheim imagined …’ (2009, p.171). So, just as it takes two to tango, both riders put together an unfortunate tangle of intentions, rights, obligations, courtesies, violations, and identities, with significant constraining force. Andy’s crash This event features five male mountain bikers riding a track in the Surrey Hills, United Kingdom. From the video we can take the names of two of the group: Tim, who is the filming rider, and Andy who has the crash; the names of the other three riders are unknown and they are referred to here as R2, R3, and R4, the number corresponding to their chronological appearance in the video. It is not clear from the video who among the riders knows each other, though it does seem that Andy is unknown to Tim; this lack of knowledge makes no material difference in the following discussion. The video begins with Tim riding down the track, filming his ride, coming to a small gap jump which he successfully clears. Then he stops and walks his bike back to the jump, just as R2 and R3 approach it. The detail of what happens here is portrayed in Figure 4.3. It may be fortuitous that RC is alongside the gap jump when R2 and R3 appear, nonetheless, he clearly stops to watch, showing that the gap jump is marked as a space where significant mountain biking action can be viewed. This focus also means that riding in such a place can be scrutinised in terms of competence within a community of practice. This aspect is exemplified in the contrast between R2’s and R3’s riding of the jump: the former comfortably clears it, and because the two are riding in a ‘flow file’ (see Lloyd, 2019), R3 knows that he also has sufficient speed to clear the gap. Despite this, in panels 4 and 5 we see that R3 brakes just before the up-ramp, then rolls through the middle. Then, as he nears the stationary Tim, he says ‘oh no’, the words and his facial expression clearly expressing disappointment at not having attempted the jump. Tim tells R3 to ride past him and it is very clear from the repetition of ‘you had enough speed’ that a mundane instance of instructive practice is occurring. This is grounded in the visibility of their being together, rather than more distant knowledge or experience. RC’s ‘lesson’ to R3 does

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Figure 4.3 Accountability at the gap jump.

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not come in reference to his own clearance of the jump, as R3 has not seen this, rather, what is key is that R2 and R3 have just then been in a flow file, thus both Tim and R3 have seen R2 clear the jump, and both know that R3 was riding at the same speed as R2, hence was set up to take on the gap jump. This is what makes the ‘accountability’ of R3’s failure to take on the jump so natural and normatively expectable. Then, as Tim repeats ‘you had enough speed’, R4 appears on the track, crests the up-ramp, and gains good air through the jump. His landing is a bit heavy, which takes him off track into some undergrowth, and we hear him laughing about this slight failure. R4’s laughter, along with expressing relief, seems to do the communicative work of recognising that something went slightly wrong in his riding of the gap jump. Tim and R3 see this but make no comment, and then as they turn back to the jump we see Andy, riding solo, approaching the jump. Figure 4.4 captures key moments. Compared to the other riders who have either cleared the jump (Tim, R2, R4), or pulled out (R3), Andy approaches at a slightly slower speed with a lower centre of gravity on his bike (see panel 1). Almost immediately upon leaving the up-ramp his front wheel dips (panel 2), and this combined with his lower speed, means that his front wheel lands inside the exit side of the jump (panel 4), where his momentum then catapults him over the front wheel. He lands face first, the severity of the landing leading to R3 immediately rushing to him while Tim exclaims ‘fuck, fuck, fuck’. R4 lifts the bike away from Andy, while R3 begins to turn him over. All we hear from Andy is a heavy breathing sound, just like snoring. RC quickly insists that Andy be left on his side, and instructs R3 to ‘call 999 now!’, as it is clear that he has been knocked unconscious in the heavy face-first landing. At this point, R2 rejoins the riders, and they are now all gathered attending to Andy. After a few minutes Andy regains consciousness, sits up, and begins talking. Three times he asks, ‘what happened?’, making it clear he has no memory of the event. In response R3 has no trouble in explaining, ‘you just took the jump too slowly. and you went straight over the handlebars’. Adding to this account, R2 walks over to the jump and indicates in the dirt where Andy’s front wheel landed. Collectively the riders who witnessed the crash offer a seamless explanation, which given Andy’s ‘wiped memory’ appears to be accepted at face value. The point here is not to dispute this, but to note that in the process other elements of detail go unremarked. One can be noted by reconstructing the scene that would have faced Andy as he approached the gap jump. This is provided in Figure 4.5. The figure is comprised of a screenshot taken from when Tim approached the gap jump, with the insertion of ovals for the location of the witnessing riders. Because R4 had gone off the track a little after his heavy landing, he is some distance away, but Tim and R3 certainly constitute a close and significant spectating presence for Andy as he approaches the gap jump. It would

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Figure 4.4 Andy’s crash.

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Figure 4.5 Andy’s view approaching the jump.

be too strong to say that the presence of the three riders ‘caused’ Andy to take on the gap jump; however, the visible presence of the three is certainly salient in the event. The fact that prior to Andy’s crash R3 had pulled out of the jump with Tim present in front of him shows why we need subtlety in finding ways to discuss the admixture of elements present in Andy’s crash. Woermann’s work (2017) adapting Heidegger’s term ‘Speilraum’ is useful in this regard. Based on video analysis and observational work in a German freeskiing ‘funpark’, Woermann draws attention to the centrality of sites of watching and being watched. Whereas in a freeskiing funpark there are often many more spectators than is the case with Andy’s crash, this transfers nicely to gap jumps as a site of action in mountain biking. First, Woermann emphasises that spectating and performing depend on each other, but they do not necessarily complement each other. That is, a skilled spectator ‘will position himself and organise his watching in such a way that he clearly focuses on the style of the tricks without interrupting the flow of conduct’ (2017, p.234). A ‘speilraum’ is an opening up of a space in which creative physical expression can be enacted, but while to some degree it channels such activity, within it ‘a bodily move cannot be projected as fully fixed and pre-determined in all its details since stable movement requires countless minute adaptations to various situational particulars’ (2017, p.235). The implication here is that once a freeskiing kicker/jump or mountain biking gap jump is built for creative expression and given the understanding that these are sites of watching, there is the ever-present possibility for things to go wrong.

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This is clearly the case with Andy’s crash (and also occurs in freeskiing, snowboarding, skateboarding). From what we see on the video Andy does not appear to be an experienced rider of gap jumps,3 so the visible presence of three other mountain bikers in front of him watching his riding, seems a significant kind of spectatorship. Any commentary after the event, such as that here, is not sitting in judgement of the gathered mountain bikers; nevertheless, there is an apposite term within legal discourse to think with: ‘demurrer’. It is not frequently used in its everyday ‘objection’ sense, but its older legal use is relevant. According to Merriam-Webster (2023), it can be a ‘plea in response to an allegation that admits its truth but also asserts that it is not sufficient as a cause of action’. This neatly alerts us to the incontrovertible presence of the gathered riders in front of Andy, but in no way enters us into an impossible search for causation, nor into the voluminous academic discussion on generalisation versus case-study particulars (e.g., see Tavory & Timmermans, 2014). In contrast to the precedent offered when riding in a flow file, Andy had no one to show him the requisite speed or style. As in R3’s example, this could have led to a decision to bail out just as much as it could have provided an exemplar for how to ride the gap jump. Of course, we cannot get inside Andy’s head to see what he was thinking, but careful consideration of the video means we cannot discount the effect of the gathering in front of him being a disastrous ‘just do it’ force. This is not to say that the watching mountain bikers should have foreseen their role in the crash; it is more useful to say that the event involved an unpredictable array of elements that ‘fell into place’. Even the most minor comment, glance, or movement is part of a practical course of action, created by corporeal processes that may themselves be beyond the direct awareness of participants. Such contingency, the ever-present unknown, may be part of the pleasures of mountain biking even if occasionally leading to dreadful crashes. Mountain biking is an activity where the pleasure of flow is delicately balanced with ever-present risk (see Taylor & Carr, 2023). Discussion The word sociology can be defined from its Latin and Greek stems as the study of the processes of companionship (Abercrombie et al., 1984). In everyday usage, companionship has a positive accent, something that most sociology with its emphasis on inequality, conflict, and power does not much emphasise. The sociality of cycling can indeed be studied in a positive sense: witness Batterbury and Manga (2022) who by ‘sociality’ tend to mean ‘conviviality and social relationships’ enabled by things like cycle workshops, organised rides, sub-cultural groups, and the like, where affiliative aspects of sociality may predominate. Above, my focus on sociality has been more in the sense of interaction and has not made assumptions about the positive benefits of social engagement in

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cycling. The ethnomethodological framework adopted here led to an attempt to discover how intelligible patterns of behaviour are actually being constructed and negotiated on the spot, this being premised on the notion that ‘every situation has different patterns of order that are required for the coherence of action within that situation’ (Rawls 2002, p.30). This also helps explain the decision to offer two video-based case studies rather than a numerical overview of mountain biking practices, an extensive listing and reviewing of relevant literature, or conceptual development. The payoff to this approach, hopefully, is a re-appreciation of detail. To borrow a phrase from Macbeth (2012, p.207), I have been interested in ‘the standing miracle of strangers-in-concert’, where it should be emphasised that ‘miracle’ is not necessarily taken to be productive of beneficial things. The point is we can throw strangers, like mountain bikers, together and they will produce social order, which after the act of production, can be characterised as positive or negative, and many shades in between. The need for detail arises because many times the characterisation of the social action occurs virtually simultaneous with the production of order. Verbal actions are not always needed to establish order; either way, there is no time out from the accountability of visible social interaction. Specifically, the mountain bikers featured in the videos were able to recognise and produce social order in the stream of conduct. A number of features were detailed, including at first contact with a ‘slower’ rider, adapting line and speed to show oneself, thus initially at least enacting common etiquette; making a polite verbal request to pass; in the face of unexpected actions, making visible one’s frustration and agitation, and then invoking a rule; hearing the invocation of a rule, but following it in a contingent fashion; offering space to pass; upon social conflict with another, leaving the activity at hand (Dalton’s exit from the track to the road); riding in a flow file; knowing that a gap jump is a place to gather and spectate; offering guidance after a ‘failure’ at the gap jump; showing disappointment, accountably, over failing to clear the gap jump; seeing three other mountain bikers gathered at the gap jump; helping an unconscious rider; and, offering a ‘natural’ account of the crash. Whereas both videos discussed here have been highly viewed, I would not call them ‘spectacular’ in the sense that applies to watching a mountain biker clear a 10-metre gap jump, or successfully drop off a near-vertical cliff, and so on. But they are notable. Once the detail is looked for, that notability is seen to stem from a bedrock of accumulated mundane actions. Because mundane actions are so taken for granted it is easy to forget them; nonetheless, in the unavoidable way in which one thing leads to another, they build into the familiar actions which comprise our society, and its sub-components. Here, I hope to have shown how aspects of the culture of mountain biking can be usefully approached through a focus on competency and interaction as everyday social processes, finely organised through visibly accountable practices.

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Notes 1 Ethnomethodology developed within American sociology from the 1950s, with its foundational text being Harold Garfinkel’s Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967). Heritage (1984) offers a comprehensive overview of this work, and Heritage and Maynard (2022) offer the most recent summary of ethnomethodology’s legacy and future prospects. 2 Also note that the ethnomethodological approach differs from more recent work on the structuring effects of video capture, display, and distribution as commonly analysed in regard to other action sports, like skateboarding (Hollett & Hein, 2019), snowboarding, and surfing (Thorpe, 2017). 3 Andy is riding a full-suspension bike that looks relatively new. He is certainly not wearing expensive mountain biking clothing – he wears a tee-shirt and long trousers – perhaps suggesting he is not a frequent rider. However, the comment that he does not appear an experienced rider of gap jumps is mainly based on the close observation of his technique before and through the jump – he does not ‘pump’ off the first side of the jump, which is a common way of gaining height over a gap.

References Abercrombie, N., Hill, S., & Turner, B. (1984). The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Ball, M., & Smith, G. (2011). Ethnomethodology and the visual: Practices of looking, visualisation, and embodied action, in Margolis, E., & Pauwel, L. (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Visual Research Methods (pp. 392–413). London: Sage. Batterbury, S., & Manga, A. (2022). The sociality of cycling, in Norcliffe, G. (Ed.), Routledge Companion to Cycling (pp. 42–51). Abingdon: Routledge. Brown, K. (2017). The haptic pleasures of ground-feel: The role of textured terrain in motivating regular exercise. Health & Place, 46, 307–314. Brown, K., & Spinney, J. (2010). Catching a glimpse: The value of video in evoking, understanding and representing the practice of cycling, in Fincham, B., & Mcguinness, M. (Eds.), Mobile Methodologies (pp. 130–151). Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. ‘demurrer’. (2023). Merriam-Webster online dictionary entry. Available at: https:// merriam-webster.com/dictionary/demurrer [accessed 27 January 2023]. Garfinkel, H. (1963). A conception of, and experiments with, ‘trust’ as a condition of stable concerted actions, in Harvey, O. (Ed.), Motivation and Social Interaction (pp. 187–238). New York: Ronald Press. Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Heath, C., Hindmarsh, J., & Luff, P. (2010). Video in Qualitative Research: Analysing Social Interaction in Everyday Life. Los Angeles: Sage. Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity. Heritage, J., & Maynard, D. (2022). The Ethnomethodology Program: Legacies and Prospects. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hilbert, R. (2009). Ethnomethodology and social theory, in Turner, B. (Ed.), The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory (pp. 159–178). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Hollett, T., & Hein, R. (2019). Affective atmospheres and skatepark sessions: The spatiotemporal contours of interest. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 23, 1–13. Laurier, E. (2010a). Being there/seeing there: Recording and analysing life in the car, in Fincham, B., & Mcguinness, M. (Eds.), Mobile Methodologies (pp. 103–117). Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

A sociology of how things go wrong in mountain biking  81 Laurier, E. (2010b). Driving: Pre-cognition and driving, in Merriman, P., & Cresswell, T. (Eds.), Geographies of Mobilities (pp. 69–81). Abingdon: Taylor & Francis. Livingston, E. (2008). Ethnographies of Reason. Aldershot: Ashgate. Lloyd, M. (2017). When rules go awry: A single case analysis of cycle rage. Human Studies, 40(4), 681–706. Lloyd, M. (2019). You just took the jump too slowly: A single case analysis of a mountain biking crash. Social Interaction: Video-based Studies of Human Sociality, 2(2). Available at: https://tidsskrift.dk/socialinteraction/article/view/113197/161844 Macbeth, D. (2012). Some notes on the play of basketball in its circumstantial detail, and an introduction to their occasion. Human Studies, 35, 193–208. McIlvenny, P. (2014). Velomobile formations-in-action: Biking and talking together. Space and Culture, 17(2), 137–156. ‘Over the Bars Mountain Bike Crash’ YouTube video. Available at: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=ek4yFrMvjMo [accessed 27 January 2023]. Rawls, A. (2002). Editor’s Introduction, in Garfinkel, H. (Ed.), Ethnomethodology’s program (pp. 1–64). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Smith, R. (2021). Space, mobility, and interaction, in vom Lehm, D., Ruiz-Junco, N., & Gibson, W. (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism (pp. 231–241). Abingdon: Routledge. Spinney, J. (2015). Close encounters? Mobile methods, (post)phenomenology and affect. Cultural Geographies, 22(2), 231–246. Taylor, S., & Carr, A. (2023). Living in the moment: Mountain bikers’ search for flow. Annals of Leisure Research, 26(2), 285–299. Tavory, I., & Timmermans, S. (2014). Abductive Analysis: Theorizing Qualitative Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Thorpe, H. (2017). Action sports, social media, and new technologies: Towards a research agenda. Communication & Sport, 5(5), 554–578. Woermann, N. (2017). ‘It’s really strange when nobody is watching’: Enactive intercorporeality and the spielraum of practices in freeskiing, in Meyer, C., & von Wedelstaedt, U. (Eds.), Moving Bodies in Interaction – Interacting Bodies in Motion (pp. 215–241). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Chapter 5

An exploration into the sensory experience of pain in mountain biking Benjamin Moreland

Introduction When hitting a drop on a mountain bike, the holy grail is to make sure both wheels hit the ground at the same time. This is the hope and most of the time it doesn’t work out, at least for me. The key to getting both wheels to land at the same time is in the take-off. In attempting to carry speed, you should manoeuvre the bike in a way that allows the body to ever so slightly feel like it is moving backwards, whilst the arms push the bike forwards and at the angle of the landing. When dialled, it should feel something like the words above. If you are going too slow, you need to work much harder. Here, you need to manual or wheelie the bike, otherwise your front wheel will be in the air and point down whilst the rear is still grounded. And this is what happened to me. I was working hard to point the bike in the angle of the landing but soon realised my rear tyre was grounded. There was nothing for me to grab as I fell, smashing my shoulder into a tree. My legs collided with the bike, and I slid what felt like meters down the trail. As I assessed the situation, I began to realise that I was in a lot of pain.

The above passage has been taken from reflective fieldnotes collected during an ethnographic study that focuses on the lived experience of mountain bikers. The passage articulates the experience of crashing during a drop section on a trail and provides insight into how the crash happened and the consequent pain that ensured. The experience shared is drawn from 100 hours of observations and fieldnotes, focussing upon one unique and common encounter for riders; crashing. The bodily and sensual experiences of riders are vast, and data collection indicates unique haptic and somatic aspects. Here, however, I draw upon pain to explore the sensory experience it evokes, the dimensions of pain I might experience, and the role played by various social and cultural influences such as emotion, anger, and fear. Therefore, the chapter examines the intersections between the historical and policy context of mountain biking (Cherrington, 2021), existing sensory research in sport, and the role an autoethnography in exploring sensory experiences of pain.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361626-8

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Mountain biking: The historical and policy context Wheaton (2013) notes non-traditional sports, often referred to as action, extreme, or lifestyle sport, have proliferated in contemporary Western culture. These sports decorate culture(s) we are part of; they influence our dress, language, friendships and very being. The growth of these sports since the turn of the millennium has been astonishing, with Statista (2022) noting that participation in extreme sports in England has reached a high of 3.4 million in the year 2018/2019. This figure is even more staggering given that the percentage increase since 2015 is over 54% (Statista, 2022). The World Economic Forum’s (2019) research on participation in the experience economy, of which these non-traditional sports are a part, suggests that 78% of millennials prefer to spend their income on desirable experiences rather than material goods. This research also indicates that the phenomenon is not confined to those in their youth; it extends to all age ranges and social groups (King, 2010). Finally, Newcomb (2020) suggests post pandemic, there has been a 117% increase in mountain bike sales in the last year. This growth of lifestyle sports has not gone unnoticed at the policy and governmental level, even if its presence has wavered over the last two decades (Gilchrist and Wheaton, 2017). According to the Australian Government, lifestyle and individualistic sports are one of the most important mega trends of the 21st century and contrast markedly with the declining rates in traditional sports (Hajkowicz et al., 2013). In England, participation in traditional sports is declining and this is captured in a ‘Sporting Future – A New Strategy for an Active Nation’ (Gov, 2015). Here, an accommodating approach has been adopted towards lifestyle and informal sport. The strategy states: ‘Sports must be demand led, recognising the different motivations, attitudes and lifestyles of its potential customer base’ (Gov, 2015, p.20). Whilst mountain biking is an established sport in the contemporary policy context, it possesses a history that has been less recognised given its very recent legitimisation by the state in events such as the Olympics. We now move to explore the invention and history of contemporary mountain biking. Cherrington (2021) suggests that the history and invention of mountain biking is steeped in myth and legend. This tension exists in part because the notion of riding a bike over rough terrain has existed far longer than the commercialised and commodified ideals that are seen in the mountain bike landscapes today (Newcomb, 2020). Early examples of mountain biking could be seen in the 19th century, with most people using and adapting bicycles to ride over rough roads (MMMB, 2022). Yet, as people have chosen different and more challenging terrains to ride over, the modern bike has evolved significantly. Contemporary mountain bikes now possess 200 mm suspension, seat posts that drop into frames, and electronic gearing. What has remained the same during experience is the relationship between participant and machine.

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At present, there are genres attributed to mountain biking that demand a particular type of bike and equipment, to be ridden over specific topographic features. At a basic level, the rider needs only their body and a bike, but in contemporary cultural representations they possess an assemblage of further equipment deemed necessary (Cherrington, 2021). Examples include the helmet and body armour, accompanied by hip belts, eyewear, and gloves. This therefore suggests that considerations of mountain biking bodies need to be set against wider changes in sport and society (Cherrington, 2021), as well as contemporary understandings of mountain biking participation. Existing mountain biking research provides various entry points into the subculture. This research currently focuses on three key areas: identities (Rosen, 1993; Eassom, 2003; McCullough, 2013), ecologies (Brown and Lackova, 2017; Brown, 2017; Cherrington and Black, 2020), and politics (Gibbs and Holloway, 2019; Savre et al., 2009). However, what is apparent in this body of literature is the lack of consolidated investigations into the bodily and sensory experiences of mountain bike riders. It is here this chapter finds its point of departure. In what follows, I begin to address this lacuna, highlighting the salience of the senses and their centrality in the riding experience. The body, the senses, and the mountain bike Hockey and Allen-Collinson (2009) suggest that research on the sociology of the body and the senses has developed rapidly, addressing various dimensions of the body’s relationship with society. A major contribution in the last decades has been the work of Vannini et al. (2012), who dedicate time to discussing the sociology of the senses in a distinct way. Here Vannini et al. (2012) assert the sociology of the senses is an approach to bodily sensation that considers the meaning and influence of society on our sensual experience and understanding. Given the influence of social constructions upon sensual experience, Vannini et al. (2012) argue that this sensual experience is not passive, contending that because the senses are active in experience ‘their quality as products and practice, as action and interaction, as work and performance’ (2012, p.5) can be explored. Given this position, Vannini et al. (2012) argue that the senses are ready to be examined in their fullness by social and cultural scientists who may be intrigued by meaning and understanding. Therefore, it is here I look to explore sensual understandings and how this can illuminate the mountain biking experience. A point of departure from existing research on the senses and advocated by Allen-Collinson et al. (2018) is that research goes beyond Western interpretations of the five senses. Vannini et al. (2012) assert the naivety of the five senses, suggesting that this taken-for-granted position seeks to provide a one-dimensional external understanding, disregarding the internal or somatic

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sensual experience. Extending this, Paterson (2009) provides an alternate perspective, deconstructing sensation into our exteroceptive, haptic and interoceptive, somatic sensation. Utilising this, Vannini et al. (2012) delve deeper, and whilst not an exhaustive list, reach a total of 13 senses that the sociologist may want to consider. These include sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, proprioception (sense of internal organs), thermoception (sense of temperature), nocioception (sense of pain), thirst, hunger, kinaesthesia (sense of movement), and balance and polychronicity (sense of time). Second, they draw attention to the social significance of sensation. Whereas this might be examined from an anthropological standpoint, for Vannini et al. (2012) this examination is central to sociologists, driving their explorations from questions of what might be experienced to how these sensations are experienced. To date, several studies have responded to the calls of Paterson (2009) and Vannini et al. (2012) in exploring sensual experience beyond Western five senses. Within a cycling context, these are less visible, but there are some contributions that provide an entry point for those interested in two-wheeled experiences. For example, Spinney (2006) examined the role of movement (kinesthesis) amongst touring cyclists summiting Mont Ventoux. Spinney (2006) concluded that the coming together of bike and person creates a cycling hybrid that results in unique embodied rhythms and kinaesthetic sensations. The kinaesthetic rhythms unique to road riding include creating a smooth, consistent pedal stroke, selecting the right gearing for the gradient, and selecting whether to be in saddle or out of it. Loic Wacquant is credited with one of the most significant contributions to research on the body. Drawing upon habitus, his detailed autoethnography provides a unique insight into the role of the body in learning and experiencing boxing. Wacquant (2004) reveals the ways in which perceived cultural chaos is mediated by a culturally structured order, one in which the body plays a significant role. The bodily activities, such as sparring, are culturally constructed to develop the muscular, strong, and powerful boxing body. Wacquant’s (2004) contributions are illuminating and his advocacy of an insideout body, a researching body that also engages in the phenomena, are vital aspect to this chapter, since to write about the body from an observational viewpoint and to actively engage your researching body in the process is to ensure the fleshiest accounts and descriptions. Further research in combat sports from Downey (2005) discusses the role sound plays in the athletes understanding of capoeira. Downey’ (2005) findings demonstrate that sound and the auditory system play a significant role in fighters locating and feeling their way through sporting performances. Additionally, Spencer (2014) discusses the embodied experience of mixed martial artists (MMA) and explores the sensory experience of fighters. Spencer (2014) suggests that the unique tastes of blood and distinct smells of sweat shape the fighting experience. As such, Downey (2005) and Spencer (2014) demonstrate the subtle but important sensual dimensions that construct and shape

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the sporting experience for participants, and these contributions are significant when exploring the sensual experience of mountain bikers. Echoing Wacquant, Hagen, and Boyes (2016) highlight the positive affective responses drawn from bike riding, such as speeding down trails and weightlessness when jumping. These examples align well with kinaesthetic and balance sensations. Additionally, Brown (2017) provides a detailed insight into the haptic pleasures (touch and feel) of mountain bikers, with outcomes revealing the ways in which the body and bike interact with ground surfaces. Here, Brown (2017) reveals the significance of trail gradient, smoothness, and topography in the haptic experience of mountain bikers. The work of Spinney (2006), Brown (2017), and Hagen and Boyes (2016) not only demonstrates opportunities to research the sensual experience of cyclists but also reveals the paucity of current research. Phenomenology has also afforded researchers the opportunity to explore the sensual experience of sporting participants. Kerry and Armour (2000) provided the first substantial theoretical contribution, outlining the promise of phenomenology to deepen our understanding of the embodied, lived experience of participants. If Kerry and Armour (2000) are acknowledged as providing the first theoretical phenomenological forays in sport research, Hockey and Allen-Collinson are acknowledged as two seminal authors in the empirical literature. Hockey and Allen-Collinson have sought to typically utilise a sociologically inspired phenomenology. They bring together the works of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Schutz to explore the lived experience of sporting participants and their bodies within the social and cultural landscape. It is this theoretical foundation the chapters seek to utilise moving forward, drawing together the insights from Vannini et al. (2012) alongside those of sociological phenomenologists. Hockey and Allen-Collinson’s initial contributions lay the foundations for empirical phenomenological research on the body (Allen-Collinson & Hockey, 2007). Now established, contributions have focussed on the embodied experiences of scuba divers (Allen-Collinson & Hockey, 2015) and long-distance runners (Allen-Collinson & Hockey, 2015). Findings from these studies illustrate the importance of touch, specifically heat, and pressure in the lived experiences of these sports enthusiasts. These contributions have sought to provide vital insights into the embodied, fleshy experiences of sporting participants, alongside widening the appreciation of sensual aspects to consider a wider sensorium (Vannini et al., 2012). This widening of focus is vital to broaden sociology’s Eurocentric, visual bias, towards an expansive understanding of the body. Consequently, contributions from Allen-Collinson and Leledaki (2015) focus on haptic senses in outdoor leisure activity, the role of temperature in the lived experiences of distance runners (Allen-Collinson & Hockey, 2007), and the weathering body in high altitude climbers (Allen-Collison et al., 2019). These contributions seek to provide both an external and internal focus on sensory experience

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and respond to calls from Paterson (2009) to pay close attention to the somatic senses and their role in shaping experience. In the context of mountain biking, it is the work of Brown (2017) that has touched upon such fleshy and embodied experiences. Brown (2017) provides an understanding of the haptic pleasures of mountain bikers specifically in relation to surface or ground feel. Here, she uncovers the somatic sensations had by mountain bikers when creating resistance and pressure in aspects of jumping, dropping, and cornering. Furthermore, she uncovers haptic sensations related to speed and grip when searching for what bikers note as hold on the trail, alongside a kinaesthetic tactility when negotiating rock gardens and trail undulations, with one participant describing this somatic feeling as a massage, but from the inside. To this point, the literature has established a strong rationale for sensory research in mountain biking. In the closing section, the chapter now moves to present first-person accounts of the sensory experience of crashing on a trail. The discussion utilises work from the above commentaries to provide accounts of pain and address a current lacuna in lifestyle sport research. Pain Mountain biking involves risk, and for Bicknell (2016), this has often been characterised as psychological. However, Bicknell (2016) contends that risk perception is unique to each rider, possessing sensual and agentic elements that govern experience, and specifically how technology (the bike) helps inform our understandings of risk. Bicknell’s (2016) work on the experiences of female mountain bikers’ understandings of risks, in particular, presents a stepping stone to discussions regarding the less visible dimensions of pain. Drawing upon reflective diary from an ethnographic project, the remainder of this chapter explores one small, but important dimension of mountain biking, the pain of crashing. The crash in question provides a unique opportunity to discuss the sensual dimension of pain and the accompanying feelings of anxiety, emotion, sound, and heat. According to Leder (1990), I can understand how the body interacts with the mind and environment in two distinct modes: the dis-appearing and the dysappearing body. For Leder, the mode of the disappearing body involves a harmonised relationship between body, mind, and world, and is one where all three components work together. This harmonisation permits the body to almost disappear from awareness and consciousness, with individuals not having to think about what they are doing. This harmonisation is frequently experienced by mountain bikers. In purposefully, and successfully, riding a mountain bike trail, the body can be said to operate in a state of flow and absence. Conversely Leder’s (1990) second mode suggests a vastly different bodily awareness. Here, the body moves to the centre of consciousness, often triggered by an intense moment of disruption or pain. This reappearance of the body, something that has sat silently in the background until that point, now

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focuses all attention on that moment, disrupting the normal harmonisation of body and mind, and placing the dysfunctional body or body parts at the centre of attention. Thus, what Leder (1990) recognises is that pain, and the body’s experience of it, is a worthy sensory, social, and cultural encounter, something so significant it disrupts our everyday consciousness in complex ways. A closer examination of pain reveals that pain is more than a haptic or somatic sensation, encompassing emotion, biology, and physicality; an embodied, phenomenological understanding of pain that is mediated by culture (McNarry et al., 2021). This socially and culturally constructed understanding of pain has been utilised by researchers employing phenomenology as a theoretical backdrop in recent times, drawing together various points. In his investigation of MMA fighters, for instance, Spencer (2014) notes the feeling of loss and despair when encountering injury. Furthermore, Allen-Collinson (2005) deepens our understanding of culturally constructed pain to suggest that bodily encounters not only have a sensory dimension but can also involve social and emotional turmoil that is felt. For example, for the professional sports athlete, the encounter of pain might signify an excruciating pain in the knee, but it also bears the worries of the anger of not being able to play. Elsewhere, Monaghan (2001) provides a counter to negative pain when researching bodybuilders. Here, the participants described a juxtaposition between the negative pain felt in their final repetitions accompanied by a pleasurable pain of the pump after completion. Additionally, work from Hughes (2016) suggests the presence of pain in sports and leisure activities can act as a positive embodied experience. The following discussion builds on earlier negative understandings when exploring an experience during data collection. Here, studies by Leder (1990), Allen-Collinson et al. (2019), and Allen-Collinson (2005) provide useful tools for examination of the physical and emotional dimensions of auditory and thermoceptive experiences of pain. Sound, emotion, and anger Leder (1990) suggests that the physical dimension of pain, and the subsequent agony caused by trauma, can move the body from a dis-appearing to a dys-appearing position. For Leder, this reappearance of the body through physical pain demands the focus of one’s attention, attending to the various symptoms. It is this physical trauma accompanied by the emotion and anger of the injury that provides a full sense of the experience. Within a sensory dimension, Vannini et al. (2012) note a variety of sensory modes that interplay during the sporting experience and contest these modes are influenced by cultural and social factors that contribute to the sensory experience. An important sensory mode that exists for a mountain biker is that of sound. The auditory system provides constant feedback to the rider from the body, bike, and the external environment such as the notes from the drivetrain as it changes gear. This auditory attunement permits the rider to notice subtle

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changes in their fatigue, the performance of their bike, or external stimuli that can have an impact on their riding. A modest research literature has explored the auditory experience of sporting athletes such as Spencer (2014) and Downey (2005), yet there exists a lacuna that explores the sounds associated with pain. Whilst applicable to these analyses it is important to note the studies above discuss auditory encounters through social interaction, when here I seek to explore the felt sensation of sound. What follows are extracts from the crash that provide insight into the auditory experience of pain and how emotion contributes to a fuller sense of understanding the experience. Lying curled on my left side five meters from the drop, I realised that I had heard a break. I have been here before, that heart sinking moment when you hear that sound as it makes its way up to the brain. Before looking at the wounds, my other senses were telling me what I had done; I felt a pulsing in my shoulder, I knew there was damage there and recognised a throbbing in my left palm, where it felt like blood was pulsing out. I had a slight tingle in my right elbow, a warmth and stickiness under my top. I looked at my hand first. There was some blood, but I also saw a chunk of my palm flapping. I then inspect my fingers, and there it was. All looked generally in order, but when trying to move my middle and ring finger, the pain was excruciating. They were clearly broken. The feeling of physical pain was offset by the shock, sickness, and utter contempt I had for myself. ‘What on earth was I thinking?! I am not good enough to send that, so what the on earth were you playing at?!’ I reviewed the situation, moving quickly to separate myself from any blame. T was leading, was going too slow, bailed too late, so it was his fault, not mine. This provoked a rising anger in my stomach, a need and urge to place the fault elsewhere. This anger and feeling quickly dissipated when I snapped back in to focus. I took another look at my hand, and as I did so, the onset of shock and realisation of what I had done provoked a lot of retching and the want to throw up. This was clearly my fault and no one else’s. As noted by Leder (1990), up until the crash my body had existed in a harmonious interplay that ensured it had disappeared, existing only in the background. During the crash, the body provided a dysfunctional presence, something that required immediate attention. The understanding of pain through this extract is the agony of the crash and the body parts requiring attention, coupled with felt sensations. The auditory sensation and the sound of a break is unique and whilst the other ailments were undoubtedly painful, a break suggested something more serious. The subtle sound of the break, a gentle crack was felt throughout the entire body, provoking a bodily reaction. This reaction was made up of the pain of the hand but also a sinking feeling that stemmed from the realisation that a trip to the hospital was likely, and subsequent fretting and attention were on the way.

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The seriousness of the encounter, alongside the presence of helplessness, prompted me to analyse the emotional dimensions of this sensory encounter. This is something Allen-Collinson (2005) suggests fits within an expanded understanding of pain, incorporating vivid emotions that deepen the understanding of pain given their socio-cultural construction during her experience of a persistent knee injury. The extract above demonstrates the signification of the felt sound, one that created worry and anger. Key to this anger is the temporal awareness I have of broken bones, their heal times, and consequently time off the bike drawn from previous crashes I have had. The extract therefore demonstrates the varied dimensions of pain and how the sense of sound interweaves with the social and cultural emotion of anger. Heat, anxiety, and fear Allen-Collinson et al. (2019) point out that in sociological and phenomenological explorations of lived sporting experiences, there exists a paucity of research that explores the role of heat. Allen-Collinson et al. (2019) build upon the work of Potter (2008), to suggest that thermoception can be recognised as a distinct sensory modality. For Allen-Collinson et al. (2019) thermoception is understood as the lived sense of heat and the authors seek to distinguish between two perceptual fields of heat; one that is felt somatically and one haptically through touch. Allen-Collinson et al. (2019) provide insights into the somatic, internal heat felt during injury and the rehabilitation process. Recreational and elite-level athletes develop a thermoceptive intelligence, an awareness of the subtle changes in heat during activity. This knowledge is built up over time and through participation or in the rehabilitation after injury. What this thermoceptive awareness provides is a knowledge base to draw upon when encountering alien forms of heat; a diary of sorts that enables an organised awareness of heat intensities. Against this awareness the heat of the crash can be discussed, starting with the extract below. The sensations most vivid were the heat these injuries emanated. The shoulder felt as though it was on fire, and after a few more minutes so did my back. The heat of the injuries felt like someone had adjusted a cooker setting not to boil, rather simmer. The extract above from the same crash illustrates the importance of thermoception to sensory research as a sensory modality. The extract demonstrates how the sensation of heat was felt somatically, an awareness of felt heat emanating from the injuries incurred and accompanying the waves of pain. This form of felt pain is supported by the comments made by A in her experiences of being hit in Mixed Martial Arts (Allen-Collinson et al., 2019). Here, there is no need to touch the area to appreciate its warmth; rather it is just felt through the sensory feedback from the site experiencing the pain.

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A second dimension provided by the extract seeks to extend the contributions from Allen-Collinson and speaks of a thermoceptive modality that is distinct from the preoccupation of sight as the primary sense (Vannini et al., 2012). In this instance, the feeling of heat on the back and rear shoulder indicates an area of the body that our gaze is unable to see, yet the felt heat across the back suggested an injury. More specifically, the heat emanating from this injury provided a detailed outline of the extent and orientation, something illustrated by the below extract: Without being able to see it, I could feel the rash on my back, the heat painting a somatic picture of a shooting star which started at the top next to my right should and moved in a downward arc to below my left ribs. It felt hotter at the top. I asked T to confirm, and with a short but indicative gasp when he looked, I knew I was right. What emerges through this extract is the importance of sensory attunement to feedback, specifically felt and haptic heat. This dimension discussed through mountain biking is not exclusive, rather it is likely omnipresent in all activities and is worthy of further investigation. It is important to note that the sensation of heat was not in isolation from other sensory and emotional dimensions of the experience. Instead, the sensation of heat during the painful encounter can be understood alongside the emotional dimensions of pain such as anxiety and fear (Allen-Collinson, 2005). When recounting a visit to the doctor, Allen-Collinson (2005) discusses how testing the injured area not only hurt, but led to her becoming overwhelmed with rage, fear, and anxiety. Spencer (2014) adds further depth to this through explorations of pain in MMA fighters. Spencer (2014) discusses the despair and loss experienced by MMA fighters when they encountered pain and consequent injury. Despair and loss were woven into the physical experience of pain to produce fears of returning to action and anxieties associated with a loss of identity and masculinity. After attending to the overwhelming physical pain initially, my attention turned to the other dimensions noted by Allen-Collinson (2005) and Spencer (2014) particularly that of anxiety and fear. This is captured in the following extract: As the shock started to wane, and the heat subsided, a realisation of the consequences of the crash came to the fore. This was not a small crash. I could tell from the physical pain and the heat emanating all over that heal time would be long and difficult. What was more concerning was the thoughts of how this was going to impact my PhD and my ability to get to work and pick up my 12-month-old daughter. These thoughts gave way to silence and inner turmoil, my anxiety was going at 100 mph and the fear of being unable to fulfil my commitments was overwhelming.

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Allen-Collinson (2005) outlines similar feelings when confronted with the finality of not being able to train after seeking to manage her pain over many months. She discusses the intense frustration and fear experienced when faced with the full extent of the injury. This fear and frustration surfaced in the above extract with thoughts focusing on the pragmatic elements of life such as thesis completion and being a dad. Whilst not directly physical and thermoceptive, both act as a precursor and added dimension that compound feelings of anxiety and fear. This combination of felt pain, heat, and consequent emotional turmoil clearly demonstrates the importance of acknowledging the social and cultural experience of pain, contributing to what is felt (Spencer, 2014). Conclusion This chapter has provided a unique insight into a sensory and socially constructed aspect of mountain biking that is common to all riders, that of crashing and its associated pain. The chapter offers grounds to position pain as a physical, emotional, and sensory phenomenon that bears upon a rider’s identity, experience, biography, and interests. Historically, pain has been regarded as a permanent feature of lifestyle sports, yet little research has sought to explore this dimension. As such, this chapter has sought to reveal the experience of pain through a big mountain bike crash, discussing the intersections between physical pain and the phenomenological aspects of sound, emotion, and heat. The chapter therefore contributes to a growing focus on the socially and constructed mountain biking body, the role it plays, and the ways it can be understood in a variety of contexts. The contributions in this chapter, whilst momentary, represent one dimension of research currently underway as a doctoral thesis. Emerging themes related to the body, sensory experience, and intersubjectivity are currently under review and indicate an exciting contribution to this literature base. The applied implications of this work lead managers and administrators to consider the breadth of experience for riders and importantly, the role of crashing and pain in experience. Possessing knowledge of this unique dimension ensures we will be in a stronger position support their sensorially pleasurable, and at times painful experiences.1 Note 1 A special thanks to Andy Pitchford for his time and guidance on this and many other projects.

References Allen-Collinson, J. (2005). Emotions, interaction and the injured sporting body. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 40 (2), 221–240. Allen-Collinson, J., & Leledaki, A. (2015). Sensing the outdoors: a visual and haptic phenomenology of outdoor exercise embodiment. Leisure Studies, 34 (4), 457–470.

An exploration into the sensory experience of pain  93 Allen-Collinson, J., Vaittinen, A., Jennings, G., & Owton, H. (2018). Exploring lived heat, ‘temperature work’ and embodiment: Novel auto/ethnographic insights from physical cultures, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 47 (3), 283–305. Allen-Collinson, J., & Hockey, J. (2015). From a certain point of view: Sensory phenomenological envisionings of running space and place. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 44 (1), 63–83. Allen-Collinson, J., & Hockey, J. (2007). ‘Working out’ identity: Distance runners and the management of disrupted identity. Leisure Studies, 26 (4), 381–398. Allen-Collinson, J., Crust, L., & Swann, C. (2019). Embodiment in high-altitude mountaineering: Sensing and working with the weather. Body & Society, 25 (1), 90–115. Bicknell, K. (2016). Technology, equipment and the mountain biker’s taskscape, in Thorpe, H., & Olive, R. (Eds.), Women in action sports cultures (pp. 237–258). New York: Palgrave. Brown, K.M. (2017). The haptic pleasures of ground-feel: The role of textured terrain in motivating regular exercise. Health and Place, 46, 307–314. Brown, K., and Lackova, P. (2017). Managing outdoor recreation: Factors affecting route choice and response to management interventions. The James Hutton Institute. Cherrington, J. (2021). The myth of the Repack Group: Some problems and provocations from an actor-network perspective. Leisure Sciences: An interdisciplinary journal, 43 (6), 549–561. Cherrington, J., & Black, J. (2020). Spectres of nature in the trail building assemblage. International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure, 3 (1), 71–93. Downey, G. (2005). Learning capoeira: Lessons in cunning from an Afro-Brazilian art. Oxford: OUP. Eassom, S. (2003). Mountain biking madness, in Rinehart, R.E., & Sydnor, S. (Eds.), To the extreme: Alternative sports, inside and out (pp. 191–206). Albany: State University of New York Press. Gibbs, D., & Holloway, L. (2019). University Of Hull MTB Trail Centre Research Summary Report. University of Hull. Gilchrist, P., & Wheaton, B. (2017). The social benefits of informal and lifestyle sports: A research agenda. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 9 (1), 1–10. Gov. (2015). Sporting future: A new strategy for an active nation. Crown. Hagen, S., & Boyes, M. (2016). Affective ride experiences on mountain bike terrain. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 15, 89–98. Hajkowicz, S., Cook, H., Wilhelmseder, L., & Boughen, N. (2013). The future of Australian sport: Megatrends shaping the sports sector over coming decades. Belconnen: CSIRO. Hockey, J., & Allen-Collinson, J. (2009). The sensorium at work: The sensory phenomenology of the working body. The Sociological Review, 57 (2), 217–239. Hughes, C. (2016). The senses, the self and the physically active body: A sensual ethnography of bouldering. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Leeds Beckett. Kerry, D., & Armour, K. (2000). Sport sciences and the promise of phenomenology: Philosophy, method, and insight. Quest, 52, 1–17. King, K. (2010). Lifestyle, identity and young people’s experiences of mountain biking. Forestry Commission. Leder, D. (1990). The Absent Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McCullough, E. (2013). Mechanical intuitions: The origins and growth of mountain biking. PhD Thesis. UOC.

94  Benjamin Moreland McNarry, G., Allen-Collinson, J., & Evans, A.B. (2021). ‘Doing’ competitive swimming: Exploring the skilled practices of the competitive swimming lifeworld. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 56 (1), 3–19. MMMB. (2022). MTN Biking History. Available at: https://mmbhof.org/mtn-bike-hallof-fame/history/ Monaghan, L. (2001). Bodybuilding, Drugs and Risk. London: Routledge. Newcomb, T. (2020). Amid cycling surge, sport of mountain biking is seeing increased sales and trail usage. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/timnewcomb/ 2020/07/13/amidst-cycling-surge-sport-of-mountain-biking-seeing-increasedsales-trail-usage/?sh=670d1f5b3ddf Paterson, M. (2009). Haptic geographies: Ethnography, haptic knowledges and sensuous dispositions. Progress in Human Geography, 33, 766–788. Potter, C. (2008). Sense of motion, senses of self: Becoming a dancer. Ethnos, 73, 444–465. Rosen, P. (1993). The social construction of mountain bikes: Technology and postmodernity in the cycle industry. Social Studies of Science, 23 (3), 479–513. Savre, F., Saint-Martin, J., & Terret, T. (2009). An odyssey fulfilled: The entry of mountain biking into the Olympic Games. Olympika: The International Journal of Olympic Studies, 18, 121. Spencer, D. (2014). Seeking violence: An ethnography of mixed martial arts. Ethnography. 15 (2), 232–254. Spinney, J. (2006). A Place of Sense: A Kinaesthetic Ethnography of Cyclists on Mont Ventoux. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 24 (5), 709–732. Statista. (2022). Number of people participating in adventure sports in England from 2016 to 2020. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/934793/adventuresports-participation-uk/ Vannini, P., Waskul, D., & Gottschalk, S. (2012). The senses in self, society, and culture: A sociology of the senses. London: Routledge. Wacquant, L.J.D. (2004). Body & soul: Notebooks of an apprentice boxer. Oxford: OUP. Wheaton, B. (2013). The cultural politics of lifestyle sports. London: Routledge. World Economic Forum (2019). The Experience Economy is Booming, but it must benefiteveryone.Availableat:https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/the-experienceeconomy-is-booming-but-it-must-benefit-everyone/

Chapter 6

Encounters with mountain bike trail centre spaces Experience landscapes David Gibbs and Lewis Holloway

Introduction This chapter builds on writing about the experience economy to introduce the concept of experience landscapes and examines their development for leisure practices using mountain biking as a case study. In outdoor recreation, individuals are increasingly moving away from passive towards more active forms of leisure as part of an exploration of the self and self-identity. Individual experiences are produced by interactions between the space created by the provider and participants’ embodied encounters with the environment. We investigate the development of trails by trail centre providers and riders’ experiences of participation in mountain biking at purpose-built trail centres in the UK. We argue that the experience landscapes we describe are co-produced by trail builders and riders. While trail builders and trail centre managers attempt to provide a (more-or-less) standardised experience, how riders actually encounter specific trails varies according to their fitness, confidence, equipment, and experience. Moreover, riders have increasingly become directly involved in creating their own experiences through unsanctioned trail building within the same spaces as the formal trails, reflecting a dissatisfaction with the ‘official’ trails and related experiences. There is thus a heterogeneity of experience and practice, and the potential for tensions to be evident between different actors. We begin by outlining concepts of the experience economy and experience landscape, and the idea of ‘flow’, before describing our empirical research with actors involved in trail centres in the north of England and Scotland, and with UK mountain bike riders. We use our data to explore their different perspectives on UK trail centres with a particular focus on the tensions created through riders’ creation of ‘wild trails’. We conclude by highlighting some of the implications for the future of trail building and trail centre management.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361626-9

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The experience economy Following the seminal work of Pine and Gilmore (1999), it is argued that we are entering into an experience economy, ‘where people no longer focus so much on material possessions but on the experiences they are able to have in their lives’ (Henley Centre, 2005, p.29). Increasingly ‘many consumers are seeking extraordinary, memorable and authentic experiences to distinguish themselves from the crowd and to engage in the pursuit of pleasure and sensations’ (Ketter, 2018. p.331). For companies and providers, developing such experiences is increasingly central to their business competitiveness and success. Subsequent research has focused on ‘the notion of experience co-creation, which recognises active consumers co-creating their experiences in a quest for personal growth and value’ (Neuhofer et al., 2012, p.37). This is a more nuanced view of the experience economy encompassing the active involvement of consumers, who become co-creators of their experiences or ‘prosumers’. A complex web of co-production has therefore evolved involving ‘a collective, collaborative and dynamic forum of interaction between individuals, companies and consumer communities’ (Neuhofer et al., 2012, p.38). While the experience economy concept originated in studies of consumer behaviour (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982; Schmitt, 1999) and strategic management (Pine & Gilmore, 2000), it has also been used to explore the implications for local and regional competitiveness (Burgin & Hardiman, 2014). Here, place becomes important as a locus of consumption and place competitiveness is based upon deriving profit from the mobility of consumers (Guex & Crevoisier, 2015). This means ‘considering a territory not merely as a production system but also as a valuable stage engaging various producers, intermediaries and consumers as well as different goods and activities in supporting a social role’ (Lorentzen & Jeannerat, 2013, p.364). The aim is to develop an experience co-creation space which allows participants to create experiences, and in the process create value and competitive advantage for particular locations. The experience economy is also becoming an important driver for outdoor recreation, in terms of both thrill-seeking activities and (re)engagement with ‘nature’ (Henley Centre, 2005). In line with the experience economy argument, individuals are increasingly moving away from passive towards more active forms of tourism as part of an exploration of the self and self-identity (Skår et al., 2008; Moularde & Weaver, 2016). As a tourism guide for Scottish mountain biking suggests, “people are searching for new experiences that will enrich their lives; ‘being’ is considered more important than ‘having’” (TIS, n.d., p.15). Outdoor recreation participants are thus seeking extraordinary and transcendent experiences involving both hedonic pleasure and personal progression (Klaus & Maklan, 2011). The result has been an expanding market and a key driver for economic growth in those areas favoured for outdoor sports (Costa & Chalip, 2005; Brown et al., 2010; Gregory et al., 2014), resulting in ‘a synergy between destination and activity…destinations

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provide opportunities for the desired experiences to occur’ (Moularde & Weaver, 2016, p.3). For actors promoting and developing destinations, their focus is increasingly on customer experience management and ‘developing a memorable and highly emotional experience’ (Ketter, 2018, p.333). From experience economy to experience landscapes: The case of trail centres Developing the ideas described above, we argue that the experience economy is becoming associated with the creation of ‘experience landscapes’ (Gibbs & Holloway, 2018). We define these as landscapes that are specifically produced for, and as part of, the activities participants are engaged in. This involves physical construction or alteration of the landscape with the intention of creating a specific set of experiences. Experience landscapes thus emerge from a (complete or part) reorientation of existing landscapes and land uses towards the needs of particular activities, albeit that they can be part of a multi-functional landscape in which other economic and leisure activities persist. Our focus in this chapter is on purpose-built trail centres for mountain biking. In the UK, the first trail centre, at Coed-y-Brenin in Wales, opened in 1996, but they have subsequently experienced rapid growth, such that there are now (at least) 67 centres across the UK, 87 throughout continental Europe (Sorrell et al., 2008), and many more in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. In some of these locations they have become important as a source of local economic activity and tourism (Burgin & Hardiman, 2014). Unlike some other outdoor activities, trail centres involve the construction (and re-construction) of landscapes through explicit interventions in, and transformations of, existing landscapes by trail builders in order to create an experience landscape. This contrasts with research into broader sports tourism which suggests that ‘destinations simply provide opportunities for the desired experiences to occur’ (Moularde, 2016, p.10). Rather the specificity of the infrastructure – the shape, texture, robustness and design of purposely limited and controlled interactions with different subjects – have all become part of what distinguishes trail centres as a commodity and as a particular kind of outdoor space. (Brown 2014, p.27) The trails themselves include features not found readily on so-called natural trails outside the centres such as bermed corners, smooth jumps, and flowing singletrack (Brown, 2014). They are (in theory at least) standardised through being graded as green, blue, red, or black trails, in terms of the skills and techniques demanded of riders and the levels of hazard presented. Such grading provides a fairly crude guide to the potential experience for riders (see Table 6.1).

98  David Gibbs and Lewis Holloway Table 6.1  Trail centre grading descriptions Green (easy): Surface is generally compacted gravel, but can be loose, muddy, and uneven. Trails mostly flat and wide with shallow climbs and descents. No challenging features, though some small singletrack sections Blue (moderate): Surface generally the same as green. Some specially made singletrack sections with small obstacles such as rocks and roots Red (difficult): Trails steeper and tougher. Mostly singletrack with varying surfaces. More technical sections including roots, rocks, drops, boardwalks, water crossing, and off-camber sections Black (severe): Trails can be physically demanding and require a high level of fitness. Trails similar to red but with larger unavoidable features such as bigger drops and rock gardens Source: Adapted from Understanding Mountain Bike Trail Centre Grading (https://trailexplorer.com).

A rise in demand for ‘rapid consumption of experiential activities’ (Taylor, 2010, p.268) by riders helps to explain the popularity of trail centres. For participants, purpose-built waymarked trails reflect a demand for convenience given that they do not require users to plan routes in advance or spend time navigating them once on-site. They cater for time restrictions on users who may have a limited amount of time for physical activity, for example, many trail centres give advice on the average times for routes. Their predictability is deemed to be an advantage ‘where stressed, time-pressured participants are looking for a quick, guaranteed experience’ (Brown, 2014, p.25). Predictability, standardisation, and lack of concern over navigation and trail craft are seen by participants as positive features that attract them to trail centres, offering riding (largely) free from conflicts with other outdoor users (Taylor, 2013). At the same time, there is a desire for the (relative) safety and security provided by such trails, in an increasingly risk-averse environment. Ironically, perhaps, the risks and hazards upon which mountain biking has built a certain image, as an ‘extreme’ sport demanding fitness, skill, and the latest (and expensive) gear, and which can be valorised in terms of the kudos gained from riding ‘gnarly’ trails and the display of injuries (to both bodies and bikes) sustained in crashes, are very much tamed at trail centres. Despite the emphasis on creating experiences, there have been few attempts to explore the development of such experience landscapes either from the perspective of developers or users. Our argument here is that experience landscapes are not simply provided by trail centres, but are co-produced by designers/builders and riders. The designers of such landscapes need to account for perceptions of what people want, like and wish to experience and then to construct the landscape so that these perceived desires are met. Trail building is thus associated with a particular geographical imagination which has a feel for how existing landscape features can be built into a new section of trail, and for how trails should be in sympathy with an

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environment. The construction of an individual trail therefore needs to be sensitive to the existing location and have an awareness of the potential of a site for experience creation. While ‘harnessing positive feelings of mobile haptic sensation is therefore a huge opportunity for those seeking to stimulate more active engagement with outdoor environments’, the key question is ‘how environments might be designed such that play and other forms of creative, tactile and somatic experience are encouraged’ (Brown, 2017, pp.312–3). In addressing this question, trail builders need to consider a whole range of issues and questions that might be thought to be outside the usual purview of construction; how should users see the trail? What should their body feel? How should their body and brain respond? What affective responses should a trail or feature generate? Such concerns also need to be adapted to particular sites, terrain, and geology, to be sensitive to ecological and archaeological features, and need to take into account the evolving human-technological assemblages involved in mountain biking (Michael, 2000; Spinney, 2006), something Brown (2014) refers to as a hybrid ‘body-bike’. From the trail riders’ perspective, Brown (2014, p.26) argues that central to their desired experience is to: …explore the limits and abilities of the body-bike in rolling over textured and shapely terrain…with little interruption on intense and deeply kinaesthetic forms of play. This involves becoming attuned to the ‘feel’ of granularity, gradient and micro-to-macro topographies of the landscape. Such engagement with the trail is also significantly mediated by technological developments in mountain bikes, such as the use of suspension, disc brakes, and the ability to alter one’s saddle height while moving. Riders can also train their minds and bodies by physical conditioning, attending skills courses, reading articles, or watching on-line videos to help overcome particular obstacles or gain in endurance and speed. All of these things are involved in practices which co-produce experience landscapes. Experience landscapes can thus be regarded as in process and hence continually being remade as, inter alia, bodies become more skilled, fit, and confident, and equipment develops. Such interplay between the body and experience is common to other outdoor activities. For example, Varley’s (2011) work with sea-kayakers indicates that paddling sessions: …gave a wonderful bodily awareness and feelings of power and balance. The alien use of the body in order to travel on the sea was changing their connection with their own bodies, as well as fostering kinaesthetic connections between body, paddle, kayak and ocean. (Varley, 2011, p.91)

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In mountain biking, this central experience is often referred to as ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), defined as involving intense concentration and immediacy and the thrill and excitement involved (Taylor, 2010). In Moularde’s (2016, p.111) study: flow is the ultimate experience…few respondents are able to pinpoint the exact elements necessary to achieve it. It is a delicate equilibrium of abilities and challenges and is mostly expressed by the respondents wanting to avoid fear and boredom. Developing this idea, Gadja (2008, p.32) describes how: [t]he concept of ‘flow’, i.e. a feeling experienced by an individual when a challenge is met…occurs when the participant’s skills and competence match the requirements of an activity or situation…there are seven components of flow: a centring of attention; transitoriness; increased perception; forgetting oneself and being completely immersed in the demands of the activity; loss of time and space orientation; satisfaction; and temporary loss of anxiety and inhibition. Consequently, experiencing flow can be linked with self-actualisation (self-fulfilment). For those mountain bikers interviewed by Brown et al. (2010, p.8), flow was: a specific sensory embodied experience and loss of self-consciousness which comes about through an appropriate balance of challenge and skill. The associated fusion of mind, body and action lead to feelings of control and power, as well as a deep sense of enjoyment, exhilaration, satisfaction and creative accomplishment. At trail centres, these feelings appear to be most induced by ‘singletrack’, defined as ‘a narrow trail that gets users closer to nature, away from vehicles, and provides a more challenging experience’ (Taylor, 2010, p.269), where the sense of flow is at its greatest. Rarick (2015, unpaginated) illustrates this in recalling a ride; ‘my memory of this epic trail … is beautiful moments at high speed, getting a little airborne, skipping through a rock garden, it’s beautiful stuff … we don’t want a mundane experience’. For many riders, fast, uninterrupted singletrack allowing momentum to be built and maintained is important, whereas for others more technical trails offer a psychological and physical challenge. However, we have only limited empirical evidence as to how trail builders and managers seek to cater for such experiential demands. Similarly, we also have little evidence as to how riders experience these trails, and how that has changed over time with bike technology, clothing, the development of skills

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training, and so on. Depending on (amongst other things) experience, confidence, competence, level of fitness, equipment, and weather, the experience of different trail users will vary substantially, even on the same trail. Indeed, as Pine and Gilmore (1999) originally indicated, no two people have the same experience given that the experience is derived from the interaction between the staged event and a person’s state of mind. Methods In order to explore these issues further we conducted empirical research with both trail providers and riders. First, semi-structured interviews were conducted with individuals from both public and private sector organisations involved in mountain bike trail provision. Interviews with five individuals were undertaken in Northern England and Scotland in 2018. Second, an online survey was posted to two national mountain bike forums and users were asked to complete the survey. These forums form part of the on-line presence of two mountain bike print and digital magazines, Mountain Bike Rider and Singletrack. The survey was open from 24 April to 1 June 2018 and elicited 211 responses. The 21-question survey was developed using Jisc Online Surveys and consisted of both open and closed, qualitative and quantitative questions. It is important to note that this sample was self-selecting and may not be representative of all mountain bike riders. It is probable that the survey reflects the views of more experienced riders who are committed to the sport. The majority of respondents to the on-line survey were male (95.7%), in employment or education, with the largest age group in the 30–49 age category (75.2%). Respondents were dispersed across the UK. Nearly three-quarters of participants had been riding for more than ten years, with only one who had been riding for less than a year. The most common type of bike used was a full suspension bike, with the second largest category being hardtail bikes. In terms of seasonality, 78.2% of riders ride every week in summer (May–September) and 52.1% ride every week in winter (October–April). Regarding riding partners, a third of participants ride with their friends (36.1%), another third ride by themselves (35.5%), and 11.3% were families riding with children. The most common trail centres used by participants in order of responses were: Cannock Chase (54 respondents); Coedy-Brenin (51); Llandegla (49); Bike Park Wales (47); and Forest of Dean (46). Developing experiences: From ‘official’ to ‘wild’ trails For trail centre providers, design and construction of the trails varies by colour designation. For this they initially referred to guidance from the US-based International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA):

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We have operational guidance booklets which give us guidance, we also use the IMBA trail guidance, so that’s really what we followed here originally. Which gives you all the information you need about, you know, green trail needs to be 2 m [wide] or either a forest road or, you know, blue routes 1.5 m, red routes you know ¾ of a metre or whatever that may be, you know, it gives you all the specs for size of drop off, size of…step ups, whatever you’re wanting to put into the trail, Northshore, you can have a maximum of a metre high off the floor, it gives you all of that specification and that sort of thing so, in theory if you follow that then you should have a trail at the end of it which is in the grade that you require. (Trail centre manager, Northern England) However, interviewees stressed that this is not simply taking a template and expecting a contractor to build suitable trails. There was an argument that trail construction needs input from active mountain bikers if the trail is to create the appropriate experience for riders. Thus: a mountain biker will create a trail that he (sic) knows will have this fundamental flow and thrill about the trail where it takes on this meandering speed and thrilling, it’s hard to describe exactly what it, what those aspects that are required to give you that thrill but it’s certainly not just a linear route on the ground, it’s a switch back, flowing, thrilling, gravity-induced fun experience on a bicycle. And if you don’t create a trail with that then some people simply won’t ride it, or it will get panned. (Mountain bike company, Northern England) From the online survey, respondents were asked to say what they deemed enjoyable for each grade. Examples of the responses given include:

• Green trails: fun, relaxed, easy, family-friendly, and can be used to get a taste for the area or used as a warm-up.

• Blue trails: a good balance between fun and technicality which both new

and faster riders could enjoy, as well as having a good flow and progression. • Red trails: good for an increase in technical challenge, adrenaline, and the introduction of small features such as jumps and drops. Black trails: challenging, have technical interest, and have bigger features • on steeper terrains. Survey respondents were asked what made a ‘good trail’ at trail centres and to rank these in order of importance. The most important factors that make a ‘good trail’ were variety, technical interest, and flow. The second-ranked set of factors were trails being weatherproof (having good drainage), being well maintained, and in a natural environment. A final set of factors involved clear

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signage, distance, and good use of gradient. In terms of riders’ favourite trail features, the most popular included rock gardens, flowing trails, berms, jumps, and drops. Trail centre managers were aware of these issues and had attempted to redesign trails over time: we’ve really just tried to improve what we’ve got so we’ve put a lot of new berms in, tried to increase flow, added rollers and little technical features on the red route. (Trail centre manager, Northern England) For trail centre providers and designers, a key question is therefore how the trails should develop and evolve in order to continue to engage riders and to create the all-essential flow. A major issue that arose from the semi-structured interviews was the substantial increase in riders constructing their own trails within the area of the trail centre, as riders seek a different kind of experience to that offered by ‘official’ trails. As one interviewee commented: now there’s this desire for off-piste riding, almost feeling like I’m not one of the masses, you know, ‘I’m doing my own thing dude’…so it’s the off-piste or call it off-piste or wild riding…those riders that like the challenge of the red route have moved on to off-piste trails and illegal trail building, not necessarily illegal riding. (National Park manager, Northern England) This was felt to be compounded by current approaches to trail centre management related to financial cutbacks, as well as concerns over liability issues, whereby some trail centres were concentrating on family trails rather than those for more experienced bikers. Thus: as budgets have kind of tightened since…2010, the rate of more trails, new trail being added, machine-built, purpose-built trail if you like, waymarked trail, has kind of slowed down from the initial growth… with not so much happening in terms of new trail…there has been a kind of growth in unofficial trail building. (Trail centre manager, Scotland) The result was seen as creating a divergence in what different groups of mountain bike riders want from trails and a difference between the types of trail created by using IMBA-type guidance and more organic evolution: people want steeper, more natural, and that’s where you see the growth of the off-piste riding, I think, and also behind that is there’s always a hunger for like new trail, and natural trails can be put in relatively cheaply…lend themselves to being dug by hand, by volunteers…In the UK at least there’s

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these…two kinds of trail you see sort of evolve…One is very much like, out and out sort of flow trail, so, machine-built, big smooth sculpted berms and turns, rollers, jumps and drops generally all made, kind of Whistler-style. Bike Park Wales has a lot of flow trails, then you have the kind of more like looking for a natural riding experience, rooty, steep, happy that the conditions change on the trail, do like things to flow but also don’t mind if it doesn’t, if it’s more good and techy. (Trail centre manager, Scotland) The rise in importance of wild trails is supported by evidence from the anonymous online survey results, where 61% of respondents said that they sometimes used wild trails when visiting trail centres, whereas the remaining 39% stayed on the designated trails. Respondents said that they enjoyed exploring or ‘mixing it up’, combining designated trails with wild trail sections. The reasons given for respondents choosing to go on wild trails are that they are seen as more enjoyable trails that are more challenging, natural, and interesting, as well as being less crowded. To give some examples of reasons for wild trail use: The wild trails at Glentress and Innerleithen provide variety and interest, with trails that are steeper and more technical than the designated routes. Variety, searching out more challenging features. Sense of being out in the ‘wild’. Avoiding more boring sections of the main trails e.g., fire road. Taking advantage of interesting local natural features. Different challenge to trail centre trails. Often hand built by experienced riders resulting in some of the best trails available. Often different in style to standard trail centre trails. Primarily, because it adds variety. I find trail centres to work best when you have, say, an interesting blue trail, an interesting red trail, and some black options. This allows you to join loops together. Adding wild trails just increases this further, so you can ride part of say a red trail, go off-piste, then re-join. The issue of wild trail use and construction is therefore one that trail centre managers are increasingly having to address and manage. The views of our interviewees were that this needs co-production with riders if trail centres are not to remain static in their provision: It’s not like these guys are mavericks they’re just part of where mountain biking is going currently and they want to be part of cycling as much as anybody else, so they want to see improved facilities for themselves… There’s lots of ways that you can help to evolve a trail centre out of the conventional, what’s become the conventional kitty litter surface manmade trail, there are other ways to do it. (Mountain bike company, Northern England)

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The Forestry Commission probably being the main provider of trail centre riding in the UK, need to get to grips with this, and to know about it and they’re deliberating, but they’re not actually doing anything about it and they either need to say it can’t happen, which I suspect can’t be the answer because it’s impossible to stop or they need to have control and adopt it and say this is a freeride zone and we engage with the local trail builders and tell them where they can and can’t build, what we’ll take out, what we’ll allow, we’ve given them a bit of training and we’ll allow them to operate in that area. Big signs for the inexperienced, to say you are now entering a non-inspected or a freeride zone, it’s only for extreme riders. (National Park manager, Northern England) One view from trail centre managers was that actual physical co-production needed to occur with riders: When you get a volunteer that spends a day, shovelling loads and loads of stone…they can then see what it takes to build a trail. Then they can take a step back and go, actually it’s not as easy as just putting some rollers over there, actually putting it in and maintaining it, they get a better idea of what goes into the actual trail side of it, and it’s a bit more of an eye opener to some of them. (Trail centre manager, Northern England) Interestingly, from the online survey responses a much higher percentage of those who said that they used wild trails were currently, or had previously been involved, with trail building (44.4%) compared to those who only used designated trails (18.3%). While the majority of riders were not involved in trail building, reasons for riders getting involved in trail building included putting something back into the sport, as a necessity in order to maintain trails, and to create and have something fun to do locally. Involvement was also related to experience – 41.2% of respondents with ten or more years of experience were, or had been, involved. These results suggest that as a rider gains more experience they become increasingly involved with the co-production of trails and aware of the needs of trail centres to develop. Given that those involved with trail building are also more experienced mountain bike riders than those who are not, and this group is more likely to use wild trails, this reinforces the idea that designated trail routes are not satisfying the needs of these riders and linked to responses to the question on trail centre problems where many said trails have become ‘dull’ and ‘boring’ and have no progression. Conclusions Mountain bike trail centres, as part of an experience economy, have been and are producing new experience landscapes in which particular aspects of a

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landscape and its environment are deployed with the aim of creating specific experiences. Our argument runs counter to Moularde (2016) who sees destinations as simply providing the setting for desired experiences. Rather, the ways in which the destination is physically constructed play a key role in riders’ experiences, such that there is ‘an emergent socio-natural assemblage between trail builders, mountain bike riders and matter’ (Cherrington & Black, 2020, p.85). However, the actual experience of riders is more intangible than the process of building a trail and derives from co-production between builders and riders. Moreover, the latter may have highly variable experiences (depending on skill, experience, technology, etc.) as well as a different experience from that intended (e.g., too difficult, too boring). Thus, there can be multiple experience landscapes, those imagined by their creators, as reflected in the material landscape, and those as used by riders, whereby their interaction with the landscape can alter the physical trail subverting the aims of the builder (Cherrington & Black, 2020). The research presented here suggests that dissatisfaction with existing trails has led to a growth in the creation of wild trails as riders seek out greater challenges and a different set of experiences to those provided (Havlick et al., 2016). Such wild trails: represent the lead trail builder’s creativity and vision, their riding style and personality which are literally embedded and built into the landscape in reciprocating partnership. To those accustomed to ‘reading’ the way the landscape has been shaped, in order to encourage a particular way of moving through it, these creative choices can be like the signatures or ‘tags’ of graffiti artists. (Dobson and McLuskie, 2020, p.890) In future, trail provision will need to incorporate wild trails and their creators into the ‘official’ trail networks by means of compromise and greater engagement between landowners, centre managers, and riders (DMBinS, 2022), in a further process of co-production.1 However, pressures to increase participation and diversity also present trail centre managers with difficult decisions about how to most effectively manage and develop trail centres in the future, especially with limited resources. For example, the requirements of families with young children will be very different from the demands of more experienced and independent riders. The need to widen participation in outdoor leisure activities including mountain biking, and to attract new and diverse participants, also means taking into account the requirements of (for example), older riders, female riders, riders with disabilities, as well as the emergence and rapid growth of technologies such as electric bikes (e-bikes). For sports tourism, there is therefore a widening diversity of participants seeking different experiences (Burgin & Hardiman, 2014), while within mountain biking there is a range of identities and riding

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styles that may also demand different experiences (McEwan et al., 2018). This adds to the complexity of ‘experiences’ that trail centres can attempt to provide or can explicitly focus on, and implies a need to make decisions about where to focus resources, and how to mediate between the competing and perhaps incommensurate demands of different groups. Note 1 Guidance on how to do this is provided in National Access Forum Scotland (2018) Unauthorised Mountain Bike Trails: A Guide for Land Managers and Riders, NAF. https://www.nature.scot/guidance-unauthorised-mountain-bike-trails-guideland-managers-and-riders

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108  David Gibbs and Lewis Holloway Havlick, D.G., Billmeyer, E., Huber, T., Vogt, B., & Rodman, K. (2016). Informal trail creation: Hiking, trail running and mountain bicycling in shortgrass prairie. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 24(7), 1041–1058. Henley Centre. (2005). Demand for Outdoor Recreation, Paper 2: A Report for Natural England’s Outdoor Recreation Strategy, Henley Centre/Headlight Vision. Holbrook, M.B., & Hirschman, E.C. (1982). The experiential aspects of consumption: consumer fantasies, feelings and fun. Journal of Consumer Research, 9, 132–140. Ketter, E. (2018). It’s all about you: destination marketing campaigns in the experience economy era. Tourism Review, 73(3), 331–343. Klaus, P., & Maklan, S. (2011). Bridging the gap for destination extreme sports: A model of sports tourism customer experience. Journal of Marketing Management, 27(13), 1341–1365. Lorentzen, A., & Jeannerat, H. (2013). Urban and regional studies in the experience economy: What kind of turn? European Urban and Regional Studies, 20, 363–369. McEwan, K., Weston, N., & Gorczynski, P. (2018). Differentiating identities within an extreme sport: A case study of mountain biking print advertisements. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1668. Michael, M. (2000). These boots were made for walking…: Mundane technology, the body and human-environment relations, Body and Society, 6(3/4), 107–126. Moularde, J. (2016). Mountain bikers’ attitudes towards mountain biking tourism destinations. Unpublished Master of Tourism Management Thesis, Victoria University of Wellington. Moularde J., & Weaver, A. (2016). Serious about leisure, serious about destinations: Mountain bikers and destination attractiveness. Journal of Sport and Tourism, 20(3–4), 285–303. Neuhofer, B., Buhalis, D., & Ladki, A. (2012). Conceptualising technology enhanced destination experiences. Journal of Destination Marketing and Management, 1, 36–46. Pine, B.J., & Gilmore, J.H. (1999). The Experience Economy: Work as Theatre and Every Business a Stage. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Pine, B.J., & Gilmore, J.H. (2000). Markets of One. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Rarick, T. (2015). Every trail starts at coffee, ends at beer. Interview with Troy Rarick, Available at: www.bikeexchange.com/blog/troy-rarick-moutain-bike-summit, Accessed 22/1/16. Schmitt, B.H. (1999). Experiential marketing: How to get customers to sense, feel, think, act and relate to your company and brands. New York: Free Press. Skår, M., Odden, A., & Vistad, O.I. (2008). Motivation for mountain biking in Norway: Change and stability in late-modern outdoor recreation. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift-Norwegian Journal of Geography, 62, 36–45. Sorrell, R., Moran, C., & Mundy, B. (2008). Mountain biking Europe. Bath: Footprint. Spinney, J. (2006). A place of sense: A kinaesthetic ethnography of cyclists on Mont Ventoux. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 24(5), 709–732. Sport England. (2015). Getting active outdoors, Available at: https://www.sportengland. org Taylor, S. (2010). ‘Extending the dream machine’: Understanding people’s in mountain biking. Annals of Leisure Research, 13, 259–281.

Encounters with mountain bike trail centre spaces  109 Taylor, S. (2013). Extending the dream machine: Understanding people’s participation in mountain biking. In F. Pothecary, K.M. Brown, & E.A. Banks (Eds.), Mountain biking in Scotland: Understanding and resolving land use conflict (Vol. 1, pp. 6–9). Aberdeen: James Hutton Institute. Tourism Intelligence Scotland. (n.d.). Mountain Biking Tourism in Scotland, Available at: www.tourism-intelligence.co.uk Varley, P. (2011). Sea kayakers at the margins: the liminoid character of contemporary adventures. Leisure Studies, 30(1), 85–98.

Part III

Mountain biking environments

Chapter 7

Downhill MTB, digital media, and DIY urbanism Riding with Red Bull Jacob J. Bustad and Oliver J. C. Rick

Starting line: Introduction As scholars of sport and physical activity within urban environments, the authors are interested in the analysis of cities and urban experiences as ‘assemblages’, wherein the city is not epistemologically understood as a unitary social construction, but instead ontologically, ‘acknowledging that different realities are being enacted here and there, now and then’ (Farias, 2010, p.13). This approach emphasises the continual and unceasing re-shaping of urban social worlds, or what Amin and Thrift (2002, p.27) refer to as the process of ‘concrescence’, in the ways that different entities and elements encounter and associate with each other in displaying the inherent heterogeneity of cities. This means that instead of referring to ‘the city’ as a bounded physical territory or socio-economic unit, and rather than relying on dual and bifurcated conceptions of the city, assemblage urbanism demonstrates and accentuates the multiple and processual realities of urban life. As Farias (2010, p.19) explains: The city is literally different things, has multiple different forms, gathers multiple different publics, fulfills multiple different functions, triggers multiple different practices, and so on…[it] is made of multiple orders of value and groups of people often running parallel to one another. To apprehend and describe this multiplicity, assemblage urbanism therefore focuses on the ‘urban assemblages’ that are constituted in and through practices, actors, associations, and materialities. Importantly, this does not mean that an urban assemblage is the sum or total of a group of inter-related elements, rather, urban assemblages are the processes of this relation, the ways in which things come together. Thus, urban assemblages refer to the processes ‘through which the city becomes a real-estate market, a filmic scene, a place of memory…to one particular enactment of the city’ (Farias, 2010, p.15). Following McFarlane (2011), this approach to thinking about and engaging with urban milieus thus recognises that the processes of neoliberalisation and late

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361626-11

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capitalism, for example, are a part of the re-making of cities, ‘but that these processes do not constitute the totality of urban practices, forms, and realities’ (ibid, p.174). Further, urban assemblages again stress the ‘work’ involved in the re-constitution of multiple realities through associations and practices, in that the focus is not on assemblage as a noun but on the active assembling of human, material, technological, and biological elements (Latour, 2007). In this chapter, we utilise the assemblage urbanism framework in regard to a particular mountain biking event hosted in a specific city: the Cerro Abajo urban downhill mountain bike race in Valparaiso, Chile, known as ‘the gnarliest of these type of urban races’ (Ward, 2023) due to the challenging design of the race route. More specifically, this project emanates from our encounters with video content and media coverage of and from this event, primarily in the form of GoPro videos produced and distributed by Red Bull as sponsor of the event and supporter of multiple urban downhill races and athletes. In particular, we seek to analyse how these videos effectively mediatise forms of cultural alterity that exist both in the contradistinction between the city as planned and lived, and within the representation of active urban embodiment as both alternative experience and branded content. This project thus examines urban downhill in Valparaiso as an assemblage of exchange between local and global practices and products, involving a particular action sport culture, Red Bull as a corporate partner with a focus on digital media and wearable technology, and a specific urban environment characterised by local factors and broader trends in Latin American urbanisation and tourism. Sector 1: Urban downhill and Valparaiso Cerro Abajo As a relatively niche action sport culture, urban downhill has emerged over the last 20 years, initially developing in contrast to traditional downhill mountain biking that often takes place in outdoor settings away from cities. During its embryonic stage, urban downhill consisted of mostly informal events organised by downhill riders during the off-season of the traditional mountain biking circuit; these events were characterised by improvisation both in terms of the route involved, as well as the equipment and techniques that borrowed from other forms of cycling, including BMX. As one example, Roque and Carvalho (2016) discuss how the Lisboa Downtown race in Lisbon, Portugal is recognised as one of the first downhill events from the early 2000s that has since transformed from an informal gathering to a structured and sponsored race. These events evidence how the sport has been formalised into ‘urban DH’ in its current form, with individual competitors timed from start to finish and the fastest time winning the race; this formalisation has also meant increased numbers of participants, including both downhill riders and competitors from other modes of competitive cycling. While not the first of its kind, the urban downhill race in Valparaiso has become one of the most well-known iterations of this format for the sport. These

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races draw on a multitude of cycling cultures, blending them into a format that is somewhere between and outside of the many formats of cycle racing. Through the technology utilised by riders and the overlapping athlete pools, urban downhill is connected to the mountain bike culture and the long history that shapes the sport. Originating in the hills of Marin County CA, mountain biking was born out of an amalgamation of thrill seeking and tinkerer culture, bringing together outsiders in the cycling world that altered existing bicycle technology and created their own, to found the sport. Urban downhill goes another step, taking the mountain bike out of the woods and hillsides of its traditional homes in the French Alps or the Canadian and American Rockies. In taking this step into the ‘urban’ these events also engage with the array of city-based cycling cultures that exist. Big jumps and tricks using the infrastructure of the city look to the world of street BMX and urban freestyles. Also, in using the city as racecourse, these events reach to the edge of allycat and urban fixed gear culture as well. This means that the sport involves a variety of elements that place it outside of the core structures of cycling and formalised sport event management. Urban downhill events are not part of a sanctioned schedule and are in many ways disconnected from the mountain biking that has made its way into the highly bureaucratic systems of the Olympics. Yet, at the same time it is this very alterity that has made the sport and the event attractive; this is a cycling discipline that traces a line around the limits of a multitude of disciplines to more distinctly formed cycling cultures, while the race itself exists in relation to the more purposefully-designed spaces of urban life. From the perspective of Red Bull’s content creators, this very indistinct nature of the sport’s format is of particular appeal. Not only does its existence outside of formal and informal systems of ownership allow the company to skirt any rights issues that may arise, but it also becomes more easily accessible to a non-expert audience. Certainly, for those inside any of these cycling cultures, there is a deeper engagement available, but that is not the focus audience for Red Bull or the media it will produce surrounding the event. Some will attend the event in person, more will consume the live or ‘as-live’ broadcasting of the entire event on Red Bull’s own streaming platform, but most will watch short media packages or point-of-view (POV) recordings of athlete’s participation on YouTube and other social media platforms. For these viewers that are the bulk of the audience that Red Bull will target, the pastiche nature of the event and its coverage is more appealing and consumable (Giulianotti, 2005). The event viewed in this way requires no degree of insider status within a cycling community. The rules do not need to be understood, the athlete’s history is inconsequential, and there is no need to engage with the event as part of what is now a five-race series. Yet, importantly, and simultaneously, the event connects with enough different cycling cultures and experiences that many can find connection with the performance they gaze upon. The bicycles look familiar, the movements are extreme versions of

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things they may have done on a bike at some point, or at the very least the tracing through the city the GoPro coverage provides is an intensified and edgy version of their own traversing of the urban terrain. The production and mediatisation of urban downhill into a POV audiovisual experience thus results in a hypercultural output, where ‘cultures implode’ (Han, 2005, p.9), pulling together recognisable elements of a multitude of cycling cultures and experiences into a novel and exciting whole that appeals most intensely to the casual consumer of postmodern sports media. The affective nature of this content reflects the merging of urban environment and embodied experience: videos of the Valparaiso event do not follow behind or above the athlete, but from their own perspective as the rider picks up speed through various corridors and staircases, on a range of surfaces from dirt and broken concrete to wider stretches of asphalt. This perspective accentuates the movements of body and bicycle through the steep declines and quick turns, moving with pace through parts of the route nearly empty of spectators and others attracting crowds that grow alongside and lean over metal barriers at the sides of the route; meanwhile, the content is punctuated by the sounds of changing bike gears, laboured breathing, crowd noise, and whistling from the occasional race steward in a reflective vest. During the same period of emergence and formalisation for the sport of urban downhill, Red Bull has transformed from an Austria-based energy drink company to an Austria-based energy drink company with an investment and interest in international sport. This has included more mainstream sport activities and competitions, including the Red Bull Formula 1 and MotoGP teams, and soccer clubs in Austria, Germany, the USA, and Brazil. Reproducing the same model outlined above with Urban Downhill, Red Bull has built a presence through their online distribution of extreme sporting performances, packaging pastiche, edgy, and novel approximations of traditional sport forms, often captured in visually stunning environs, from wingsuit flights in the Alps to high diving off the Stari Most bridge in Bosnia and Herzegovina and windsurfing during storms in Ireland. This strategy has been core to the company’s mediated growth and requires them to consistently seek out opportunities that align the brand with particular athletes and increasingly novel action sport settings designed to connect with common sporting experiences while generating excitement as they go well beyond the commonplace. For the Cerro Abajo event in Valparaiso, Red Bull’s approach is evident throughout the structure of the race route and in particular through the crescendo to finish area as the course spills over a final jump and into the main city square with its distinctive fountain (and for the event, Red Bull hoardings on various fencing and overhead signage). Timings from each rider’s run are collected and prizes are awarded, and the event itself may be followed locally or internationally by a core audience of urban downhill enthusiasts, but these details are secondary to the urban action sport content that draws in viewers and consumers.

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Sector 2: Red Bull, urban downhill, and the ‘GoPro gaze’ Given this corporate strategy, the videos produced by Red Bull athletes of urban downhill events, including the VCA, evidence a particular model of digital media and marketing, or what Kunz et al. (2016, p.521) call ‘sport-related branded entertainment’. This is partially in response to a sport marketing environment in which fragmentation and overload have resulted in challenges to traditional advertising strategies, and in turn leading to forms of branded entertainment as ‘an effective integration of commercial advertising and editorial content…a brand (as a product and/or service) is no longer simply “placed” into existing content, but content is actually co-created by a brand’ (Kunz et al., 2016, p.521). Moreover, while mainstream sports have proven to provide content ready-made for the branded entertainment model, the Red Bull version of this model has shown that niche action sport athletes and teams can benefit from sponsorships while also provoking both consumer attention and prosumer engagement (Kunz et al., 2016). In this mode, the embodied experience of traversing the urban downhill course in Valparaiso has a layered relationship with Red Bull, as the company serves as the primary sponsor for the event and for multiple athletes competing in the event, while also effectively drawing from the corresponding content of the event taking place in order to promote their version of branded entertainment. The integration of the company’s brand with action sports also allows for a different type of content creation, especially in comparison to more established sport organisations and competitions. For example, Kunz et al. (2016, p.528) describe the differences between Red Bull’s Formula 1 content as constrained by media rights and licensing requirements, in contrast to ‘new action-sports, where no global associations market the worldwide media rights’. As they explain: This also is why Red Bull’s skateboarder, BMX cycler, motocross biker or wingsuit jumper can be included in the sport-related content without violating any regulations. Because Red Bull owns the property and, therefore the rights, it does have control of all stages, from pre-production to distribution. (2016, p.529) In tracing the development of the VCA videos, we can emphasise the pre-production and production stages as uniquely critical for the type of content that Red Bull is after, with regard to the pre-production activities, this includes coordinating and planning the event with different stakeholders, including local authorities, co-sponsors, media partners, and participating athletes. This type of action sports video therefore often involves Red Bull as the main brand communicator, other brands as advertisers and sponsors (such as GoPro for the wearable technology), and also athletes as ‘additional communicators’

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(Kunz et al., 2016, p.529) that provide individual perspectives that are not always present within traditional sport content and branded entertainment. The perspective of the athlete is therefore immediately present at the start of the video, with no preamble or discussion of the current standings or timings of other competitors; the viewer joins the experience at the rider’s final moments in the ‘start house’ at the top of the route, bent forward over the handlebar in anticipation of the first drop. The initial stages of the route feature smaller crowds and onlookers, but riders are instantly challenged with multiple staircases and narrow pathways to navigate, most often with makeshift barriers and coverings that require the skills for a tight and technical course. As the route continues, riders face unique features that have been purposefully incorporated by organisers to provoke flair as well as skill, including ramps of different sizes that provide an opportunity for riders to perform freestyle elements in their jumps. The most spectacular, and most social media-famous, of these jumps takes riders onto the roof of one house before proceeding in and through a hallway on the second story of a different house, leaving through a jump down to a short ramp and on to the next segment. This jump, called La Casa Azul in reference to the distinctive colour of the house, has become an iconic part of the track for many VCA competitors, including Chilean rider Pedro Burns: …you drop down from the roof and you’re then presented with riding through someone’s house. You jump from inside the house back onto the course. They remove the door for the race, you jump outside over a three-metre gap and land on the landing. (Ward, 2023, para. 7) The importance of wearable technology in this assemblage is therefore fundamentally important, as GoPro videos construct a particular version of reality that is integral for their use in action sports cultures. In their analysis of the use of GoPros within adventure travel, Vannini and Stewart (2017, p.153) offer the concept of the ‘GoPro gaze’: videos made from a GoPro gaze succeed not only in making distant and often nearly inaccessible places visible, but also in rendering them better lit, crispier, more vibrant, and more vividly saturated in color than reality itself…The physical movements therein represented appear seamless, harmonious, and – even during ‘epic’ episodes of failure – always fun and pleasurable. Moreover, through carefully edited plots contention is generated and dullness eliminated…the GoPro gaze is focused on the action of individuals who are adventurous, skilled, and capable of performing exciting public feats for the camera. Subjects of the GoPro gaze, in other words, are not in front of the camera for who they are in relation to the videographer and/or because they happen to be there, but rather for what they are able to do and how well they do it, and therefore for their material and practical engagement with a taskscape.

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This distinction of the qualities of GoPro production helps to emphasise the video as evidence of the inter-relationships between Red Bull’s quest for sport-related branded entertainment, action sport cultures such as urban downhill and specific events like the VCA, and the utilisation of wearable technology to convey an adventurous, skilful, and pleasurable experience for the viewer/consumer. In the sections that follow, we describe how the unique qualities of the urban environment in Valparaiso, and specifically the cultivation of forms of DIY urbanism in and through the VCA as an urban downhill event, are also integral for the experience of the video and/as branded entertainment. Sector 3: Urban downhill, Valparaiso, and DIY urbanism Comprising a series of neighborhoods situated on hills adjacent to the Pacific Ocean, Valparaiso is the second-largest metropolitan area in Chile. The city was originally founded in 1536 and features a mix of Spanish colonial architecture and Victorian architecture that reflects the city’s status as a major port and growing hub of economic development throughout the 19th century, with the unique combination of infrastructure and a natural landscape ‘forming an amphitheater towards the Pacific’ (Martin et al., 2021, p.3). These elements contributed to Valparaiso as a ‘setting that inspired many artists and poets like Pablo Neruda…the city’s early industrial infrastructures and monumental architecture wonderfully inhabits its challenging topography of steep hills accessible through stairways and its distinctive funicular elevators’ (Seijas, 2020, p.73). Over the last 30 years, the city has become an increasingly popular tourist destination known for its distinctive geography as well as an important arts and literature culture, as evidenced by the abundance of graffiti art displayed throughout the staircases and walls of the city. Valparaiso’s graffiti culture thus demonstrates both a burgeoning centre of artistic expression and favourable municipal policies directed towards these forms of expression, including that any structure in the city can be used for graffiti by an artist (with permission from the structure’s owner). The city’s historical and cultural significance was further emphasised with the designation of the port and surrounding area as a World Heritage Site in 2003 (Martin et al., 2021). Further, the recognition of Valparaiso’s unique character as an asset within the tourism industry came during a rapid expansion of Chile’s tourist economy as a key aspect of the country’s economic development; with 5.6 million visitors in 2016 the country was the second leading destination in South American and sixth in the Americas for international visitors, resulting in an estimated USD 2.7 billion in tourist revenues for the same year (Rangel-Buitrago et al., 2018). Following Moreira Gregori et al. (2019), the combined factors of the city’s natural environment (including the bay, hills, coasts, and beaches) and social environment (including architecture, art, and history) have therefore positioned Valparaiso as an example of contemporary cultural tourism within Latin America.

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Yet, while tourism has increased over the past several decades, Valparaiso has also been characterised by growing social inequality, reflecting a ‘complex urban system where the main trend has been one of increasing levels of poverty and segregation’ (Salinas-Silva, 2015). As Borsdorf et al. (2007, p.367) explain, the contemporary urbanisation of Valparaiso has mostly followed a pattern similar to other Latin American cities, wherein ‘neoliberalism and globalization…opened it up for polarization in a minor spatial dimension and for fragmented structures – a city of islands or an urban archipelago’. This process of fragmentation has resulted in Valparaiso having pockets of middle class and affluent residents further down the hills (and closer to the city’s historic quarter near the port), with more working-class neighborhoods further up the hills (and away from the tourist centre). Following Cáceres Seguel (2019), re-development strategies in Valparaiso have resulted in the transformation of specific neighborhoods near the ‘heritage area’, including Concepción and Alegre, as ‘homes changed from residential to tourist use, becoming hotels, restaurants, handicraft stores, gradually transforming residential neighborhoods into enclaves for tourism’ (p.157). The city thus reflects an increasing number of tourists and tourist amenities, while also featuring one of the highest rates of poverty in Chile, as part of a ‘continuous process of socio-spatial segregation’ (Salinas-Silva, 2015, p.8). In their assessment of Valparaiso as a ‘decaying port city’, Seoighe and Cuevas Valenzuela (2021, p.82) cite the relationship between tourism and neoliberal economic policies as key aspects of the ongoing fragmentation of the city’s communities. From this perspective, Valparaiso’s embrace of tourism also belies a dependence on that industry which risks converting a celebration of the city’s geography, history, and cultural expression into a form of ‘dereliction tourism’ (2021, p.91) that lacks any meaningful positive change to local conditions. In our analysis, these elements of the environments of Valparaiso as a particular urban context – the distinctive geography, atmosphere of artistic expression, and the contrast in social class and living conditions throughout the city and along the race route – are not neutral aspects of the setting for an urban downhill race, but instead are important elements involved in the event as an assemblage of human and non-human actors. A report from the 2013 race highlighted the differences at the start of the route near the Cerro Carcel, the former site of the city’s prison that was transformed into an urban cultural centre in 2011: The start is high above the city in the favela. Not the safest part of town, and the residents take security a little more seriously than most riders are used to. (Trumpore, 2013, para. 3) The statement was accompanied by photos of razor wire atop concrete fencing that surrounded houses in the area.

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Along with the contrast of social inequality in an artistic city overlooking the ocean, the race route also comprises a mixture of structured and improvised features and actions, on the part of both the course organisers and the athletes. The same report from 2013 includes a description of how the unique conditions of Valparaiso were essential to the character of the event: The usual roots rocks and mud of the World Cup are replaced by the challenges of steep endless staircases, 200-year-old cobble stone streets, road gaps, wallrides, and a finish line that launches riders out of a second story window. Per order of the police, no riding is permitted prior to Sunday’s race. In years prior there was a small practice session on Saturday, but as the event grew in popularity, mobs of fans began to arrive early in anticipation, causing traffic incidents, blocking roads, and making it impossible to run practice under the radar of local authorities. (Trumpore, 2013, para. 1) These aspects of the race route and the process of the event demonstrate a combination of professional management and sponsorship (especially following Red Bull’s involvement), while purposely retaining some dimensions of the more bottom-up organisation within many action sport cultures. We would emphasise that it is these forms of do-it-yourself or DIY urbanism, referring to a set of practices which are connected by their emphasis on ‘the potential of low-budget, improvisational and often temporary interventions to enrich urban public life’ (Hubbard, 2017, p.212), that are critical to the type of content that Red Bull seeks to create through sponsoring action sport events and athletes. Most often, DIY urbanism has been discussed in regard to practices and activities that emerge from citizen interests and are unsanctioned by more official authorities within urban spaces, for example, improvised bike lanes on major thoroughfares or ‘pop-up’ community gardens in vacant lots. Following Finn (2014, p.383), these ‘bottom-up’ types of urban planning and design are most often ‘instigated, designed, created, paid for and implemented by single users or small voluntary groups and not municipalities or corporations’. This definition contrasts with the development of the Cerro Abajo event by a major international corporation in Red Bull; however, we would argue that the conceit of urban downhill requires this type of perspective in regard to the re-utilisation of urban public space. Thus, while Red Bull’s sponsorship and support is imperative to the event and athletes, the characterisation of urban downhill as a niche action sport culture is also predicated on engagements with public space that are outside of the sanctioned uses and designs of the city. In this mode, the race in Valparaiso, and the representations of the event via GoPro videos, incorporates not only a global corporate partner but also an approach to urban space that emphasises ‘a form of soft rebellion against a planning status quo that is perceived to lack creativity, flexibility, imagination and efficacy’ (Finn, 2014, p.391). As the Cerro Abajo videos follow the race

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route in Valparaiso, viewers witness forms of DIY urbanism through this mixture of strategically positioned sponsor hoardings and crudely constructed ramps and gap coverings, of carefully chosen staircases and straightaways with fans at arms’ length, and route personnel (sometimes) in yellow jackets blowing whistles to announce the course is clear. This may be an international action sport event with a global energy drink sponsor, but organisers and athletes provide elements of DIY urbanism as ‘outside’ the planned city that are integral to how the event is represented and mediatised to a broader audience. Another report from the early years of the race also highlighted the relationship between the city’s unique geographic and social conditions and the capacity to implement the race route: Snaking a course through the city streets or literally on top of families doorsteps means the VCA team has to do a lot of ramp prep off-site and can’t actually start to put things into place until Saturday afternoon, with many of the workers welding some features late into the night. Come race day, they will have to setup, prep, and fine tune the course & features within hours, which is no easy feat when you have 6000 ft of metal riot fencing to install through busy streets and neighborhoods. Not to mention they completely shut down one of the busiest plazas in Valparaiso for the finish line! (Lucent, 2013, para. 1) The extreme performances of the athletes juxtaposed with the everyday taskscapes of urban life in a Latin metropolis provide a grittiness to the event’s aesthetic that is lacking in many more formalised cycling formats. It is also a capture of an exotic lived time and place, one seemingly far away from the western consumer, somewhere ‘lustrously repelling’ (Fischer et al., 2014, p.1). The VCA is thus an event that is represented by Red Bull to emphasise the contrasts of local and global, everyday and spectacular, and familiar and exotic. These boundaries present a place of engagement with the consumer that Red Bull has fostered, monetised, and made central to its global branding success. Finish line: Conclusion As the VCA route nears the finish line, riders enter Plaza Anibal Pinto, the centre of architectural heritage in Valparaiso and close to the port as the historic gateway to the city. This space might seem appropriate as a nexus point of global and local cultures, given that following the race, athletes will work with Red Bull to produce GoPro videos of the rider’s perspective of the event, eventually distributing those videos via social media within the contemporary version of ‘shipping’ particular forms of content around the globe. In early 2023, Red Bull announced the expansion of urban downhill events with the inaugural hosting of the first race in Guanajuato, Mexico, another addition to the Cerro Abajo series along with Valparaiso and Medellin, Colombia. The development of

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another urban downhill event signals both an increasing popularity for this form of mountain biking and further opportunities for Red Bull to cultivate branded content through support of action sport cultures and athletes. In analysing these forms of content, and the broader scope of urban downhill in Valparaiso and other Latin American cities, we could suggest that Red Bull has demonstrated a specific type of the sport-related branded entertainment model, one that emphasises not the direct creation of content but rather the managing of action sport events and athletes towards the development of content, in short, that Red Bull’s goal is to provide fertile ground for the types of content that involve POV perspective videos from skilled athletes doing exciting activities. In contrast, this chapter demonstrates that the assemblage of urban downhill in Valparaiso involves more than the sponsors and structure of this particular action sport, the content that Red Bull produces both depends on and promotes forms of cultural urban alterity that involve the sport, the sponsor, and the urban environments in which the event takes place. Further, we would emphasise that this analysis has several potential implications for scholars interested in action sports and global branding, as well as professionals operating in related industries. Events such as the VCA require forms of participation from local citizens and organisations, and in turn levels of coordination and cooperation between corporate sponsors and organisers, competitors, and host communities. While the videos generated from these events provide an affective dimension to the advertising and marketing of a global corporation, they also require effective event management in regard to the logistics and infrastructure involved in the competition and race route, and the strategic production of a route that ultimately highlights both the physicality and performance of the athlete and the changing and dynamic urban environments in which the event takes place. As in Valparaiso, these dynamic environments are most often reflective of differing social conditions across and within a single city, reflective of broader processes of contemporary economic development. This means the communities that provide the setting for these events, through their staircases, alleyways, streets, and houses, represent important stakeholders that must be accounted for in the brand management and ethics of the corporation, in regard to developing and implementing an approach towards corporate social responsibility that seeks to engage local interests rather than simply profiting through them. References Amin, A., & Thrift, N. (2002). Cities: reimagining the urban. Cambridge: Polity Press. Borsdorf, A., Hidalgo, R., & Sánchez, R. (2007). A new model of urban development in Latin America: The gated communities and fenced cities in the metropolitan areas of Santiago de Chile and Valparaíso. Cities, 24(5), 365–378. Cáceres Seguel, C. (2019). Turismo, gentrificación y presión por desplazamiento en los cerros Concepción y Alegre de Valparaíso. Revista invi, 34(97), 157–177.

124  Jacob J. Bustad and Oliver J.C. Rick Farias, I. (2010). Introduction: Decentering the object of urban studies, in Farias, I., & Bender, T. (Eds.), Urban assemblages: How actor-network theory changes urban studies (pp. 1–24). London, England: Routledge. Finn, D. (2014). DIY urbanism: implications for cities. Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, 7(4), 381–398. Fischer, B., McCann, B., & Auyero, J. (Eds.). (2014). Cities from scratch: Poverty and informality in urban Latin America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Giulianotti, R. (2005). Sport: A critical sociology. Cambridge: Polity. Han, B. C. (2005). Hyperculture. Cambridge: Polity. Hubbard, P. (2017). City. London: Routledge. Kunz, R. E., Elsässer, F., & Santomier, J. (2016). Sport-related branded entertainment: the Red Bull phenomenon. Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal, 6(5), 520–541. Latour, B. (2007). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lucent. (2013). Pinkbike’s Official Video - 2013 Red Bull Valparaiso Cerro Abajo. Pinkbike.com, March 1, 2013. Available at: https://www.pinkbike.com/news/Video2013-Red-Bull-Valparaiso-Cerro-Abajo.html Martin, J. C., Román, C., Moreira, P., Moreno, R., & Oyarce, F. (2021). Does the access transport mode affect visitors’ satisfaction in a World Heritage City? The case of Valparaiso, Chile. Journal of Transport Geography, 91, 102969. McFarlane, C. (2011). Learning the city: Knowledge and translocal assemblage. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Moreira Gregori, P. E., Martín, J. C., Oyarce, F., & Moreno García, R. (2019). Tourism and heritage. The case of Valparaiso (Chile) and the profile of the cultural tourist. PASOS: Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 17(5), 1005–1019. Rangel-Buitrago, N., Contreras-Lopez, M., Martinez, C., & Williams, A. (2018). Can coastal scenery be managed? The Valparaíso region, Chile as a case study. Ocean & Coastal Management, 163, 383–400. Roque, A., & Carvalho, P. (2016). Downhill urbano em Portugal, in Carvalho, P. (Ed.), Lazeres Ativos I. Málaga: EUMED (pp. 11–30). Malaga: Universidade de Malaga. Salinas-Silva, V. (2015). The ‘great fire’ of Valparaiso 2014: Social class differences and people’s vulnerability. A case study of wild-land-urban fire. UCL Hazard Centre Disaster Studies and Management Working Paper, 30, 1–13. Seijas, A. (2020) Nocturnal heritage: awakening the Historic Quarter of Valparaiso. Latin America Policy Journal, 9, 71–9. Seoighe, R., & Cuevas-Valenzuela, H. (2021). The decaying Port City as a tourist destination. Valparaíso’s Commodified Decline. European Journal of Creative Practices in Cities and Landscapes, 4(2), 82–107. Trumpore, D. (2013). Course Walk Red Bull Valparaiso Cerro Abajo - VCA 2013 Urban Downhill. VitalMTB.com, February 2, 2013. Available at: https://www.vitalmtb. com/features/Course-Walk-Red-Bull-Valparaiso-Cerro-Abajo-VCA-2013Urban-Downhill,445 Vannini, P., & Stewart, L. M. (2017). The GoPro gaze. Cultural Geographies, 24(1), 149–155. Ward, T. (2023). Why Valparaiso is one of the best urban downhill tracks in the world. RedBull.com, February 2, 2023. Available at: https://www.redbull.com/se-en/ red-bull-valparaiso-cerro-abajo-preview

Chapter 8

Sustainable mountain bike trails Towards a holistic approach Tom Campbell

Introduction Since the turn of the century, we have witnessed a marked shift from passive to more active forms of leisure as individuals increasingly prioritise experiences over consumerism. This trend coincides with a period of significant growth in the popularity of mountain biking (Wilkes-Allemann et al., 2022). As individuals seek to participate within experience landscapes through mountain biking (Gibbs & Holloway, 2018), the growing demand for mountain bike trails brings challenges for planning and land management and raises wider environmental concerns. Concurrently, adventure tourism continues to gain popularity, with mountain bike tourism, in particular, representing a growing global market (Buning et al., 2019; DMBINS, 2019). Alpine tourist destinations are increasingly diversifying due to climate change and shifting seasonality, with mountain bike tourism assuming greater economic importance (Pröbstl-Haider et al. 2021). Positioned against the backdrop of broader societal debates regarding climate change and habitat loss (Cherrington & Black, 2020), the topic of trail sustainability has therefore assumed greater significance within both the mountain bike sector and society at large. This chapter seeks to explore the topic of sustainable trails from a broad conceptualisation of sustainability which embraces different and often contradictory dimensions as well as the interrelatedness of these. Central to this chapter is the belief that siloed approaches to research and practice are slowing the rate of progress and that a multidisciplinary approach is required which should be embedded within a more radical, regenerative conceptualisation of sustainability. With this in mind, the chapter will explore current theoretical perspectives and practices and consider the extent to which traditional and contemporary perspectives on sustainability might be limiting progress within the area of sustainable mountain bike trails. Drawing upon recent advances from sustainability science, I advocate for the use of conceptualisations that encompass both inner and outer dimensions (Ives et al., 2020) and for the application of a broadly delineated construct of regenerative sustainability (Gibbons, 2020).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361626-12

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Traditional vs regenerative sustainability paradigms and their relevance to mountain bike trails Early sustainability paradigms were predominantly anthropocentric in nature and focused largely on improving efficiency, reducing harm, and mitigating (human) damage to the environment (Du Plessis & Cole, 2011). This approach was underpinned by a reductionist view, in which human behaviour was analysed in isolation from other lifeforms and ecosystems (Gibbons, 2020). For instance, much of the current knowledge base regarding trail sustainability has emerged from research focussing on soil disturbance, although environmental impact can extend to wider ecological components including vegetation (Weiss et al., 2016; Pickering, 2022), disturbance of wildlife (Wyttenbach et al., 2016), and effects upon water quality (Kidd et al., 2014; Cooke and Xia, 2020). It is now well established that all trail-based activities cause a degree of degradation of soil, with the effect generally being curvilinear (Hammitt et al., 2015) and moderated by an interaction between environmental factors, user type, and user behaviour. Recent attempts have also been made to promote repeatable evaluation of the physical condition and sustainability of trail systems through measurement of attributes, including the composition of tread substrates, vegetation type, soil moisture, and tread drainage (Marion &Wimpey 2017; Marion et al., 2022). However, a recent review of soil erosion on mountain trails resulting from leisure activities argues that the clear asymptotic relationship between trail use and degradation occurring in some environments but not in others highlights the need to better understand the natural factors which mediate this relationship and the behaviour of users (Salesa & Cerdà, 2020). Thus, it is only through an integrated approach which measures multiple variables longitudinally, including local geomorphic conditions, trail characteristics (e.g., grade, slope alignment, surface materials), weather conditions, ground and soil conditions, usage (e.g. volume, frequency, and patterns of use) rider behaviours (e.g., riding styles, braking technique, adherence to the trail) and considers the interaction between them can we can properly establish the environmental impact of mountain bike trail use within local contexts. Indeed, the current reductionist approach, and associated conceptual (im)precision, may constrain integrative enquiry (Ives et al., 2020) and cannot fully elucidate the sum of impacts across the wider environment. Furthermore, current approaches are generally limited to describing and quantifying impacts and there is a need to develop and measure the efficacy of strategies for mitigation at a minimum (Salesa & Cerdà, 2020). Here, the idea of regeneration represents a paradigm shift for sustainability, adopting a holistic worldview that transcends previous forms of sustainability whilst aiming to promote the thriving and flourishing of complex living systems (Gibbons, 2020). Central to the regenerative approach is the belief that sustainability comprises both inner and outer dimensions. Inner sustainability

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refers to the mindset of individual agents, including their beliefs, values, attitudes, and emotions. In mountain biking, for instance, rider behaviours are arguably the most important determinant of the ecological impact of trail use and therefore need to be fully understood in order to progress the discourse of sustainable trails. In terms of trail use, current trends suggest that trail and enduro riding are becoming the most prevalent (Vital, 2020; Campbell et al., 2021; IMBA, 2021) and these riding styles encompass the use of a wide range of trails, including machine built, hand-dug and wild, or natural, with enduro tending towards more natural, downhill-orientated tracks. We also know that a majority of mountain bikers will continue to ride in wet conditions, although there are country-specific variations (Campbell et al., 2021; IMBA, 2021). Outer dimensions of sustainability, on the other hand, represent the observable elements of sustainability, including those relating to governance, ecosystems, and human-environmental systems. Indeed, one of the most contentious issues surrounding the use of trails by mountain bikes at present is that of trail status, or designation. Trail access laws differ across countries and trail designations are often ambiguous due to the lexicon applied to unofficial trails, which includes terms such as unauthorised, unofficial, illegal, illegitimate, unsanctioned, wild, rogue, guerrilla, pirate, or grey trails, among others. Unauthorised trail building has always been part of mountain bike culture, but with growing numbers of riders the potential for negative impacts increases. However, while purpose-built trail centres and bike parks can divert mountain bikers away from more sensitive areas, thereby protecting ecosystems and reducing conflict (Taylor & Sand, 2021), they may not satisfy all riders’ appetites for natural technical trails (Gibbs & Holloway, 2018). Certainly, previous research has shown that most European riders admit to using illegal or unauthorised trails (Zajc & Berzelak, 2016; Campbell et al., 2021) and, perhaps unsurprisingly, use of unauthorised trails is greatest in countries where riders report a shortage of appropriate legal trails. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic afforded a unique insight into how these inner and outer factors can intersect and overlap, as we witnessed how the impact of enforcing widespread restrictions on mountain bikers (outer), in this case of movement, leads to the proliferation of unauthorised trail building (inner) (Primack and Terry, 2021; O’Keeffe, 2022), supporting the notion that mountain bikers have a desire to ride certain types of trails and to create them where they don’t currently exist. During the pandemic there was also a significant increase in the use of trails located in or close to urban areas (Tiessen, 2022; Smith et al., 2022), and while this may not have been driven by fully autonomous motives, locating trails close to where people live and work promotes wider sustainability by reducing vehicular travel to reach trails and increasing equity of access. With that being said, little is understood about the motives for building and using such trails, although anecdotal evidence suggests that unsanctioned

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trails are often initiated by underrepresented groups who are unsatisfied with sanctioned trails and cite predictable man-made features and perceived sanitation as undesirable elements of official trails (AMB Magazine, 2021). Arguably, then, by crafting trails which promote opportunities to engage with nature in ways which satisfy individual needs (and desire for more technical trails) unauthorised trail builders are promoting their own well-being and sense of flourishing. The extent to which this might develop various dimensions of sustainability, especially within the group domain, and ultimately lead to wider pro-environmental behaviours is currently unclear but needs to be considered as a potentially important outcome. In considering the complex and overlapping nature of inner and outer motivators for sustainability, it is therefore important not to assume that unauthorised trails are inherently less sustainable than authorised trails, as this assumption is predicated upon somewhat limited evidence and adopts a predominantly ecocentric perspective. Again, there is a need for multidisciplinary evidence attending to the local context surrounding these trails. Unauthorised building of technical trail features certainly has the potential to create environmental issues, as well as safety concerns where existing trails have been inappropriately modified, but simply removing unauthorised trails or features fails to address positive social benefits that emerge from mountain bikers’ perspectives (Pickering et al., 2010). Trail design, building, and maintenance from a regenerative perspective From a management or legislative perspective, it is imperative that mountain bike practitioners consciously consider all aspects of sustainability to ensure an informed decision-making process. To facilitate this, there is a need to develop frameworks to guide the decision-making process underpinning the response to unauthorised trail building, which may be embedded within contemporary or regenerative paradigms. While local access legislation is central to this debate, planners and trail builders should be cognisant that prohibition is likely to be counterproductive and may push riders towards a disengagement tipping point leading to a reduction in feelings and acts of care towards other users and the environment (Brown, 2016). In Scotland, where access laws are especially progressive, the National Access Forum, who work in collaboration with Developing Mountain Biking in Scotland, land management and ownership bodies (Forestry and Land Scotland, Scottish Land and Estates, and Scottish National Farmers Union), and other recreation bodies (British Horse Society, Ramblers Scotland) developed a guide to unauthorised trail building (National Access Forum Scotland, 2018). This document is intended to help mountain bikers engage with landowners and land managers, and the guidance also contains practical steps and advice on several of the key issues and problems relating to the

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construction of trails. In addition, the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) currently advocates for more trails close to home, citing the significant benefits that these have for mental health and quality of life, providing economic benefits and creating community (IMBA, 2022, 2023). Bentonville, Arkansas, serves as an exemplary case study for this, and the potential for creating new social and economic communities from the co-location of people and trails (Heil, 2017). In this sense, ‘unauthorised’ trails can, under certain circumstances, make an important contribution to local economies, provide physical and mental health benefits, offer sporting challenges, and provide a connection with nature (National Access Forum Scotland, 2018). As I have already suggested, the regenerative paradigm asserts that inner dimensions are the root of outer sustainability and that it is only by attending to these inner dimensions that positive effects on the wider biosphere can be realised. Despite the persisting belief that mountain bikers are motivated by a sense of risk and danger, there is a growing body of evidence to demonstrate that enjoyment of nature is a much more powerful source of motivation (Roberts, 2018; Campbell et al., 2021). Given the immediacy of many mountain bike trails to natural environments (see Figure 8.1), this is perhaps unsurprising. Extreme sports certainly have the potential to cultivate a strong affinity to, and connection with, nature and the natural environment (MacIntyre et al., 2019) and may act as a precursor to undertaking environmentally sustainable

Figure 8.1 Mountain bike trails in Aviemore, Scotland. Credit: Ross Bell/Developing Mountain Biking in Scotland.

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practices (Brymer et al., 2009; Brymer & Gray, 2010). Roberts et al. (2018) reported that nearly 90% of mountain bikers believe their involvement in the sport makes them feel more connected to nature and the world around them. More recently, we demonstrated that European mountain bikers not only believe that use of mountain bike trails has increased their appreciation of and willingness to protect nature, but that a large majority claim to have taken direct action to do so (Campbell et al., 2021). When viewed from the perspective of regenerative sustainability, it appears likely that participation in mountain biking is influencing an internal dimension of sustainability (evidenced through reported attitudes) and driving pro-environmental behaviours that extend beyond the boundaries of the trail itself. Adopting this perspective may therefore promote research to better understand and to capitalise on this process. Here, there is an apparent paradox between mountain bikers’ desire to use and to protect nature. While contemporary sustainability would consider the trade-off between potential environmental impact and sustainability of human well-being, regenerative sustainability affords an opportunity to think differently about human-nature relationships and pro-environmentalism and to look beyond the direct impacts occurring from participation in leisure activity or nature-based sport (Hanna et al., 2019). We can draw upon various examples relating to mountain bike trails where inner sustainability (attitudes) appears to drive outer sustainability (proenvironmental behaviours). For example, Trash Free Trails (TFT) is a communityfocused, non-profit organisation which aims to reconnect people with nature through the simple yet meaningful act of removing single-use pollution from wild places. In 2022, TFT removed over 7000 kg of rubbish from 9775 km of trails through 2810 volunteer hours (Trash Free Trails, 2022). Similarly, the Marin Tidy Trails initiative also seeks to mobilise the mountain bike community in removing litter from trails through trail-tidy days and campaigning (Marin, 2022). This reflects work I have conducted elsewhere, whereby, in explaining their enjoyment of riding mountain bike trails, participants cited characteristics which encompassed a broad range of environmental, social, and economic aspects (Campbell et al., 2021). Within these initiatives, the planning, design, and construction of mountain bike trails are integral to their regenerative potential. This is formalised in the International Mountain Bicycling Association’s (IMBA) Guide to a Quality Trail Experience (GQTE), which states that: One of the core principles of the GQTE is to balance these components of trail sustainability in every project that is undertaken. If achieved, this balance will provide the type of quality trail outcomes that riders seek, ultimately resulting in a truly sustainable riding opportunity. (IMBA, 2017, p. xvi)

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This idea of balancing the different aspects of sustainability also allows us to move beyond the mechanics of sustainable construction techniques, or of maximising mitigation, to a position where environmental impacts might be weighed up against other aspects of sustainability, since: The most overlooked aspect of the trail development process is social sustainability, and a primary goal of the GQTE is to elevate awareness and consideration of this component. Each trail user seeks a specific experience, and while this seems simple enough to achieve, the complicated reality is that various types of users may be seeking dramatically different experiences on the same trail on the same day, and some users may have varying expectations of the trail itself depending upon their unique recreational objectives on any given day. Failure to consider or provide for a wide range of desired user outcomes (experiences and associated benefits) is easily evidenced by overcrowded trails, trails with little use, trail users who feel ‘pushed out’ by other users, and the creation of unauthorized routes. Even if a trail is properly designed to provide a desired user outcome by minimizing resource protection, it can still fail to be socially sustainable. If the location of the trail is unsupportable from a political or social standpoint, the long-term sustainability can be called into question as a case of “right trail, wrong place.” Different bike cultures, influenced by topography, weather, the bike industry, and innumerable other factors, exist in some areas, racing is a critical component of the local scene; in others, pushing the boundaries of technical riding drives the community. Using the network of trail stakeholders to identify the dominant culture of a specific area will foster the development of proper trail user objectives, ultimately leading to establishing the right trail in the right place. (IMBA, 2017, p.165) Applying the concept of whole ecosystems to the trails, it therefore becomes relatively easy to advocate for a position which considers the sustainability of wider trail networks rather than of individual trails within planning. It is for this reason that Marion et al. (2022, p.1) suggests that In the context of larger trail networks, there should be an equilibrium or harmony between human uses and the long-term protection and maintenance of the trail network’s infrastructure, its environmental and cultural resource conditions, and broader social, health, and economic benefits to surrounding communities. However, this raises an important question regarding whether all trails need to meet the same threshold in order to formally qualify as ‘sustainable’.

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Certainly, from an environmental perspective we know that local conditions interact with build level to dictate the carrying capacity and therefore the level of build required, and this may vary significantly across the wider trail network. For instance, hand-built trails (see Figure 8.2) may be appropriate in some areas, whereas in others, a mechanised build (see Figure 8.3) may

Figure 8.2 A hand-built trail, ‘3G’ in Innerleithen, Scotland. Credit Ian Linton/ Developing Mountain Biking in Scotland.

Figure 8.3  A machine-built trail, ‘Silverstone’ in Hemsedal, Norway. Credit: Lars Storheim.

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be preferable. Planning becomes central to ensuring sustainability across networks (guidance from IMBA touches upon this) and DMBinS recommends involving the riding community in this process to ensure that trails can be provided which meet their needs. Integration of professional and voluntary trail builders should be encouraged and, where possible, trail associations and unofficial trails crews should contribute to the creation of the right trails in the right place. By acknowledging that not all trails need to be equal, it is possible to identify areas where trails will necessarily be short lived (e.g., due to commercial harvesting operations), and consider the implications for the build level of (steep, natural fall line) trails which will not need to withstand lots of traffic or years of use (NAF, 2018). With this in mind, it has been argued that land managers potentially need to consider providing trails in sacrifice areas to alleviate the stress imposed on fragile ecosystems while recognising that decisions taken in one area are likely to affect neighbouring areas over time due to shifts in mountain biking opportunities. (Mosedale, 2002). Conversely, where protection is prioritised, there are a number of innovative approaches which promote environmental sustainability. For example, Vivabike in Valposchiavo have been expanding their mountain biking offer in Switzerland without creating new trails through a process of ‘trail recycling’, whereby largely unused historic paths are converted into a viable network of mountain bike trails. This emerging practice represents a sustainable way to create an attractive trail network without having to interfere with the landscape, since the trails are already historically and ecologically embedded in the landscape (Take Care of Your Trails, 2021). In considering these examples, it is clear that trail planners and builders bear ultimate responsibility for shaping both the user experience and the potential environmental impact (Taylor & Sand, 2021). As the trail-building sector seeks to become more professional, there is therefore a need for quality education and training to ensure the sustainability of high-quality mountain bike trails. To date, the IMBA guide (2017) represents the most comprehensive guide to improving the design and construction of mountain bike trails. However, the results of a comprehensive trail-building sector survey undertaken in 2020 as part of the European Commission-funded ‘Developing Intereuropean Resources for Trail Builder Training’ (DIRTT) project indicates that as many as 65% of companies operating in the trail sector have difficulty recruiting employees with the appropriate skills and competence, while over half felt there was insufficient training available to meet the needs of their organisation (Campbell et al., 2021). There was also a strong demand for a certification program, with 79% of respondents believing that the introduction of certification would lead to an increase in the quality and sustainability of mountain bike trails. The purpose of DIRTT was to create a pan-European education and training offering to address the limitations of current training and to develop the necessary skills within the trail-building sector. Due to the pan-European composition of the project partners, local context was explicit, leading to the

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development of a global framework which can be applied at the local level according to contextual factors including geology, topography, legislation, weather, build levels, type, and end users. This was a deliberate departure from a previous one-size-fits-all approach, opting instead for a common quality assurance framework that can be interpreted and applied locally. Here, the focus is on the end-user experience as the starting point to delivering the right trail in the right place. The project developed a formal credit-bearing vocational course of study, combining online education with practical residential sessions, as well as a structure and resources to facilitate stand-alone training within each partner country according to their needs. Development of pedagogical training principles is embedded within the training to promote quality instruction and to maximise opportunities for experienced trail builders to share their knowledge. Similar developments are taking place within the United States, with Vermont University launching a sustainable trail certificate in 2023 and Northwest Arkansas Community College’s Foundation having recently been awarded an $8 million grant to establish a trails trade school (Trobach, 2023). Sustainability and the (increasing) role of trail associations Increased participation in mountain biking and the potential conflict between user groups and land managers has spawned a marked growth in civic recreation-based stewardship and advocacy groups aimed at preserving, creating, and restoring recreational resources (Schild, 2019). The mobilisation of collective actors in the shape of trail associations has been shown to be pivotal in negotiating and addressing trade-offs between different groups of stakeholders (Wilkes-Allemann et al., 2022). While there is no official database of trail associations, the online trail management platform TrailForks lists approximately 3000 trail associations worldwide (Trailforks, 2023). Vermont Trail Association, who claim to be the largest, boast a current membership of nearly 10,000 members, growing by nearly a quarter between 2020 and 2022 (VMBA, 2023). Trail associations serve to mobilise the riding community by harnessing social capital and a willingness to contribute to trail maintenance. The value of volunteering for developing a sense of community in sports settings has previously been demonstrated (Cuskelly & O’Brien, 2013) and trail associations have an important role to play in developing sustainable mountain bike communities. While individual associations have specific mission statements, these most commonly focus on securing access to or enhancing mountain biking opportunities, building, and maintaining trails, promoting responsible mountain biking and trail use, and advocating on behalf of mountain bikers, with community building also being a relatively frequent aspiration (Schild, 2019). Therefore, while there is an important focus on the environment, it could be argued that the central purpose of trail associations promotes all aspects of sustainability: environmental, social, economic, and cultural.

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Voluntary participation in recreation and conservation projects has previously been shown to improve aspects of participant well-being (Molsher & Townsend, 2016), enhance awareness of environmental issues (Asah & Blahna, 2012; Molsher & Townsend, 2016), and lead to attitudinal shifts (indicative of increased inner sustainability) and improved stewardship (Dresner & Fischer, 2013; Schild, 2018). Whether this leads to wider proenvironmental behaviours is not currently clear, and there is currently a lack of empirical evidence derived from participants volunteering in the construction or maintenance of mountain bike trails. However, alongside environmental reasons, the social and fun aspects of volunteer trail-building activity have been shown to be important motivations for participation which might contribute to the development of inner dimensions of sustainability (Kamei et al., 2016). From a practical perspective, Wilkes-Allemann et al. (2022) outline the critical role that formalised trail associations played in successfully liaising and negotiating with other stakeholders and representing the interests of mountain bikers within three European countries. For example, IMBAs annual Take Care of Your Trails campaign, originating from Scotland, promotes volunteer-based trail maintenance and highlights all trail repair, clean-up and build efforts from trail crews and volunteers across Europe. In 2022 alone, over 6900 volunteer hours were contributed through this initiative (IMBA, 2023). Adopting or assuming responsibility for trails is therefore key to initiating negotiations around ownership and use, while the challenge of funding the establishment and maintenance of the trail raises competing interest and can constrain the process. Many trail associations offer membership or contribution systems to attract funding direct from the riding community, with funds being directed back into local trail infrastructure. Additionally, through their formalised structures and governance, trail associations provide a valuable link between governing bodies, industry, and riders, by providing a degree of assurance and professionalism that allows alignment of brand and consumer values. While trail associations are clearly an important element in the issue of trail sustainability, they may not fully represent the needs of all riders. There are challenges relating to the potential for over-sanitisation of trails and the effect that this may have on more experienced and established groups of riders. This is where the integration of trail associations with higher-level planning and trail network coordinators becomes important. Similarly, the ‘No dig no ride’ philosophy that is permeating into the unofficial trail-building community may, on the face of it, appear to be a positive development intended to support the building and maintenance of trails, but also has the potential to divide to the riding community. The underlying message is one of gatekeeping, with echoes of the attitudes previously displayed towards mountain bikers from other users of the outdoors. This may undermine inner dimensions of sustainability, alienate individual riders, and fuel a counterculture that creates further division and distrust among mountain bikers.

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Conclusion: Can inclusion and sustainability co-exist in mountain biking? Historically, the sustainability of mountain bike trails has generally been located within an anthropocentric perspective, with the lens shifting between conventional and contemporary paradigms (Gibbons, 2020) according to the extent to which rider experience (human wellbeing) or trail quality (ecological well-being) is prioritised. On the ground, this agenda has largely been driven by issues relating to social conflict (Cherrington, 2021) and as a relative newcomer to the world of nature sports, significant efforts have been certainly made to measure and evidence the environmental impacts of mountain biking relative to other users. However, mountain biking has quickly transitioned to being a firmly established and legitimate nature sport, affording the opportunity to move beyond this defensive position to one which focuses on the important nuance of sustainability. In this chapter, I have provided evidence of an emergent holistic approach to sustainability in mountain bike trail building which considers the local context, rather than adopting a onesize-fits-all approach. Indeed, moving away from thinking dualistically about humans and the environment and embracing socio-natures and emergent ecologies (Cherrington & Black, 2020) may provide a more useful basis from which to explore mountain bike trail sustainability. Increasingly, the mountain bike industry is mobilising to promote this holistic approach. For example, several mountain bike manufacturers have recently launched initiatives to promote more sustainable mountain bike trails, and while environmental considerations are those that are the most heavily marketed, there is also a strong focus on developing communities and promoting greater use of trails by wider sections of society. For example, Trek established their foundation in 2021 to: …help protect land, develop trail systems for public use, and provide more riders access to great places to ride. The trail systems this helps fund will remain open, protected, and free for all to use. In addition to providing communities and mountain bikers with new and better trail networks, grants from The Trek Foundation help protect the surrounding land from development. (Trek, 2021, no pagination) In a similar vein, Fox Factory created the Trail Trust to: bring together diverse communities to build, maintain, and expand access to trails… to meaningfully enhance trail/land access and maintenance. We seek to diversify the population that participates in the cycling and power sports industries, which have historically seen inadequate representation. (Trail Trust, n.d., no pagination)

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Through their Pay Dirt scheme, Santa Cruz are also committed to increasing access to trails by supporting the work of people who make it happen. Via this project, the mountain bike manufacturer pledges to donate $1 million towards trail projects, local organisations, events, and programs that are geared towards creating and strengthening opportunities for people to get out on the trails (Santa Cruz, 2023). Finally, Specialized have operated their soil searching initiative since 2018 to create sustainable trail systems around the world through ambassadors, dig days, and fundraisers to assist communities in maintaining and growing their trail networks (Specialized, 2023). This initiative supported over 11,000 volunteer hours across 2019 and 2020. Clearly, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that the mountain bike community and industry are largely environmentally conscious and are seeking to promote the sustainability of trails through a range of innovative initiatives. These initiatives, though different in their approach and outcomes, are united by a shared mission to enable direct action via political investment and social structures that can capitalise on pro-environmental attitudes. Practical approaches supporting the creation and maintenance of more sustainable trails through trail builder education and accreditation, mobilisation of volunteers through trail associations, industry-led initiatives, and a focus on greater access to trails closer to home are encouraging. However, there remains a need for a collective shift in thinking to embrace a more holistic conceptualisation of trail sustainability which encompasses the wider biosphere and the potential to move beyond mitigation, towards regeneration through promotion of inner dimensions of sustainability. This conceptual shift requires a new, more holistic research agenda to generate the evidence base required to help realise the goal of regeneration. References AMB (2021). Opinion -Why Build Illegal Trails. Available at: https://www.ambmag. com.au/feature/opinion-why-build-illegal-trails-567624 Asah, S.T., & Blahna, D.J. (2012). Motivational functionalism and urban conservation stewardship: Implications for volunteer involvement. Conservation Letters, 5, 470–477. Brown, K.M. (2016). The role of belonging and affective economies in managing outdoor recreation: Mountain biking and the disengagement tipping point. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 15, 35–46. Brymer, E., Downey, G., & Gray, T. (2009). Extreme sports as a precursor to environmental sustainability. Journal of Sport & Tourism, 14(2–3), 193–204. Brymer, E., & Gray, T. (2010). Developing an intimate ‘relationship’ with nature through extreme sports participation. Leisure/Loisir, 34(4), 361–374. Buning, R.J., Cole, Z., & Lamont, M.(2019). A case study of the US mountain bike tourism market. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 25(4), 515–527. Campbell, T., Kirkwood, L., McLean, G., Torsius, M., & G. Florida-James. (2021). Trail use, motivations, and environmental attitudes of 3780 European mountain bikers:

138  Tom Campbell What is sustainable? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(24), 12971. Cherrington, J. (2021). The ontopolitics of mountain bike trail building: Addressing issues of access and conflict in the more-than-human English countryside. Somatechnics, 11(3), 322–339. Cherrington, J., & Black, J. (2020). Mountain bike trail building, ‘dirty’ work and a new terrestrial politics. World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research, 76(1), 39–61. Cooke, M.T., & Xia, L. (2020). Impacts of land-based recreation on water quality, Natural Areas Journal, 40(2), 179–188. DMBINS (2019). Scottish mountain bike strategy 2019–2025. Available at: https:// dmbins.com/our-work/scottish-mtb-strategy/ Dresner, M., & Fischer, K.A. (2013). Environmental stewardship outcomes from yearlong invasive species restoration projects in middle school. Invasive Plant Science and Management, 6(3), 444–448. Du Plessis, C., & Cole, R.J. (2011). Motivating change: shifting the paradigm. Building Research & Information, 39(5), 436–449. DOI: 10.1080/09613218.2011.582697 Fox (2022) Trail Trust. Available at: https://www.ridefox.com/purpose.php?p=trail_trust Gibbons, L.V. (2020). Regenerative - The new sustainable? Sustainability, 12(13), 5483. Gibbs, D., & Holloway, L. (2018). From experience economy to experience landscape: The example of UK trail centres. Area, 50, 248–255. Hammitt, W.E., Cole, D.N., & Monz, C.A. (2015). Wildland Recreation: Ecology and Management. The Authoritative Guide to Understanding and Managing the Ecological Impacts of Recreational Activities in Wildlands. (second ed.), New York: John Wiley & Sons. Hanna, P., Wijesinghe, S., Paliatsos, I., Walker, C., Adams, M., & Kimbu, A. (2019). Active engagement with nature: Outdoor adventure tourism, sustainability and wellbeing. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 27(9), 1355–1373. Heil, G. (2017). Northwest Arkansas: This is what $13 million can build. Singletracks. IMBA (2017). Guidelines for a quality trail experience. Available at: https://www.imba. com/resource/guidelines-quality-trail-experience IMBA (2021). 2021 trail sector stakeholder and consumer survey. Available at: https:// www.imba-europe.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Stakeholder-and-consumerreport-DIRTT-Project.pdf IMBA. (2022). Catalysing more trails close to home. Available at: https://www.imba. com/blog/catalyzing-more-trails-close-home IMBA. (2023). Our focus – more trails close to home. Available at: https://www.imba. com/our-focus Ives, C.D., Freeth, R., & Fischer, J. (2020). Inside-out sustainability: The neglect of inner worlds. Ambio, 49, 208–217. Kamei, T., Aikoh, T., & Ryan, R. L. (2016). Motivations of Trail Volunteers of the Adirondack Mountain Club. Proceedings of the Fábos Conference on Landscape and Greenway Planning: Vol. 5 : No. 2, Article 37. Available at: https://scholarworks. umass.edu/fabos/vol5/iss2/37 Kidd, K.R., Aust, W.M. & Copenheaver, C.A. (2014). Recreational stream crossing effects on sediment delivery and macroinvertebrates in Southwestern Virginia, USA. Environmental Management, 54, 505–516.

Sustainable mountain bike trails  139 MacIntyre, T.E., Walkin, A.M., Beckmann J., Calogiuri, G., Gritzka, S., Oliver, G., Donnelly, A.A., & Warrington, G. (2019). An exploratory study of extreme sport athletes’ nature interactions: From well-being to pro-environmental behavior. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1233. Marin (2022). Marin Tidy trails week returns this September. Available at: https://www. marinbikes.com/gb/news-reviews/marin-tidy-trails-week-returns-this-september Marion, J.L., Arredondo, J., & Meadema, F. (2022). Assessing the condition and sustainability of the trail system at Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. Final report to the Nature Conservancy, Kansas Flint Hills Office, and DOI National Park Service, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, Strong City, KS. Available at: https://cdn2. assets-servd.host/material-civet/production/images/documents/Tallgrass-PrairieNatl-Preserve-Final-Rpt.pdf Marion, J.L., & Wimpey, J. (2017). Assessing the influence of sustainable trail design and maintenance on soil loss. Journal of Environmental Management, 189, 46–57. Mihai, B., Reynard, E., Werren, G., Savulescu, I., Sandric, I., & Chitu, Z. (2009). Impacts of tourism on geomorphological processes in the Bucegi Mountains in Romania. Geographica Helvetica, 64, 134–147. Molsher, R., & Townsend, M. (2016). Improving wellbeing and environmental stewardship through volunteering in nature. EcoHealth 13, 151–155. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10393-015-1089-1 Mosedale, J. (2002). Mountain biking in the Canadian Rocky Mountains: A situational analysis. Case study on Mountain Tourism, and the Conservation of Biological and Cultural Diversity. A Mountain Forum e-consultation for the UNEP / Bishkek Global Mountain Summit, 23–28, April 2002. National Land Access Forum Scotland. (2018). Unauthorised mountain bike trails: A guide for land managers and riders. Scotland: Developing Mountain Biking in Scotland. O’Keeffe, P. (2022). Young peoples’ construction of DIY dirt jumps in Melbourne, Australia, throughout the Covid–19 lockdowns. Journal of Applied Youth Studies, 5, 117–134. Pickering, C. (2022). Mountain bike riding and hiking can contribute to the dispersal of weed seeds. Journal of Environmental Management, 319, 115693. Pickering, C., Castley, G., Hill, W., & Newsome, D. (2010). Environmental, safety and management issues of unauthorised trail technical features for mountain bicycling. Landscape and Urban Planning, 97(1), 58–67. Primack, R.B., & Terry, C. (2021). New social trails made during the pandemic increase fragmentation of an urban protected area. Biological Conservation, 255, 108993. Pröbstl-Haider, U., Hödl, C., Ginner, K., & Borgwardt, F. (2021). Climate change: Impacts on outdoor activities in the summer and shoulder seasons. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 34, 100344. Roberts L, Jones G, Brooks R. (2018). Why do you ride?: A characterization of mountain bikers, their engagement methods, and perceived links to mental health and well-being. Frontiers in Psychology, 9:1642. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01642. Salesa, D., & Cerdà, A. (2020). Soil erosion on mountain trails as a consequence of recreational activities. A comprehensive review of the scientific literature. Journal of Environmental Management, 271, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.110990

140  Tom Campbell Santa Cruz. (2023). PayDirt. Available at: https://www.santacruzbicycles.com/en-US/ paydirt Schild, D. (2018). Fostering environmental citizenship: the motivations and outcomes of civic recreation. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 61(5–6), 924–949. Schild, R. (2019). Civic recreation: Outdoor recreationists as advocates, stewards, and managers of natural resources. Environmental Management, 63, 629–646. Smith, I., Velasquez, E., Norman, P., & Pickering, C. (2022). Effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the popularity of protected areas for mountain biking and hiking in Australia: Insights from volunteered geographic information. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 41, 100588. Specialized (2023). Specialized soil searching. Available at: https://www.specialized. com/us/en/soil-searching Take Care of Your Trails. (2021). TCoYT 2021 most innovative trail crew award TCoYT 2021 Most Innovative Trail Crew Award | Take Care of Your Trails Taylor, S., & Sand, M. (2021). Doubles, drops and ditches: Deconstructing the art of the mountain bike trail-builder. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 33, 100364. Tiessen, M. (2022). To the ravines! Encountering, exploring, and expanding Toronto’s mountain bike trails during and beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. Eracle. Journal of Sport and Social Sciences, 5(1), 64–93. Trailforks. (2023). Trail association directory. Available at https://www.trailforks.com/ directory/all/?category=1 Trash Free Trails. (2022). Annual impact report. Available at: https://www.trashfreet rails.org/2022-impact-report Trek (2021). Trek Foundation. Available at: https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/ trek-foundation/ Trobach, J. (2023). NWACC Foundation to use $8 million grant for trails trade school. Available at: https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/jan/10/8-million-grant-toget-trails-school-going VITAL (2020). 10,000 Mountain bikers respond – 2020 Vital MTB survey results. Availableat:https://www.vitalmtb.com/features/10-000-Mountain-Bikers-Respond-2020-VitalMTB-Survey-Results,2946 Weiss, F., Brummer, T.J., & Pufal, G. (2016). Mountain bikes as seed dispersers and their potential socio-ecological consequences. Journal of Environmental Management 181, 326–332. Wilkes-Allemann, J., Ludvig, A., Gobs, S., Lieberherr, E., Hogl, K., & Selter, A. (2022). Getting a grip on negotiation processes: Addressing trade-offs in mountain biking in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Forest Policy and Economics, 136, 102683. Wyttenbach, M., Graf, R. F., Sigrist, B., Karlen, B., & Rupf, R. (2016). Mountainbiking and wildlife: disturbance experiments with roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) in Switzerland. Monitoring and Management of Visitors in Recreational and Protected Areas: Abstract Book. Zajc, P., & Berzelak, N. (2016). Riding styles and characteristics of rides among Slovenian mountain bikers and management challenges. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 15, (10–19), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jort.2016.04.009

Chapter 9

No dig, no ride Repairing and caring for DIY-designed mountain bike and BMX trails Liam Healy

Introduction In 1993, Nancy Midol produced an early study of what she called ‘whiz’ sports (now more commonly ‘extreme’, or ‘lifestyle’) where she argued that: When a sociologically circumscribed group has no other aim in life but to live in a world of waves or snow [or trees and piles of dirt], when an entire life is devoted to one moment of ecstasy, it is time to consider the most intimate ways by which human beings build [repair and maintain] their own cultural landmarks and make them meaningful’. (1993, p.27, my adaptations and emphasis) Since then, many scholars have taken up Midol’s call, with burgeoning scholarship on relations between these sports and the worlds, architectures, designs, and practices that surround them. For example, work on skateboarding’s relationship to architecture and the production of space (Borden, 2001, 2019), surfers relations to water ecologies (Olive, 2022), and snowboarding and product design has become a mainstay of the sociology of sport and leisure (Thorpe, 2012). In this chapter, I take up this call but opt instead to focus on the often unseen or hidden communities who care for, maintain, and repair DIY bike trails (what I will refer to following cultural vernacular as ‘spots’) used by mountain bikers, BMX riders, and dirt jumpers. Mountain bike, BMX, and dirt jump trails have rather divergent histories, but their worlds have become more entangled in the last 20 or so years. Arguably, as the sports have matured, and trail users have changed (in my view have become less dogmatic), the design of trails has evolved to facilitate and combine different kinds of riding (e.g., jumping, trail riding, downhill), and many trail users will often ride and participate in multiple types of bike riding involving different terrains. What they share in common is that DIY trails are typically made of varying qualities of dirt (Cherrington & Black, 2020a), mud, and rock (not soil! Puig de la

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361626-13

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Bellacasa, 2015), and are designed, built, shaped, and maintained by hand using shovels and wheelbarrows by small communities on sub or peri-urban plots of land that are often squatted or appropriated without permission. These spots exist all over the world and are often connected by way of tightknit social networks of (typically male) builders maintained by travelling large distances to visit one another, social media platforms, and through printed magazines and zines. Many spots are built in secret, often on private land without prior permission from landowners, meaning they can be precarious, fragile, and are regularly removed, ‘ploughed’, and illegalised (much to the distress of the local builders). In what follows, I follow feminist science and technology studies (STS) scholars’ suggestion that we (which in this paper I take to mean designers and researchers) tune into neglected practices and things (Lindström, Se, & Ståhl, 2019; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011). Accordingly, I begin the paper by making a shift from studying ‘action’ (Gomart & Hennion, 1999) towards maintenance (Denis & Pontille, 2019; Denis & Pontille, 2014) and ‘care in practice’ (Mol, Moser, & Pols, 2015), and in doing so find that trail spots thicken conceptions of care in spaces typically conceptualised in terms of performance, and the affective experiences and thrills of bike riding itself (Hagen & Boyes, 2016), as opposed to the less visible and often mundane practices that keep them functioning and which create the conditions for these experiences. My aim in this chapter is to centre the empirical material and to tell a series of unfolding stories based on my observations which highlight three key forms of repair and care encountered in the field work. First, I give an account of some of the ‘neglected’ repair practices on the sites; these are DIY practices that rarely feature in accounts or understandings of the sport, or the spaces in which they take place (though are often prominent in vernacular forms of media and documentation as discussed later). In doing so I find that the land that the trails are built on are often in SLOAP (spaces left over after planning), or following Anna Tsing, what I have come to refer to as ‘post-capitalist ruins’ (Tsing, 2015), including mines and quarries, spaces between major roads, and landfill sites. I argue that the practices that trail builders undertake, and the new land uses that they formulate, can be understood as a kind of ‘repair work’ of these ruins. Second, I problematise the ongoing temporal concern of caring for the trails themselves so that they can remain functional. Referring to Puig de la Bellacasa’s (2011) call to tune into ‘neglected things’, I argue that care practices are not only unseen, but intentionally kept secret because the spaces and trails often exist illegally. This brings about two important problems, which I argue thicken and problematise calls for ‘paying attention’. I find that the forms of attention they are given must be done so carefully, and I consider when scholars may need to avoid neglected things, to consider when practices and spaces need to be kept secret or hidden. The second is a highly contentious issue among the communities whereby exclusion of those outside the core community is often enacted and described as a maintenance

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practice. Following this, I point to the relationships between repair and care practices and participation, finding two key features. First, the forms of governance that make up commoning practices, which are required in order for these places to continue to exist in the margins. Second, I find that several spots have recently started to ‘repair’ these forms of exclusion by developing new practices to ensure a spot’s future. These include re-designing the architecture of the spaces to invite a broader community, and ‘exclude to include’ initiatives, designed to bring in new participants. I argue that these sites re-emphasise that repair and care are not innocent, and following feminist approaches to care highlights who or what is excluded in care relations. I argue that DIY bike trails suggest a thickening of care and a novel site to conceptualise the relationships between the multiple ongoing maintenance and care practices enacted. Part I: From action to maintenance It is perhaps odd to look at bike trails through a lens of care and maintenance. The more visible, obvious, or exciting features of these spaces are the forms of action and expression, and the affective experience of riding (Hagen & Boyes, 2016) and performing jumps and tricks. Equally, care is more typically employed as a lens in STS (Lindén & Lydahl, 2021) to examine practices like nursing (Latimer, 2000), the management of disease (Mol, 2008), soil (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2015), and more recently has been taken up in various corners of design scholarship (Lindström et al., 2019; Pennington, 2022; Rodgers, Bremner, & Innella, 2018). Feminist scholars (Fisher & Tronto, 1990) have convincingly argued that attention is asymmetrically paid to the grand gestures of action, over the continual, every day and mundane processes of looking after people and things (Tronto, 1994), which is an argument I seek to follow by exploring DIY trails spots through the (perhaps unlikely) lens of feminist conceptions of care, maintenance, and commoning. In doing so, I find that the theory helps to understand and problematise the multiple and layered forms of repair and maintenance in these places, as well as providing a novel space to reflect on the ways care is understood, and how some of the practices in these spaces might be re-thought or re-designed. Neglected practices DIY trails spots are not only to do with riding bikes and performing tricks, but involve many other practices and support networks, including the production and repair of the space itself, preparing food, gardening, and cleaning, as well as providing general support within the community. These practices are rarely centred in either mainstream or scholarly accounts of action sports. In an attempt to explore these practices through other outlets in biking culture, Figure 9.1 shows a set of screenshots from a short video Dirt Rules! made by

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Figure 9.1 Screenshots from the video ‘Dirt Rules!’. Credit: Stew Johnson (director): S&M Bikes.

the American bike company S&M Bikes. I have re-edited this 42-minute video by following a set of rules so that all ‘action’ (jumping, crashing, performing tricks) is removed, with only the maintenance or care practices left in the video. What is left is three minutes of stacking (making piles of dirt), shaping (sculpting the piles into the desired forms), packing and compacting the features, sweeping, watering, planting, pruning, and covering jumps with tarpaulins to stop them drying out and being damaged by rain when not in use. From the original video, I was surprised at how much of the film remained showing these mundane practices of repair, which demonstrates a certain sense of pride to these maintenance practices, and while they are largely unseen outside the community, they are rather explicit and focussed within. Maintenance practices are not only the physical actions of repairing the jumps and trails or building new features, they also involve cooking and cleaning. For example, Figure 9.2 is from a trail spot in the UK which is on squatted (though tolerated) land, where an annual ‘jam’ (a non-competitive event bringing together different communities of riders and builders) is used to raise money to pay for insurance the community has taken out on the land by selling pizzas made from an oven built into one of the jumps. Another spot I have visited that occupied a meanwhile space in Brooklyn was especially interesting because it begins to highlight the practices that are unpaid and more or less unseen in the other places that I have observed. Before being developed the spot was supported by several local housing developments who employed three people to maintain the tracks, collect trash and empty bins, ensure it was safe, and show newer or younger riders how to use it, all practices that are done voluntarily in the other spaces analysed here. In recent years, there has also been a more visible presence among the community where well-known riders and ‘influencers’ have begun to produce social media content to persuade their followers to clean and look after their spots. Trash Free Trails have also had a relatively wide reach in

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Figure 9.2 A pizza oven used for cooking food built into one of the jumps at a dirt jump spot in the UK. Photograph by the author.

encouraging riders and builders to look after the ‘natural’ spaces where trails exist. For example, they have organised litter picking at biking events, and run workshops with young people to clean up their local trails, as well as developing a citizen science initiative to measure types and quantities of pollution (Trash Free Trails, 2020, 2021). Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) has conceived of the notion of ‘doings’, which in her words ‘focus on everydayness, on the uneventful, as a way of noticing care’s ordinary doings, the domestic unimpressive ways in which we get through the day, without which no event would be possible’ (2017, p.117). Doings is at odds with the grand event, moment of ecstasy (Midol, 1993), or grandiose performance of a difficult jump or trick, and instead draws attention to the uneventful and ordinary. The concept suggests slower kinds of practice which are without end, an attuning towards constant ongoing practices of maintenance and care. Bellacasa’s notion of doings was echoed by my first interviewee, Brian from Posh woods in Pennsylvania USA, who told me: [At Posh] there isn’t a lot of creative input necessary, I’m like the Caretaker […] in the grand scheme of things, it’s probably like 70% caretaking and 30% riding. Describing himself as a caretaker, Brian went onto explain that very little of his time at the spot is spent riding or using the trails, and that for him,

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maintenance is the dominant practice. He explained that this is in part because this particular spot has been here for around 27 years, meaning it is no longer necessary, or indeed possible owing to lack of space, to make very much that is new. Instead, now that this spot has achieved a certain amount of permanence, the larger proportion of practices are around keeping things going. Brian also gives a highly asymmetric ratio of riding (which for most of those I have talked with is the end goal of doing this work) to maintenance work, showing that far from an aside, these practices are a central and important part of this community. Caring for ruins Many spots are built on squatted land, without permission (at least initially). My interlocutors tend to tell similar stories of the genesis of their spots, normally they begin at a small DIY scale, with a group of (normally) young people looking for somewhere to ride their bikes, building new features and jumps which gradually grow in size. Many of these spaces can also be characterised as ‘spaces left after planning’ (SLOAP), or what I have come to think of as post-capitalist ruins (Tsing, 2015), with the builders re-appropriating them for their own needs. For example, they are often sandwiched between major roads, taking up the spoil spaces that are left over after roads are built, or in the case of Brian’s spot, Posh Woods, between a disused quarry, suburban housing, and a shopping mall car park. Importantly, it is precisely this sense of ‘ruin’ which allows them to function and remain; they do not take up prime locations meaning others often do not make claims over the space or tend to visit them. Outside of the trail community people do not seem to care very much about the land, giving underground communities an opportunity to (often temporarily) occupy it. Spots are often built on land that has previously been exploited, for example from mining and quarrying. Therefore spots are always built on pre-existing nature-cultures (Latour, 1993); they don’t exist in pristine untouched nature, but among existing human transformations to the landscape. This is where I take the notion of ruins from the anthropologist Anna Tsing (2013) to refer to the spaces of post-capitalist exploitation where new practices and kinds of life begin to emerge. Importantly, it isn’t my intention to romanticise these practices, or their human privileging; one could argue that many of these maintenance practices are themselves damaging and arguably many of these spaces were doing just fine at ‘repairing themselves’ before the trail builders arrived. Instead, my argument is that from these neglected places, comes a kind of playful practice that (though privileging potential human experiences), can also be seen as a space of co-becoming between humans and non-humans (Cherrington, 2021; Cherrington & Black, 2020b). Thinking with Tsing’s work, I find that in these spaces we can find life built among capitalist ruins, whereby their former functions are re-purposed. Rather than an eerie sense of haunted landscape (Gan, Tsing, Swanson, & Bubandt, 2017),

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these traces left after their previous life give shape to the space enabling, often joyous, and affective possibilities for a community. To thicken this further, in a now commercial bike park built in a former quarry in North Wales, UK, the notion of ruins is ongoing. Here the earthworks to the terrain that was left after quarrying and subsequent tree plantation produces conditions that are well suited to building mountain bike trails (the trees are planted consistently, protecting the trails from water, and the holes left from quarrying become features like drops and jumps). However, this site has recently been closed down due to an outbreak of phytophthora ramorum (Forest Research, n.d.) a tree disease affecting the Larch in the plantation forest, meaning the centre will be closed so that the affected trees can be felled and removed (‘Revolution Bike Park Announcement’, 2022). The trails built in the ruins of the quarry-become-bike-park will themselves become a ruin. This means that the care and maintenance practices of building and shaping the trails will shift and be replaced with a different practice that attempts to repair the site of its diseased trees. My point here is that far from a pristine nature, when these spaces are explored through the lens of repair, they reveal themselves as highly complex socio-natures, involving global networks of actors (e.g., tree diseases, resource extraction, and capitalist exploitation), which are ongoing, and involve heterogenous and sometimes competing practices. And of course, once again echoing feminist STS scholars’ arguments, they are not neutral, and the ontological politics (Mol, 1999) involved in them will often be at the expense of ‘others’. To provide one final example to illustrate this, Holmen Dirt (Figure 9.3) is a spot that emerged from the Anarchist commune Freetown Christiania in

Figure 9.3 Holmen dirt in Copenhagen, Denmark. Source: Holmen Dirt.

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Denmark in the late 1990s. Here, the piles of dirt that make up the jumps and features were once Viking age fortifications (a ruin in a far more traditional, archaeological sense), but they are also a site of historical importance that the municipality has recently decided to restore and protect and have been trying to move the trail builders out of the site. Here the site has become haunted by its former life, that the municipality wants to preserve, once again pointing to the ontological politics of the ways certain kinds of maintenance and acts of care enact certain kinds of exclusion. Part II: Neglected things and caring for a commons Until now, I could have been accused of taking a normative position towards trails spots, and appreciate that I seem to be uncritically listing all of the wonderful caring practices that take place. There is of course more trouble here. For example, my interlocutors have discussed with me a practice of exclusion that they have also framed as an act of maintenance, or even care. This is based on the finding in my field work that often trails spots are not neglected as an ‘uncaring’ act but are actively kept secret and exclusive in order to protect them. Put another way, it is clear that the locals might want us to neglect them. This suggests two problems for me as a scholar interested in conducting research on these places. The first is to problematise when I might need to look away from something or someplace in order to protect it. The second is to suspend a prevailing feeling, or perhaps normative understanding, that exclusion must be ‘bad’. Here, I have attempted to stay with the trouble (Haraway, 2016) whilst reflecting critically on the ways exclusion has been described to me by my interlocutors. When to look away I am currently working on a research project (Co-design Forests) with Forestry England exploring the ways in which the organisation provides access to their woodlands, and how this might be done and designed differently. One aspect of the study is to look at how mountain bike riders use their forestry sites. Rather fortunately, a short distance from where I live is a key hub of mountain biking in the UK built on Forestry England-managed land. This site could potentially provide a rich case study owing to the large network of DIY-built trails, as well as a number of active and motivated communities involved in their design, build, and maintenance to conduct research with. However, there is a problem. Trails in this woodland are ‘wild’, and while they are somewhat tolerated, they are not built with permission. Hence, the network of trails is kept secret, with entrances to them often obscured and hidden, and being shown them (and therefore gaining the privilege to ride them) comes with a set of rules and principles concerning sharing their locations. For

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example, using the social media and fitness tracking app Strava (a divisive topic among the mountain bike community) is discouraged because it can be used to find secret trails, and it is not uncommon to see signs around these trails ‘banning’ the use of these and other social media platforms. It is very tempting to begin a study of this area; the research could provide interesting findings and could potentially foster beneficial practices and partnerships between the trail-building community and Forestry England. But because of the status of these trails, it is also extremely risky, and I am highly aware that bringing attention to them through the project could jeopardise their future. Therefore, I have found that a practice or methodology I need to foster as a researcher is knowing when to ‘look away’, or when to neglect something that is enticing as an interesting research subject. These spots then begin to problematise when and why scholars start to look for ‘neglected things’ (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011) and suggests that there will be times when those neglected things should perhaps remain neglected. Exclusion as a maintenance practice This brings me to another important problem in these places; that trails and their related practices are not just overlooked by accident, but that people are actively excluded from them. This in turn becomes a condition of the place, and one which (some locals would argue) allows them to sustain. For example, when we discussed who was involved in Posh Woods historically, Brian told me: You didn’t go down there unless you knew somebody, or you got the ‘OK’ from somebody. Another interlocutor, Carley, was one of those who seemingly did not get the ok from somebody: I went [to Posh] with my brother… I had no intentions of riding, but I brought my bike because we were on a trip and [the locals] all looked at me like, ‘Why is she here?’ I was like, ‘Whoah, Oh. Where do you want me to go? You want me to go sit in the car?! The locals from Posh Woods have, in the past sought to exclude users from outside the core local community. From an outsiders perspective, they seem like the usual arguments used to keep out people who do not fit with a ‘core’ local scene (Abulhawa, 2020; McCormack, 2017). However, if we take a different view, and this is lensed through a sense of care and maintenance, these practices appear different. For example, Carley, who is from my understanding deeply embedded in the scene (yet was still previously excluded by

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these practices), offered an internal perspective which centers around protection, and of maintaining the trails: When trails get ploughed, people’s lives stop for a long time. Something died, [they] lost something that [they] invested so much into. People don’t get that unless you have a spot ploughed. You have no idea what that feels like.…when people are so protective of trails and people coming in, it’s because of that experience of loss. The problem that Carley describes is that too much of an open spot could bring unwanted attention and jeopardise its future. This argument appears to sit along the lines of those made for enclosure and exclusion, perhaps even echoing Hardin’s famous notion of the Tragedy of the Commons (1968), where he would argue that the protection of private property is in the best interests of the ‘population’, arguing for the merits of exclusive access to land by a select few land owners. Clearly, this practice of exclusion is highly problematic, especially where it falls along pre-existing intersections of injustice and exclusion in extreme sports, such as by gender (Beal, 1996; McCormack, 2017; Rinehart, 2005; Robinson, 2008), race (Harrison, 2013), sexuality, or age. Having said this however, when maintenance is described as a practice of exclusion, it highlights when certain kinds of participation can be damaging and means confronting restriction as a repair practice. Of course, there are several examples of this in other spaces, for example where people seek to protect sacred or natural spaces, or to re-wild damaged land, or to prevent damaging practices related to access (which might also include building illegal trails). There are also some (relatively new) initiatives that seek to exclude to include, for example, women’s and gender non-binary events have recently become more common in the field (e.g., Figure 9.4; see also Project Evolve, Skelton, 2022), where the typical white, male, hetero users of the space are excluded in order to invite more diverse participants. The above, then, suggests some informal governance and rules, which are central to forms of repair both physically, and in the ways they they undo the various kinds of discrimination that can be present in these spaces. Governance A number of scholars (e.g., Linebaugh, 2010; Ostrom, 1990) have argued that Hardin’s arguments for enclosure of common land failed to acknowledge that the commons were in fact always governed. Though the commons were technically open, there are always certain rules to be adhered to so that the commons would not be overwhelmed, as when fines would be issued for grazing too many animals on a given plot. This is also true of DIY trails spots, which are normally accompanied by both written and unwritten rules. For example,

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Figure 9.4 Poster advertising the Catty and Posh Woods’ annual Women’s Weekend event in 2021. Illustrated by Tasha Lindemann.

the title of the article, ‘no dig no ride’ is a commonly used phrase among trail builders, pointing to the need for some contribution to a spot’s production, maintenance, and repair in order to gain access to it. Spots also tend to have basic rules to keep them functioning, such as not to climb on the jumps, which would cause damage, as well as more typical safety rules such as only riding in one direction and always wearing a helmet. Therefore, in order to maintain the spaces as commons, certain (informal) rules need to be adhered to. In their introduction to the Aesthetics of the Commons, Sollfrank et al. (2021) describe the structure of commons as relations of care rather than ownership. I find this a useful way of understanding these spaces in two key ways. First there are the more obvious and visible relations of care consisting of the shovelling, raking, and watering, done to produce the space. Second, there are the rules and forms of DIY governance which arguably come to matter just as importantly in holding the space together. This is because these spaces are very rarely ‘owned’ by the community, they are squatted and held together in a fragile network of being just hidden enough, just safe enough, just about standing. They are fragile all the way down, requiring careful relations that hold them together.

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When seen in this way, governance is a series of care relations that enable the commons to function, and includes, for example, the different relations between both humans and non-humans that keep space safe and functional. Linebaugh’s (2008, p.298) notion of commoning (importantly, as a verb) again helps to understand these places through a lens of care, whereby, they are not set out around collective sets of ‘resources’, or forms of exchange, but through an entanglement of the human communities, and the non-human soil, dirt, water, trees, shovels, bikes, animals, and tarpaulin.1 Understanding the fragility of some of the spots I have researched, many have begun to change their practices of exclusion towards actively inviting new communities into them. Importantly, this has come about for two overlapping reasons. The first is that for spots to become more open, they need to have achieved a certain amount of permanence, often having been granted permission to use the land. And second, that the communities involved in their upkeep have become smaller, meaning more people need to be recruited to take on the maintenance practices. Arguably then, participation can be said to be in a state of repair, and is starting to be cared for and invited. Invitations Via the interviews I found that these spots are slowly shifting from what in the past have been hyper-masculine, closed off, and exclusive spaces, and are carefully developing ways to be inclusive to a broader range of users. Carley told me this is because: There’s this fear that there’s going to be a disconnect that when this group of legendary trail builders are all done…who’s going to come up and take over the trails?! Carley implies that the recruitment of new builders also relates to maintenance of the spot and the sport in general. Core locals are getting older, are perhaps retiring from the sport, or are injured, and need help to keep things running. Brian also echoed this and has been working to actively re-design their spot so that they might become more open to new users: I think you’ve got to put the beacon out there, and we’ve been trying to do that and been making it more accessible and more inviting to younger people, to women, to girls. Many of the locals have found that they need to involve different (and more) of the community so that they can be made sustainable. This is illustrated by new specific architectural features designed to invite a broader community into the space. For example, Holmen Dirt recently built a pump track deliberately positioned so it is visible from a path running alongside the trails, in

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the hope that young people, parents (and so on) will see the accessible track and be attracted to join in with the local scene. Behroz explained to me that there has been a shift in attitudes among the locals at Holmen, and that he wanted to expand the community as much as possible: From the start we didn’t want to get picked up by the commune too much. But then, you know, if we do it like that, you don’t get to grow, you don’t get to get really good facilities. The large drive to recruit new people into the spot involved forming a union (similar to a charity or non-profit organisation) which meant that they could rapidly grow and make new resources available (like rental bikes, tools, and materials) by applying for resources and funding from the municipality. However, this is not necessarily universally accepted among the whole community and Behroz described how these new practices produced tensions in the original group meaning that some of the original members left because they felt that the punk and DIY roots of the spot had become replaced with a practice of administration and organisation more typical of mainstream politics. At Holmen the practices to maintain the spot have also involved participating in more traditional forms of politics. For example, in their response to the municipalities plans to remove the trails described above, the locals organised a live-streamed political debate with five potential candidates for local councillors shortly before an election. This allowed them to set the terms of a debate on the future of their spot in front of various local groups and eventually led them to securing pledges from all the local politicians to stand on a platform that would support them. Conclusion In this chapter, I set out to explore the world of DIY-designed bike trails through a lens of repair. The sites and communities I explored re-emphasise that repair and care are not innocent, and following feminist approaches highlighted who or what does the repair work, and who is excluded in care relations. I have found that DIY-designed bike trails suggest a thickening of care, and a novel site to conceptualise the relationships between the multiple ongoing repair, maintenance, and care practices enacted. What I have shown through a focus on the empirical work is that by approaching with a different focus to that of ‘action’, and to centre the ‘mundane’ reveals multiple, overlapping, and often contradicting forms of DIY repair and maintenance in the production of bike trails that we, as researchers can learn from and become attuned to. Based on the findings of this chapter, I would suggest three key take-aways for future research on the building, repair, and care of BMX and mountain bike trails. First, these spaces offer small but important enclaves for observing

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how humans (bike riders) and non-humans (trees, plants, and animals) might live and co-become together (Cherrington, 2021) among the ruins of postcapitalist extraction. Second, and relatedly, there is a need to approach spaces and communities critically and carefully to consider when to look away from neglected, or ‘secret’ things. Here, I argued that caring for riding spots involves exclusion practices, whereby the secrecy of the spot is paramount to its continuation. As such, I proposed to stay with the trouble of this exclusion, and to consider what this might mean in the context of repair, and as a care practice. Finally, I sought to attune to the ways that rules and governance participate in commons, and how these might be re-made, re-designed, and participated with otherwise. Though under-explored here, future research should consider the ways that theories around repair, care relations, and the commons may be taken up in the empirical sites as a form of action-research as my work continues to unfold, and the ways communities might understand their practices by way of this kind of scholarly attention and analysis. Note 1 Linebaugh tells us: To speak of the commons as if it were a natural resource is misleading at best and dangerous at worst – the commons is an activity and, if anything, it expresses relationships in society that are inseparable from relations to nature. It might be better to keep the word as a verb, an activity, rather than as a noun, a substantive. (Linebaugh, 2008, p.279)

References Abulhawa, D. (2020). Skateboarding and femininity: Gender, space-making and expressive movement. London: Routledge. Beal, B. (1996). Alternative masculinity and its effects on gender relations in the subculture of skateboarding. Journal of Sport Behavior, 19(3), 204–220. Borden, I. (2001). Skateboarding, space and the city: Architecture and the body (1st ed.). Oxford: Berg Publishers. Borden, I. (2019). Skateboarding and the city: A complete history (2nd ed.). London: New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts. Cherrington, J. (2021). The ontopolitics of mountain bike trail building: Addressing issues of access and conflict in the more-than human English countryside. Somatechnics, 11(3), 322–339. Cherrington, J., & Black, J. (2020a). Mountain bike trail building, ‘dirty’ work, and a new terrestrial politics. World Futures, 76(1), 39–61. Cherrington, J., & Black, J. (2020b). Spectres of nature in the trail building assemblage. International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure, 3(1), 71–93. Denis, D.J., & Pontille, D. (2019). Why do maintenance and repair matter?, in Blok, A., Farías, I., & Roberts, C. (Eds.), The Routledge companion to actor-network theory (1st ed., pp. 283–293). London: Routledge.

No dig, no ride  155 Denis, J., & Pontille, D. (2014). Maintenance work and the performativity of urban inscriptions: The case of Paris subway signs. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32(3), 404–416. Fisher, B., & Tronto, J. (1990). Towards a feminist theory of caring, in Abel, E. K. & Nelson, M.K. (Eds.), Circles of care: Work and identity in women’s lives (pp. 3–54). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Forest Research. (n.d.). Ramorum disease (Phytophthora ramorum). Retrieved 20 February 2023, from https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/fthr/pestand-disease-resources/ramorum-disease-phytophthora-ramorum/ Gan, E., Tsing, A.L., Swanson, H.A., & Bubandt, N. (2017). Haunted landscapes of the Anthropocene, in Tsing, A.L., Bubandt, N., Gan, E., & Swanson, H. A. (Eds.), Arts of living on a damaged planet: Ghosts and monsters of the Anthropocene. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gomart, E., & Hennion, A. (1999). A sociology of attachment: Music amateurs, drug users. The Sociological Review, 47(1), 220–247. Hagen, S., & Boyes, M. (2016). Affective ride experiences on mountain bike terrain. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 15, 89–98. Haraway, D.J. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. London: Duke University Press. Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons: The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality. Science, 162(3859), 1243–1248. Harrison, A.K. (2013). Black skiing, everyday racism, and the racial spatiality of whiteness. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 37(4), 315–339. Latimer, J. (2000). The conduct of care: Understanding nursing practice. Abingdon: Wiley–Blackwell. Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern (Translated by C. Porter). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lindén, L., & Lydahl, D. (2021). Editorial: Care in STS. Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies, 3–12. Lindström, K., Se, M., & Ståhl, Å. (2019). Caring design experiments in the aftermath. WHO CARES, 8(9), 1–9. Linebaugh, P. (2008). The Magna Carta manifesto: Liberties and commons for all. Oakland: University of California Press. Linebaugh, P. (2010). Enclosures from the bottom up. Radical History Review, 108, 11–27. McCormack, K.M. (2017). Inclusion and identity in the mountain biking community: Can subcultural identity and inclusivity coexist? Sociology of Sport Journal, 34(4), 344–353. Midol, N. (1993). Cultural dissents and technical innovations in the ‘whiz’ sports. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 28(1), 23–32. Mol, A. (1999). Ontological politics. A word and some questions. The Sociological Review, 47(1), 74–89. Mol, A. (2008). The logic of care: Health and the problem of patient choice. New York: Routledge. Mol, A., Moser, I., & Pols, J. (2015). Care in practice: On tinkering in clinics, homes and farms. North Dakota: Transcript.

156  Liam Healy Olive, R. (2022). Swimming and surfing in ocean ecologies: Encounter and vulnerability in nature-based sport and physical activity. Leisure Studies [online first]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2022.2149842 Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action (1st ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pennington, S. (2022). Care-politics in design: Towards an inventive feminist research practice. London: Goldsmiths, University of London. Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2011). Matters of care in technoscience: Assembling neglected things. Social Studies of Science, 41(1), 85–106. Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2015). Making time for soil: Technoscientific futurity and the pace of care. Social Studies of Science, 45(5), 691–716. Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2017). Matters of care: Speculative ethics in more than human worlds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Revolution Bike Park Announcement. (2022, October 14). Retrieved 20 February 2023, from https://www.revolutionbikepark.co.uk/revolution-bike-park-announcement Rinehart, R. (2005). ‘Babes’ & boards: Opportunities in new millennium sport? Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 29(3), 232–255. Robinson, V. (2008). Everyday masculinities and extreme sport: Male identity and rock climbing. Oxford: Berg. Rodgers, P.A., Bremner, C., & Innella, G. (2018). The Lancaster care charter. Design Issues. Skelton, B. (2022, May 25). Video: Women’s Gravity Jam at Revolution Bike Park in ‘Project Evolve’. Retrieved 24 May 2023, from Pinkbike website: https://www. pinkbike.com/news/video-womens-gravity-jam-at-revolution-bike-park-in-projectevolve.html Sollfrank, C., Stalder, F., & Niederberger, S. (Eds.). (2021). Aesthetics of the commons. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Thorpe, H. (2012). Snowboarding: The ultimate guide. Santa Barbara: Greenwood. Trash Free Trails. (2020). Impact Report 2020. Available at: https://www.trashfreetrails. org/research Trash Free Trails. (2021). The State of our Trails Report. Available at: https:// trashfreetrails.org/ Tronto, J. (1994). Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care (1st ed.). New York: Routledge. Tsing, A. (2013). More-than-human sociality: A call for critical description, in Hastrup, K. (Ed.), Anthropology and nature (pp. 37–52). New York: Routledge. Tsing, A.L. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Von Trier, L., & Vinterberg, T. (2005). Dogme 95: The vow of chastity, in Utterson, A. (Ed.), Technology and culture, the Film Reader (pp. 25–45). London: Routledge.

Chapter 10

Air pollution as ‘slow violence’ during multi-day mountain bike trips Clare Nattress

Introduction: Multi-day mountain bike trips as a cultural phenomenon Bikepacking consists of multi-day, self-sufficient journeys by bike that usually take place off-road and is a phenomenon which has increased in popularity in the last 10 years. Prior to 2013, it was mostly reserved for diehard endurance racers, outliers, wanderers, and obscure forum discussions. Since then: …the concept has evolved and been pulled in different directions. But the idea is still the same. Strap some stuff to a mountain(ish) bike, ride it somewhere off the beaten track for a couple days (or more), and camp in between. (Watts, 2017, no pagination) However, few studies have examined this leisure activity from a social and cultural perspective, and there are fewer empirical or theoretical analyses which account for the experiences, motivations, and identities of bikepacking enthusiasts. In addressing this lacuna, this chapter represents one of the first attempts to unpack contemporary multi-day mountain bike experiences whilst identifying key themes in past and present scholarship. Comprising two reflections on the author’s own experiences of (local and global) multi-day mountain bike trips, combined with an analysis of other artistic interventions relating to cycling and pollution, the chapter challenges the anthropocentric bias and philosophical boundaries of existing research whilst highlighting the limitations of viewing bikepacking cultures as an outcome of human-mastery or individual endeavour. Here, I consider air pollution as a form of ‘slow violence’, a term coined by environmentalist and literary scholar Rob Nixon to reference a gradual, out-of-sight violence that usually occurs over years, even decades (Nixon, 2011, p.2), and explore strategies for personal action and response-ability to help minimise, in so far as possible, the exposure to toxic air. Subsequently, it is argued that in a time of ecological crisis, where the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361626-14

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likelihood of eliminating air pollution is low, we must instead contemplate how to ‘live-with’ (Verlie, 2021, p.59) air pollution and adapt effectively, uncovering new strategies for a hopeful future. The (in)visibility of air pollution on an international, multi-day mountain bike trip Across the world, millions of premature deaths per year are associated with air pollution (Vohra et al., 2021, Fuller et al., 2022). A recent study by the Francis Crick Institute in London suggests that 1 in 10 lung cancer patients in the UK is due to the exposure of dirty air (BBC News, 2022) and it is estimated that twice as many people today suffer from lung disease and asthmatic conditions caused by air pollution than they did 20 years ago (Landau & Toland, 2022). In fact, researchers have now made significant steps linking air pollution with early neurological decline and disease (Carey et al., 2018). To emphasise this further, Gardiner (2019, p.20) states that ‘the danger posed by air pollution is slow moving and far from obvious’. The invisibility of air pollution therefore suggests that it can be easily overlooked and remains low on the public’s priority list. In August 2018, I had experienced first-hand how such air pollution can affect one’s experience of cycling in off-road environments as I cycled parts of the world for 12 months on a Bombtrack Beyond +1 bicycle. During the trip, I pedalled through Norway, Germany, Spain, Nepal, South Australia,1 Tasmania, and New Zealand. The trip raised significant questions regarding the environment and ecology, namely humans’ relationship with nature, nonhumans’ relationship with nature, and the global problem of air pollution. During a six-week period of cycling in Nepal, through its bustling capital Kathmandu, Pokhara, and the Annapurna region, the environment and surroundings were incredibly tough. Not only because of the extreme weather conditions ranging from −20°C on the Annapurna Circuit to 30°C in the lowlands, but also due to the unforgiving sandy and dusty terrain which made every pedal stroke completely exhausting. The route was also mixed with high elevation profiles, altitude sickness symptoms, and dangerous levels of air pollution. The air quality in Kathmandu was monitored via the mobile app AirVisual and air pollution masks were worn daily for health and well-being. The poor visibility became a daily challenge with thick orange dust repeatedly churned up with every passing vehicle or motorcycle wheel. It was hazardous dust that blanketed the bicycle’s components; the body, stained clothing, layered on hair, seeped into the skin, ears, irritated the eyes and nostrils, and thickened on the surgical mask. Within a short space of time, the mask was coated with layers of visible pollution and other unknown environmental matter. To provide further context, the particulate matter PM2.5 μm concentration in Kathmandu is, at the time of writing, 7.4 times above the World Health Organization

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(WHO) annual air quality guideline value. Undoubtedly, this is one of the key reasons why around 100 people die every day in Nepal due to air pollution (The Ecologist, 2020). Despite registering poor air quality on a daily basis, and leaving Nepal with a chest infection, it was not until shortly after whilst cycling on the West Coast of Tasmania that the disparity was both upsetting and unsettling (Nattress, 2021, p.75). Cycling from the South to the North of Tasmania, followed by the West coast introduced me to the Tarkine Forest. Comprising 7% of Tasmania, the Tarkine contains the nation’s largest temperate rainforest. It’s celebrated for its biodiversity and for being home to some of the richest Aboriginal heritage in the southern hemisphere. The Tarkine has also been inscribed on the National Heritage List and has topped data charts with the cleanest air readings in the world, as measured by the nearby United Nations monitoring station ‘The Cape Grim station’ (Patagonia, 2019; Cleland et al., 2016). After returning home in the Summer of 2019, a practice-based research inquiry began, attempting to raise further questions on the problem of air pollution in the United Kingdom. The initial quantitative research highlighted many areas of the country that do not meet the legal requirements for air quality. A clean air campaigner, Simon Bowens, from Friends of the Earth, states: ‘It’s unforgivable that across the United Kingdom there are nearly 2,000 locations over air quality limits, leaving millions of us breathing dangerously polluted air’ (Friends of the Earth, 2020, unpaginated). In addition, atmospheric scientists have evidenced that city air contains harmful pollutants, including nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and soot-based particulate matter 10, 2.5, and 1 μm, but little literature is disseminated which extrapolates and analyses data from rural and coastal locations, and in locations outside of England’s major cities including London, Birmingham, and Manchester. It was for this reason that I decided to investigate the lived experience of pollution in England in further detail. Returning home: Local manifestations of poor air quality during a multi-day mountain bike trip In order to explore this gap in scientific research, I cycled a well-known bicycle route from Morecambe, Lancashire, to Bridlington, East Riding of Yorkshire, which was included as part of a three-day art performance from 6 to 8 August 2020. During the performance a total of 85 points of moderate, high, or very high levels of air pollution were recorded using a Plume Labs Flow 2 sensor. The sensor was strapped to the handlebars and connected to an App on an iPhone 7 that measured live pollutants in the air. The five pollutant categories were volatile organic compounds (VOCs), particulate matter (PM) PM10, PM2.5 and PM1, and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). The 85 location points were recorded on gravel paths, traffic-free paths, single-track, and country

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lanes, as well as when passing through towns and villages. The highest recordings during the performance were as follows: VOC 43 (moderate) recorded on 6 August at 14:00 in Church Street, Settle; PM10 142 (very high) recorded on 7 August at 09:20 on the B6265 in the Yorkshire Dales; PM2.5 30 (moderate) recorded on 7 August at 09:55 on the B6265 in the Yorkshire Dales; PM111 (low) also recorded on 7 August at 09:56 on the B6265 in the Yorkshire Dales; and NO2 66 (high) recorded on 8 August at 09:43 on Scoreby Lane, Catton, East Riding of Yorkshire (Nattress, 2021, p.76). Despite cycling through urban and populated towns such as Morecambe, Lancaster, Settle, York, Pateley Bridge, and Ripon to name a few, the highest level of PM10 was recorded in a location surrounded by fields in the Yorkshire Dales. This calls attention to air pollution that is captured in ‘natural’, ‘wild’, and supposedly ‘pristine’ environments which is in many ways more problematic at the ethical, ontological, and epistemological level. However subtly, it may threaten a greater diversity of species, whilst at the same time disrupting the ontological boundaries that traditionally separate ‘nature’ from ‘culture’ (Cherrington, 2022; Cherrington & Black, 2020b). To investigate air pollution in rural locations further, I set about collecting data at a nearby trail centre, Dalby Forest in North Yorkshire. Dalby is located in the North York Moors National Park and is maintained by Forestry England. There are an array of cycle trails to tackle, ranging from leisurely and flat which are labelled as green routes to highly technical and demanding routes which are labelled as blue, red, or black. The more confident mountain bikers who are competent at riding jumps, berms, navigating rocky descents, and challenging uphills can face the red and black routes as well as the UCI World Cup course. The Cross Country World Cup was held at Dalby in 2011 and the trail is still rideable today, despite small alterations, and is described by Forestry England as a ‘short but seriously challenging and technical world-class course. Expect steep climbs and challenging, purpose-built descents’ (Forestry England, 2011, no pagination). Dalby Forest is also a rich habitat for a myriad of biodiversity including small mammals, bird and tree species, fungi, and microorganisms. In more recent years, there has been a greater focus on communicating climate change to visitors. For example, in 2022, a land art project The Forest Eye saw children plant trees alongside representatives from Forestry England, Sand in Your Eye, and the Environment Agency in an existing clearing in the forest. As the trees grow and mature over time, they will form the shape of a child’s eye. The aim is for the eye to span 300 metres across, and to achieve this aim 5,000 beech, alder, and maple trees were marked out and planted by the volunteers. The Forest Eye is being created to focus attention on climate change and show the important role of resilient forests in tackling it (Sand in Your Eye, 2022). The project came to fruition with the agenda to engage Dalby Forest’s 450,000 annual visitors, and to foster dialogue and interest as it  changes and grows over time. This comes at a pivotal period, when

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people are feeling the urgent crises of climate change and significant biodiversity loss. As with previous research, my goal was to collect data using a Flow 2 sensor during performative rides at Dalby Forest, and to spark awareness and understanding of air pollution via certain art installations and public performances. Plume Labs, who manufacture the Flow 2 sensor, use their own air quality index (AQI) which sits in line with the WHO recommendations. The classification thresholds are as follows: low 0–20, moderate 21–50, high 51–100, very high 101–150, excessive 151–200, extreme 201–250, and airpocalyse 251+ (Plume Labs, 2020). The highest average recordings during the performance rides were VOC’s 21 (moderate), PM10 139 (very high), PM2.5 34 (moderate), PM1 20 (low), and NO2 11 (low). When analysing the data more rigorously, an average of 18 locations across a 15-km route detected ‘very high’ levels of PM10. It should be noted that, up to the point of writing, this route was cycled five times. To gain further consistency to the data, the author acknowledges that additional cycling of this route is necessary. For further insight into the ‘very high’ reading bracket, we can shed additional light on PM. PMs are produced from a range of primary and secondary sources, with different sources dominating different size ranges. Larger particles, such as PM10, are usually comprised of primary, inorganic species originating from combustion processes, construction, and road transport as well as natural sources such as sand and sea salt (Nattress & Bryant, 2023, p.11). PMs are inhalable particles that are 10 micrometers and smaller and, in order to comprehend their microscopic size, are usually communicated by scientists as measuring the tenth of the width of a human hair. This highlights why they are so dangerous to human and non-human life, as once they are inhaled into the body, they are likely to pass deep into the lungs, bloodstream, and the brain (Balayannis & Garnett, 2020). As far as scientists understand, exposure to very high levels of PM10 may induce more serious health effects, and continued long-term exposure constitutes a real health risk. There can be harmful impacts on the public, even in the case of short-term exposure. Plume Labs recommends that all individuals should avoid physical activities when readings are high until pollution subsides, regardless of sensitivities (Plume Labs, 2020). It is here we can consider cycling as an insightful method to amplify embodied attunement and to access interconnectivity with the non-human world (Cherrington & Black, 2020a). In practice, when mountain biking (in this case in the forest) the senses become heightened. The human body manoeuvres in collaboration with the bicycle and the terrain. Our heightened state of awareness can unlock affective encounters with our surroundings which allows for a deeper attunement with our environment. Here, I argue that toxicity can be sensed outside of quantitative data and technological devices; however, as Calvillo (2018) acknowledges, such devices are nonetheless considered legitimate ways of knowing the toxicity of the air that we

162  Clare Nattress

should not dismiss. By contrast, Calvillo considers that human bodies attune to the air, ‘composing completely different regimes of perceptibility, from bodily symptoms and sensitivities to intimate interactions’ (Calvillo, 2018, p.375). This increased attentiveness to our surroundings may help to instil a personal response-ability and deeper attunement with the world (Donald, 2019, p.617). Furthermore, the recalibration of our bodies that accompanies this process can help to encourage a re-connection to our environment and other symbiotic life. The embodied attunement of air quality experienced during the journey across the world and more recently in cycling performances in North Yorkshire has prompted engagement with theorists who delve into the concept of ‘attuning’ more specifically. We can consider the notion of attunement on multiple levels. Primarily, attuning to our enmeshment with the Earth’s climate, including air pollution, is an urgent task if we are to both mitigate and adapt to climate change and consider possible solutions, as well as a hopeful outlook. Embodied contemplation of our entanglements with others, such as air pollution particles and environmental matter, allows us to acknowledge, on a deeper level, the agency between the body and matter. This extends the work of Verlie (2021) who elaborates that: bodies are not passive vessels that atmospheric matter flows in and out of unchanged. Rather, bodily metabolisms accumulate and transform matter, meaning that bodies are both subject to the toxicities of the atmosphere as well as active manufacturers of climate conditions. (Verlie, 2021, p.17) This allows us to acknowledge that we are all at risk of air pollution and that air pollution is a problem for not only human life but also non-human bodies, plant life, and microorganisms. This calls attention to human and non-human bodies not only as victims of slow violence but also conversely, as crucial sites of knowledge production. Learning from others: (Mountain) biking as artistic practice This is not the only performance by an artist who has engaged with cycling as a mode of ecological practice. Indeed, a number of artists and scholars have sought to explore how art practices might enable us to ‘appreciate different ways of knowing the environment and how doing so might forge environmental relations based on connections of entanglement rather than those of separation, domination, and distance’ (Hawkins, 2017, p.7). Simon Starling’s practice brings forth interests in apparatus, environmental politics, ecology, and circulation, and key similarities can be drawn with the present study. On 9 September 2004, Starling travelled 41 miles across the Tabernas Desert in

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Almeria, Spain on an improvised electric bicycle. The bicycle was powered by electricity, produced in a portable Nexa fuel cell which fitted within the bicycle’s frame. The fuel cell produced up to 1200 watts of power using only compressed bottled hydrogen and oxygen from the air. The journey required two gas bottles that contained 800 litres of compressed gas. The only waste product from the bicycle’s journey was pure water, of which 600 ml was collected in a water bottle that Starling later used, along with watercolour paints, to produce a depiction of the local Opuntia cactus. Despite sharing interests in the proximity between science and art, there are also key differences between Starling’s work and my own. Starling collected what was described as a waste product from the journey; 600 ml of pure water. By contrast, I collected invisible information from the air that was then analysed in a laboratory by environmental chemists. What is common is our approach, or rather, a method, which has importantly re-framed a somewhat leisurely bicycle ride into an intentional performative art piece. The works that are produced as part of this study are premeditated and become a ‘created event’; one that can exist within everyday life as part of a ‘premeditated journey’ that is knowingly ‘put on’ (O’Neill, 2018, p.57). With reference to artists working with air pollution, one can call upon the work Pollution Pods (2018) by Michael Pinsky. The installation was exhibited at Somerset House in London and consisted of five interconnected geodesic domes that contained air which sought to emulate particulate matter (PM), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO), and ozone (O3). The viewer could walk through the smog-filled simulations of five cities across the world with varying levels of air pollution readings. The cities encapsulated in the domes were New Delhi, São Paulo, Beijing, London, and Tautra island in Norway. A spokeswoman for Somerset House stated that ‘Some people have said the New Delhi pod is just unbearable, but that’s what people experience every single day’ (Sachdeva, 2018, unpaginated). In 2019, researchers Sommer and Klöckner also conducted a study based on the emotional reactions that viewers showed to environmental artworks including Michael Pinsky’s Pollution Pods. The study determined that people do not change their behaviour unless an issue affects their own everyday life (Sommer & Klöckner, 2019). Indeed, despite the installation having a positive effect on its audiences, few visitors took advantage of the possibility to estimate their own CO2 emissions (Pinsky & Sommer, 2020). As such, though audiences may well react to pollution on a deeper ontological and epistemological level, such studies serve to highlight our disconnect as a human species from the natural environment and the planet that we, as a species, inhabit (Morton, 2018). What sets my work apart from these related practices is the performative aspect of mountain biking and the concept of unlocking embodied attunement as a key method of knowledge production. Moreover, I expose and disseminate air pollution data in locations that have yet to be investigated,

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such as Dalby Forest, where air quality is perceived as ‘fresh’ and ‘clean’ by its many visitors and by myself. By adopting cycling as a methodology, we can therefore celebrate the minimal pollution that is generated in order to collect and share the data in comparison to a work such as Pollution Pods, which bears significant environmental implications on its tour around the world as well as the copious amounts of electricity used to power the domes. What is to be admired across all these projects, however, is the passion and commitment to disseminate the problem of dirty air. Despite air pollution data being published in academic journals and presented at scientific conferences, the general public are still relatively in the dark regarding the serious health impacts of poor air quality. In the case of how pollution complicates our notion of ‘health’ in supposedly ‘natural’ environments, Evers elucidates the complex enmeshment of leisure and dirty air, articulating how leisure now involves becoming-with pollution. Consequently, he introduces the concept of polluted leisure, which reflects how being ‘embodied, sensorial, emotional, intellectual, spatial, and technological – material and social, harmful and nonharmful, actual and perceived – assembling with leisure’ (Evers, 2019:424). Arts practice can offer an interesting scope for research inquiry and a significant critique to make air pollution information further accessible to the cycling and mountain biking community, and the wider public. As a result of this, focusing on making air pollution visible, tangible, experiential, and local to its audience is key, as well as strategies for attuning to the air more intimately so that we can limit our own exposure and learn to ‘live-with’ these damaging airborne particles with a greater sense of awareness and knowledge. Performance cycling unlocks the empirical and methodological dialogue between the ‘subjective’ modes of practice such as inhaling airborne particles and describing their scent and considering the many sources of air pollution, whilst also expressing bodily aches and tiredness during performance rides. In addition, there are ‘objective’ collection methods that can aid our understanding of these processes, such as attaching Perspex discs coated with double-sided sticky tape to the bicycle to amass environmental matter, and, carrying technological devices such as the Plume Labs Flow 2 sensor and MiniVol TAS sampler. Conclusion: The body-bike hybrid and human attunement to air So, in practice, how do human bodies attune to the air? When mountain biking through Dalby Forest the artist unlocked different regimes of perceptibility: from collective associations around bodily symptoms in relation to multi-chemical sensitivity (Murphy, 2013) to intimate interactions with the natural and toxic (Choy, 2011; Shapiro, 2015). Fragrances of pine, dampness, soil, wet tree trunks, moss, and petrichor were present as well as metal,

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smokey, and oily scents. The flow of the route that was pedalled assisted with the flurry of fragrances that were inhaled. The uphills allowed the artist to take deeper breaths and inhale the forest atmosphere, whereas the fast descents agitated the land, and the body brushed past trees which dispersed fragrance. The experience was visceral, embodied, and sensorial. As Verlie (2022, p.10) states, ‘our increased awareness of when, where, how and with whom we can and do encounter climate change, can enable more attuned and responsive engagement strategies’. We share our air with other humans and non-humans, with all, and everything other. As such, activities that result in air pollution must be seen as possible acts of violence. O’Neill and Seal (2012) advocate that when airpollution offences are viewed as acts of violence, it is more likely that the severity of such acts will become subject to greater public, and political scrutiny. According to Nixon, ‘slow violence’ occurs gradually over time and, for the most part, out of sight. In his writings, Nixon attributes slow violence to environmental concerns such as the destruction of oceans and coral reefs, deforestation, and climate change. It is not typically viewed as violence because it is ‘a delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space’ (Nixon, 2011, p.2). As the default mentality, we tend to associate violence in conjunction with the dictionary definition; as behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt or kill someone or something (Oxford Dictionaries, 2022). Violence is therefore an inherently visible act, emotional, fast, and executed with brutality and force, not, as Nixon describes, as an event that happens over a long period of time, often going unnoticed. Adopting the term slow violence when referring to air pollution is interesting and may allow a reframing of air pollution for what it really is; an invisible element that pervades every aspect of our lives. A recent report has evidenced that small particle pollution has barely decreased over the last 50 years, and more worryingly, the government’s proposed 2040 target for air pollution is set at double the WHO’s limits (Carrington, 2022). Moreover, scientists now believe that air pollution particles damage every organ in the body (Carrington, 2022). With these statistics in mind, perhaps greater attention would be paid to the air we breathe if we comprehended air as both necessary for survival but also deeply harmful to our health. Slow violence provokes us to expand our imagination of what constitutes harm (Fisher, 2021). It insists we take seriously the forms of violence that have, over time, become unmoored from their original causes. The dangers of dirty air to human and non-human health communicated by using the term slow violence will therefore have an important effect on how the public perceive the air that we breathe. It might also allow us to consider the data more seriously or to unlock a greater attunement with our environments as to avoid high levels of continual exposure. Whether we adopt the term slow violence when referring to air pollution or not, the question still remains: how do we make visible our vulnerability,

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and our inseparable entanglement with the air and all of its toxicity? Data and scientific research are necessary and important to the analysis of air pollution to formally examine potential sources and the health impacts; however, the sensorial and embodied connection to our air, on a localised level, is crucial in engaging the public more emotionally. Researchers experimenting with modes of sensing and sensing technologies are leading this shift, reimagining exposure, and reframing the (human) body from a site of violence to a site of knowledge with capacities for collective political action (Calvillo & Garnett, 2019; Gabrys et al., 2016; Ottinger, 2010; Shapiro, 2015). We need to unlock how to sense dirty air outside of quantitative data, whilst at the same time embracing bodily forms of knowing within scientific practice, in order to protect ourselves from the dangers of polluted air. In practice, using both subjective and objective modes of research allows artists to experiment more broadly and develop new strategies for monitoring air pollution. Within the scientific community, the body is removed from the collection and analysis stages. Specialised equipment is used to collect data which requires minimal human intervention. Likewise, the body is protected and covered up with laboratory coats, goggles, and gloves during the process of analysis to avoid contamination. What is interesting is that performance manifests in the sensorial, affective, and more-than-cognitive. It provides access to the many communicative registers of the body which are frequently overlooked, or inaccessible, in linguistic modes (Thrift, 2003). When cycling, the body is heightened to its surroundings, whether that be on gravel paths trying to avoid puncture hazards or picking lines to steer clear of tree roots and rocks. The body is acutely attuned to its environment as well as to the non-human collaborators within the performance, in this case the bicycle, airborne particles, and vegetation. The lungs can feel tight, the legs might ache, the bicycle feels heavy, the air can smell like chemicals or burning wood with a hint of metal and smoke to its taste. This is attunement in all its glory. Monitoring sensors such as the Plume Labs Flow 2 provide informative data from ground level and updates in real time. In many respects, these instruments are essential for citizen scientists and the public to collect and evidence a wider locative data of air pollution. They are affordable and wearable technologies which ‘make undetectable phenomena evident in our dayto-day lives’ (Gabrys, 2018, p.66). Despite being an informative and accessible resource, we may unearth contradictions in how reliable these affordable technologies are, as well as how much approval they hold within the scientific community. Regardless of Flow 2 devices having a place within this research study, we can consider if technological sensors on the whole have any real emotional effect on the citizen beyond sharing direction for limiting personal exposure to polluted air. It is clear that we must recognise and celebrate a sensor’s potential to instil personal inquiry, collective action, and new insights, but only in addition to other forms of collective embodiment. Indeed,

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the notion of multi-agential sensing across multiple bodies, technologies, and organisms collectively becomes paramount to highlight the slow violence that dirty air beholds. This is why arts practice and interdisciplinary collaboration are fundamental for the mountain biking community. Note 1 The author acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the lands across Australia. Respects are paid to the Elders past, present, and emerging for they hold the memories, the tradition, the culture and hopes of Aboriginal people across the country.

References BBC News. (2022). Air pollution cancer breakthrough will rewrite the rules. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-62797777 (accessed 11th September 2022). Balayannis, A, & Garnett, E. (2020). Chemical kinship: Interdisciplinary experiments with pollution. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 6(1), 1–10. Calvillo, N. (2018). Political airs: From monitoring to attuned sensing air pollution. Social Studies of Science, 48(3), 372–388. Calvillo, N., & Garnett, E. (2019). Data intimacies: Building infrastructures for intensified embodied encounters with air pollution. The Sociological Review, 67(2), 340–356. Carey, I.M., Anderson, R., Atkinson, R.W., Beevers, S.D., Cook, D.G., Strachan, D. P., Dajnak, D., Gulliver, J., & Kelly, F.J. (2018). Are noise and air pollution related to the incidence of dementia? A cohort study in London, England. BMJ Open, 8, e022404. Carrington, D. (2022). Revealed: air pollution may be damaging every organ in our body. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/ may/17/air-pollution-may-be-damaging-every-organ-and-cell-in-the-body-findsglobal-review (accessed 20th November 2022). Cherrington, J. (2022). Mountain biking in the (Neg)Anthropocene: Encountering, witnessing, and reorienting to the end of the ‘Natural’ world, in Cherrington, J., & Black, J. (Ed.), Sport and physical activity in catastrophic environments (pp. 129– 147). London: Routledge. Cherrington, J., & Black, J. (2020a). Mountain bike trail building, ‘dirty’ work and a new terrestrial politics. World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research. 76, 39–61. Cherrington, J., & Black, J. (2020b). Spectres of nature in the trail building assemblage. International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure, 3, 71–93. Choy, T.K. (2011). Ecologies of comparison: An ethnography of endangerment in Hong Kong. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Cleland, S., Keywood, M., Fraser, P., & Krummel, P. (2016). Forty years of measuring the world’s cleanest air reveals human fingerprints on the atmosphere, The Conversation, 15 November, https://bit.ly/3OtGs4s (accessed 10th May 2022). Donald, M. (2019). Guddling about: An ecological performance practice with water and other nonhuman collaborators. GeoHumanities, 5(2), 591–669. Evers, C. (2019). Polluted leisure. Leisure Science, 41(5), 423–440. http://doi.org/10.1 080/01490400.2019.1627963

168  Clare Nattress Fisher, R. (2021).The ‘unseen’ violence that affects millions. Available at: https://www. bbc.com/future/article/20210127-the-invisible-impact-of-slow-violence#:~: text=%22Slow%20violence%20provokes%20us%20to,the%20University%20 of%20Nottingham%2C%20UK. (accessed 10th November 2022). Forestry England (2011). Unique Forest Eye. Available at: https://www.forestryengland. uk/news/unique-forest-eye-living-tree-feature-focuses-attention-forests-fightingclimate-change (accessed 2nd January 2023). Friends of the Earth. (2020). Mapped: More than one thousand locations in England still breaching air pollution limits. Available at: https://bit.ly/3xKuIom, (accessed 19th November 2020). Fuller, R., Landrigan, P.J., Balakrishnan, K., Bathan, G., Bose-O'Reilly, S., Brauer, M., Caravanos, J., Chiles, T., Cohen, A., Corra, L., Cropper, M., Ferraro, G., Hanna, J., Hanrahan, D., Hu, H., Hunter, D., Janata, G., Kupka, R., Lanphear, B., Lichtveld, M., & Yan, C. (2022). Pollution and health: A progress update. The Lancet. Planetary Health, 6(6), 535–547. Gabrys, J., Pritchard, H., Calvillo, N., Keene, T., & Shapiro, N. (2016). Becoming civic: Fracking, air pollution, and environmental sensing technologies, in Gordon, E., & Mihailidis, P. (Eds.), Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice (pp. 435–440). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Gabrys, J. (2018). How to do things with sensors. USA: The University of Minnesota Press. Gardiner, B. (2019). Choked: The age of air pollution and the fight for a cleaner future. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Hawkins, H. (2017). Artful climate change communication: Overcoming abstractions, insensibilities, and distances. WIRE’s Climate Change, 8(5), 1–12. Landau, F., & Toland, A. (2022). Towards a sensory politics of the Anthropocene: Exploring activist-artistic approaches to politicizing air pollution. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 40(3), 629–647. Pinsky, M., & Sommer, L. (2020). Pollution pods: Can art change people’s perception of climate change and air pollution? Field Actions Science Reports, 21, 90–95. Morton, T. (2018). Being Ecological. London: Pelican Books. Murphy, M. (2013). Chemical infrastructures of the St Clair River, in Boudia, S., & Jas, N. (Eds.), Toxicants, health and regulation since 1945 (pp. 103–116). London: Pickering & Chatto. Nattress, C. (2021). Airpocalypse, Performance Research, 7(26), 73–79. Nattress, Clare and Bryant, Dan (2023) Discipline Hopping for Environmental Solutions: An Art-Science Collaboration. Active Travel Studies. 1398. ISSN 2732-4184. Nixon, R. (2011). Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. O’Neill, S.J. (2018). Making art from self-tracking cycling data. Digital Creativity, 29(4), O’Neill, M., & Seal, L. (2012). Transgressive imaginations: Crime, deviance and culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Ottinger, G. (2010). Buckets of resistance: Standards and the effectiveness of citizen science. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 35(2), 244–270. Oxford Dictionaries (2022). Mountain Bike. Available at: http://oxforddictionaries. com/definition/english/mountain-bike (accessed 28th February 2022).

Air pollution as ‘slow violence’  169 Patagonia. (2019). World heritage protection for the Tarkine. Available at: https://www. patagonia.com.au/blogs/stories/world-heritage-protection-for-the-tarkine (accessed 10th December 2022). Plume Labs. (2020). Let’s do something about air pollution. Available at: https:// plumelabs.com/en/ (accessed 1st January 2019). Sachdeva, M. (2018). An art installation in London simulates life in the world’s most polluted cities. Available at: https://www.architecturaldigest.in/content/podinstallation-air-pollution-london-earth-day/ (accessed 3rd January 2023). Sand In Your Eye. (2022). Forest eye in Dalby Forest - Monumental land art for future generations. Available at: http://blog.sandinyoureye.co.uk/2022/land-art/forest-eyein-dalby/ (accessed 30th November 2022). Shapiro, N. (2015). Attuning to the chemosphere: Domestic formaldehyde, bodily reasoning, and the chemical sublime. Cultural Anthropology, 30(3), 368–393. Sommer, L.K., & Klöckner, C.A. (2019). Does activist art have the capacity to raise awareness in audiences? – A study on climate change art at the ArtCOP21 event in Paris. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 15(1), 60–75. The Ecologist. (2020). Air pollution in Kathmandu. Available at: https://theecologist. org/2020/mar/23/air-pollution-kathmandu (accessed 6th December 2022). Thrift, N. (2003). ‘Performance and…’ Environment and Planning A, 35, 2019–2024. Verlie, B. (2021). Learning to live with climate change. From anxiety to transformation. Oxon: Routledge. Verlie, B. (2022). Climate justice in more-than-human worlds. Environmental Politics, 2(31), 297–319. Vohra, K., Vodonos, A., Schwartz, J., Marais, E.A., Sulprizio, M.P., & Mickley, L.J. (2021). Global mortality from outdoor fine particle pollution generated by fossil fuel combustion: Results from GEOS-Chem. Environmental Research, 195, 110754. Watts, L. (2017). The Rise of Bikepacking, A Manifesto. Available at: https://bikepacking. com/plog/manifesto/ (accessed 15th September 2022).

Part IV

The cultural politics of mountain biking

Chapter 11

Women and barriers to participation in mountain biking The impossible climb Louise Bordelon

Introduction Mountain biking is one of the fastest-growing sports in South Africa. The growth of the sport is due to several factors, including the success of South African athletes in the sport and being the host country to The Cape Epic Mountain Bike Race1 (Barry, 2014; Bordelon & Ferreira, 2019; Du Preez & Lee, 2016). Stellenbosch is a renowned destination for mountain biking in the Western Cape of South Africa (Blewitt, 2022; Jooste, 2015). The climate and an extensive trail network are contributing factors to the area’s appeal (Bordelon & Ferreira, 2018). At the time of this study, the number of women participating in mountain biking in Stellenbosch is increasing due to the facilitation of women’s group rides, women’s skills coaching (Netwerk24, 2021; Tread Media, 2021), and access to a permit only (safer) nature area in which to recreate. However, barriers to participation remain. This study explores how women in Stellenbosch experienced initial barriers to participation and how they persisted in the sport to find their own community. Gender disparity Worldwide statistics point toward mountain biking being a male-dominated sport (Barber, 2016; Physical Activity Council, 2021). Although the number of women who mountain bike is steadily growing, female riders remain a small percentage of total mountain biking participants. While the statistics for all bicycle users worldwide are far more diverse, mountain bikers remain as a group of mostly white, male participants (Bordelon & Ferreira, 2019; Cessford, 1995; Huybers-Withers & Livingston, 2010; King & Church, 2013; Scott Shafer & Scott, 2013; Skar, Odden, & Vistad, 2008). This study aims to develop an understanding of why women remain as a minority in the sport of mountain biking, through reflections on their experience and barriers to participation. Surveys and studies of mountain biking demographics are inconsistent; however, as Table 11.1 shows, there is a significant gender gap, even within

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361626-16

174  Louise Bordelon Table 11.1  G ender disparity in mountain biking participants Study

Location

Year

Men (as %)

Women (as %)

Source

IMBA

USA

2010

73.6

24.6

NSRE

Canada

2010

62

38

Industry Survey Singletracks. com IMBA

USA

2016

82–85

15–18

Corporate Research Associates (2010) Corporate Research Associates (2010) DirtArt (2016)

USA

2018

82

18

Barber (2016)

Europe

2019

94

6

2021

83.9

16.1

International Mountain Bike Association Europe (2019) Physical Activity Council (2021)

Outdoor USA Foundation

the variation of findings. The disparities in findings illustrate the difficulty in quantifying mountain biking participation; the itinerant and dispersed nature of the sport along with numbers based largely on survey and retail market data overlook the used bike market and unstructured, or informal participation (Taylor, 2010; Wheaton, 2010). Some of the reasons for lower numbers of female participants in mountain biking relate to the real or perceived risks involved, fear of violence in the wilderness, costs involved in participating, a lack of ‘everyday’ women portrayed in mountain biking media, and entrenched societal gender roles (Cessford, 1995; Frisby, 2017; Huybers-Withers & Livingston, 2010; King & Church, 2013; Nash & Moore, 2021; Wesely & Gaarder, 2004). Mountain biking therefore reflects wider societal gender norms that dictate both how women participate and how they are represented and perceived (Frisby, 2017). Thus, mountain biking as a sport is a social construct through which masculinity is proven and maintained (Connell, 1995). Gender-related sports and outdoors literature points out that historically, female participation in both wilderness and outdoor activities is discouraged (Kay & Laberge, 2004; Wesely & Gaarder, 2004). This is, in part, because characteristics of femininity, for example, passivity, lack of competitiveness, dependency, high attention to self-appearance, and being unaggressive, are incompatible with extreme sports. Women are excluded from these practices through societal (and their own) perceptions that mountain biking practice requires aggression, competitiveness, assertion, and dominance (Meân & Kassing, 2008). However, as society becomes more progressive, attitudes about gender roles have changed along with levels of female participation in various ‘masculine’ activities.

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Limitations to women’s participation in mountain biking There is a growing body of work on the relationship between mountain bikers and nature, including the impact of mountain biking on nature (Brown, 2015; Cherrington & Black 2019, 2020) and the value mountain bikers place on their participation in nature (Gilchrist and Ravenscroft, 2011; Skar, Odden, & Vistad, 2008). Mountain bikers impact the land not only through leaving tire marks, but also through modifying the land by building trail features like bermed corners, raised platforms, and rock gardens (Brown, 2015; Cherrington & Black, 2020). Nature, in turn, also impacts the rider; experiences in nature or open space can have an immediate positive effect on mental well-being for humans, across all demographics (Barton & Pretty, 2010). In a review of 51 publications on the mental-health benefits of time spent in nature, 90% of studies found at least one benefit including improved cognition, affect, and decreased anxiety (Lackey et al., 2021). More than half the qualitative studies focused on women. One study examined how time in nature improved women’s perception of their body image by distancing themselves from societal context through embodied experiences in nature and wilderness (Hennigan, 2010). For women, time spent outdoors in embodied, physical experiences is empowering and liberating because these practices lift traditional societal constraints typically placed on women (e.g., discourse around femininity, beauty, size, bodies, and sexuality) and create opportunities for women to realise their strength and become aware of their physical capacity, both of which can allow female-identifying individuals to find a new respect for self (Cole, Erdman, & Rothblum, 1994; De Beauvoir, 1952; Hennigan, 2010; Powch, 1994). Therefore, being removed from the landscape of typical gender roles and experiencing nature through mountain biking has multi-layered benefits for women and is worth further investigation. However, it is important to consider that although the practice of mountain biking can be empowering for women, the broader community of sport remains within a masculine framework where the empowerment of women clashes with societal impositions, and everyday practicalities limit female participation in lifestyle sports (Meân & Kassing, 2008). Fear and risk In open space or wilderness environments, fear and vulnerability can limit female participation (Wesely & Gaarder, 2004). Though participation in wilderness activities is shown to aid in deconstructing traditional gender stereotypes and improve the status of women in society (Pohl, Borrie, & Patterson, 2000; Hennigan, 2010), long-standing socio-cultural constructs relating to fear of ‘the woods’ hinder such progress. Powch (1994, p.23) posits that

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Countless women … are denied the healing benefits of wilderness because of the fear … taught with (stories like) Little Red Riding Hood. The fact that (most) sexual abuse…occurs inside homes does little to introduce women to the healing powers of wilderness. In mountain biking, this fear is exacerbated because the bike itself is an item of value that may entice criminals to beleaguer the rider, although this is largely dependent on the locale and crime rates in the places women ride. In the context of Stellenbosch, South Africa, crimes against mountain bikers are increasing and hesitation or extreme caution from women participants is not unfounded (Bordelon & Ferreira, 2018). Arrive Alive, a government-funded road safety initiative, recommends groups of five or more (regardless of gender) to ensure safety on roads and trails (Arrive Alive, 2022). Personal safety concerns for women mountain bikers in Stellenbosch are a palpable deterrent for many would-be riders, and a significant unease for women who ride regardless, despite knowing these risks. In addition to the fear of violence in isolated or wilderness environments is the fear of injury. Historically, these risks, whether real or perceived, are considered unsuitable for female participation (Kay & Laberge, 2004). Accepting risk is integral to the rhetoric of masculinity in lifestyle sports (Laurendeau, 2008) and the psychological connections between risk and masculinity continue to marginalise female participants (Atencio, Beal, & Wilson, 2009; Nash & Moore, 2021; Thorpe, 2005). In some instances, participants who do not take extreme risks are assigned a lower status or dismissed as novice or beginner (McCormack, 2017). Risk in mountain biking can also be associated with positive experiences; the concept of ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) is an accepted motivator in lifestyle sports (Cater et al., 2020; Taylor, 2010) and can be defined as moments of complete immersion in an embodied experience when a balance of risk and skill results in positive sensations in the body. Risk is thus both a deterrent and a motivator for participants; however, as Taylor and Carr (2023, p.11) explain, the experience of flow is not experienced by all mountain-bikers and is rather a ‘welcome by-product of the activity through levels of mastery’. Indeed, although feelings of flow can motivate women participants, flow is not a factor in breaking barriers to women’s initial participation in mountain biking because of the skill and experience required to access a state of flow. Media Huybers-Withers and Livingston (2010) revealed that women do not receive the same representation as men in mountain biking media. Willing and Shearer (2015) furthered this research, noting that although the diversity of the sport is increasing in terms of age, gender, and ethnicity, minority groups remain underrepresented in media and participation. A 25-year study on the

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representation of women in sport on three news networks in California determined that women’s sports received less than 9% of dedicated sportscasting time (Cooky et al., 2015). In addition to lower representation in the media, the way that women athletes are represented often devalues their athletic performance. When the bodies of women athletes are portrayed as objects for the sexual pleasure of others, and not based on their sporting performance, a masculine rhetoric controls the narrative and perception of women in sport (Frisby, 2017; Meân & Kassing, 2008). Thorpe (2005) explains how a lack of images portraying women athletes as courageous, fearless, or skilled suggests that only male athletes take big risks, get injured, or can achieve high competency in sports, further perpetuating ideas surrounding women as beginners, less skilled, or as passive spectators of their male counterparts. Fratriarchies ‘Fratriarchies’ describe the bonds formed between participants in action sports through the exhibition or demonstration of skill, strength, and risk (Loy, 1995, p.267). The term suggests bonds between males but does not exclude female participants who are considered ‘one of the boys’ or respected for ‘keeping up with the guys’ (McCormack, 2017, p.120). Fratriarchies are evident in many contemporary sports where women or other risk-averse individuals are marginalised and their performance considered less-than, or inferior (Olive et al., 2015; Thorpe, 2005). This is demonstrated in mountain biking where women’s participation is infantilised by the exclusion of women from competitions or events that are deemed too risky and thus, only allow male participants. Restricting or limiting female access also reduces the threat of female participation and empowerment that could challenge hegemonic structures (Meân & Kassing, 2008; Thorpe, 2005). The practice of mountain biking thus reconstructs dominant masculinities through an emphasis on risk and skill that contribute to a social hierarchy within a sporting community that acts as a ‘proving ground for masculinity’ (Laurendeau & Sharara, 2008, p.26). Through this cultural framework, the participation of women is negated, as their skills and fitness are underestimated and they are deemed ‘beginners’ regardless of their actual abilities (Olive et al., 2015). This is further evidenced by data showing that although 40.4% of male mountain bikers categorized their skill level as Advanced or ‘Pro’, only 21% of female riders placed themselves in this category (Physical Activity Council, 2021) demonstrating that women underestimate themselves or negate their experience in the same way. The reason for women in action sports devaluing their ability is unclear; however, it is possible it stems from the way they experience subtle othering, or even through their introduction to the sport of mountain biking. A study by Nash & Moore (2021) observed paternal influences on girls’ participation in

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action sports. As fathers, brothers, and male partners introduce women to mountain biking, their role as teacher and superior is perpetuated in the participation of the sport; this allows a masculine rhetoric to dominate how women play (Olive et al., 2015) and enables fratriarchies to exist and thrive within the mountain-biking community because women begin and develop underneath a patriarchal umbrella. Methodology This phenomenological study aims to build a more complete picture of the lived experiences of female mountain bikers (Van Manen, 1990). To obtain these qualitative data, I conducted 15 in-depth interviews with women mountain bikers in Stellenbosch, South Africa. I transcribed, drew out themes, similarities, and recurring phenomena. The interviews were conducted as discussions between people inside the cycling community (Minello & Nixon, 2017) but also between two people who identify as women. The author acknowledges subjectivity and recognises that there may be issues that participants would not, or did not, share during their interviews. The demographic make-up of the sample attempts to capture a range of women who mountain bike. The women of various skill levels all had at least one year of experience and participate at least twice a week. The sample included women from ages 21 to 50 years. Thirteen of the 15 are college-educated or attending college. Six of the women are mothers, two of whom have children under the age of five. In the following section, I use a narrative format to analyse interview responses under the following key phenomena: (1) Fear (safety and risk);(2) Representation in the Media; (3) Fratriarchies; and (4) Community. Findings and discussion Fear Fear of isolation and vulnerability in the wilderness is complex in the context of Stellenbosch. In addition to socio-cultural ideas related to the dangers of wilderness (Powch, 1994), the reality and frequency of incidents involving crimes against mountain bikers in the Western Cape of South Africa is tangible and widely understood (TimesLive, 2019; Walls, 2020). I asked interviewees if they ever ride alone, and with what frequency: …essentially for me, it’s a social thing, so I wouldn’t ride the trails alone, there have been so many incidents recently. On well used roads. It’s just not safe. (Benita, 50)

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It’s not safe at all. Guys, even groups of five or six guys, have been held up at gunpoint for their bikes… I guess I just take the chance, but it’s scary. (Diana, 37) I never ride alone, ever. It’s just not worth it… (Lauren, 21) Every woman interviewed said they do not mountain bike alone. Relying on the schedules and constraints of others to arrange times and places to ride limits women’s participation. Perceptions of fear in open spaces is already a limiting factor to female participation in wilderness areas (Wesely & Gaarder, 2004) and compounded with additional personal safety concerns creates additional barriers. This is a justified fear primarily based on gender identity that disproportionately affects women, particularly in this context and culture. The concept of fear extends to the gendered risks associated with mountain biking: I think the main difference between men and women is that women are always concerned with falling, it always comes up, whereas men just don’t seem to worry about it. Maybe they just don’t say it because it would be unmanly, but maybe it’s because women (and I’m doing it right now), overthink. I had to train myself not to think. The boys just do it. (Tamara, 32) I’m a woman and so if I see another woman (ride a big trail feature), I think ok, I can do that. But if I guy goes off a drop then I don’t know if I can do it, I don’t trust I can make it. (Lauren, 21) Research shows that women self-report as less skilled than their male counterparts (Laurendeau & Sharara, 2008; Physical Activity Council, 2021). This lack of confidence in their skills is often directly related to their gender identity or how they perceive their own abilities. All but three women said they preferred to follow another woman down a technical trail (the three who have no preference are all professional mountain bikers). Diana is one of them and explains: I rode for ages with only my brother, I have the confidence and skill to ride with guys. I never thought of it as a gendered thing until I met pro women who made me realise (we) weren’t paid the same as men, or that there are fewer women on the trail.

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Diana, now a skills coach, says most women derive confidence from seeing another woman ride difficult sections of trail, For some reason when women ride with other women, they just follow each other and ride the trails. Lots of women say they don’t trust the lines a guy will take. (Diana, 37) There is no apparent reason why this phenomenon exists, or whether it is justified. What is clear from our interviews is that women prefer to ride with women. This might relate to McCormack’s (2020) idea that participants who do not take unnecessary risks are typically assigned a lower status, or as Tamara describes ‘unmanly’. It could also be argued that when women ride with other women, they are free to perform however they want to, they experience less pressure to take risks and advance their status, and as one participant noted, ‘can just be a rider’. Representation in media Images of sportswomen naked, bathing, or sexualised in any way are damaging not only to the athlete, but to gender equality in sport. As Frisby (2017) and Daniels et al. (2021) explain, women in sport are often represented in a sexualised way despite their sporting prowess. Traditional forms of media, such as television, magazine, and newspaper outlets, are not solely responsible. Some female mountain bikers promote these gendered ideologies to garner attention, fans, and sponsorship. Many women interviewed expressed disappointment with how some women sexualise themselves to gain attention (of the male gaze) using ‘emphasised femininity’ (Connell, 1987, p.183) that promotes women as passive objects of desire. As Janice (35), a professional mountain biker explained, some women athletes use their sexuality to gain popularity in social media, despite how damaging this practice is to women in sport. As a result, even professional women mountain bikers are sometimes judged, based on metrics other than their athletic performance. If a pro cyclist uses her femininity and sex to promote herself, she could be anything. She is more model than athlete and she doesn’t get recognised for her athletic accomplishments. Then you take away from female performance. And that’s where we (women who mountain bike) always feel we don’t get respected. (Janice, 35) I was on this social media women’s ride group hosted by a local shop, but two guys managed it. One day they posted a video pretending to be one of the best women cross-country racers in the world. This guy was wearing a

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tutu and curly-haired wig, jumping around saying her name. It was so demeaning. She is a fast, skilled rider but they focused on her looks and made fun of her personality. I left that group and never went back to that shop again. (Jane, 38) Jane continued, ‘…if those guys don’t respect her when she wins world championships, they sure aren’t going to respect me’. Continued use of sexualised images distributed by the media or through self-representation perpetuate the objectification of women and are damaging to the advancement of women in sport (Laurendeau & Sharara, 2008). Paternalistic relationships and gendered mountain bike gear Six interviewees started riding their brother or partner’s old bike. Five started with heavy, big-box-store bikes. Four purchased used bikes. Benita later purchased an upgrade for herself that significantly improved her experience. She explained a phenomenon she sees among her peers, when men try to get their female partners involved: Guys buy their wife an old, heavy bike, while they are on their fancy expensive bike and then don’t understand why their wife isn’t having fun. The bikes are ugly, heavy, and they don’t have a good ride quality. And women don’t want to ride because it’s hard on a horrible bike! (Benita, 50) Male introductions to the sport are typically well-intentioned but because of the power dynamic established at the outset, the dominant role of the more experienced male is difficult to undo, even when women surpass their male counterparts in athletic prowess and skill. Diana (37) described an experience riding with a male counterpart: I was riding with this guy who is also a coach. He was riding behind me, judging me. I was under pressure. I felt insecure, and he was coaching me. I didn’t ask him to coach me… but he immediately started correcting my technique. I am an advanced rider, and a coach, and I am happy to take correction, but I didn’t ask him for that. Another example from Nicole (30) relates to how her performance as a rider is often negated or belittled: …at the trailhead talking to my friend…we just got done riding…and this old guy rides up and says are you chicks riding or talking? He would never say that to two guys!

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Diana’s experience is notable because she is an elite-level rider and coach, but every interviewee regaled stories of experiencing uninvited coaching by the men they ride with. In a similar vein, Nicole’s response elucidates how language plays an important role in the belittling of female riders. Olive et al. (2015) posit that women experience marginalisation in subtle ways as they receive uninvited advice or even encouragement that men in the same situation would not. These experiences illustrate how women are perceived as a homogenous group of less-skilled riders. As Jane (38), a former semiprofessional road cyclist explained: I went to the shop for new tyres, I didn’t ask for help, but a sales guy came over and recommended a certain tyre. He explained that his mom uses those ones, so I would probably like them. As far as I can tell, other than the fact that we are women, me and this guy’s mom have no connection in terms of how and where we ride. These types of experiences are common among women who frequent bicycle shops. Jane expanded on multiple experiences where she was redirected toward entry-level bikes and equipment and ‘mansplained’ about different types of tools and soft goods. Diana and Jane’s experiences are not unique. Although the number of female mountain bikers is growing, the way they participate is still dictated or influenced by their male counterparts whether through their introduction to the sport or through experiences in the bike industry. Bicycle retailers made significant progress in developing women’s-specific gear over the last 15 years; however, women mountain bikers continue to be infantilised not only through being excluded in media and events for men only (McCormack, 2020; Thorpe, 2005), but in the design choices used in products geared toward women. The colour pink surfaced in every interview when asked about products geared towards women: I mean…I don’t dislike pink, but what I really don’t like is that they make something and put a bit of pink on it and then say it’s for the girls. You know, what the? (Janice, 35) I have a lovely pair of road shoes that are grey and pink. But I’m a grey person, not a pink person. (Benita, 50) I like women’s specific products. But if it starts to get pink, I don’t like that, I don’t like pink stuff. (Michelle, 31)

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In 2018, at a Stellenbosch bicycle store, three of the six women-specific helmets were pink. A fourth featured purple and teal accents. Discussing the colour pink is relevant to understanding how women in the sport are perceived. The notion that women who ride prefer pink bikes, assigns an element of childishness to how women participate. Baby blue and pink are colours that do cultural work; through clothing, they communicate meaning ascribed to the gender of babies (Barthes, 2006; Stoddart, 2010). The ubiquitous use of pink as a colour choice is a critical element that helps us understand how in this context (time and place), women’s mountain biking is perceived as a beginner’s practice. The women’s mountain bike community Considering the explicit and implicit forms of belittlement and exclusion outlined above, it is interesting that women in this study continue to participate and carve out their own space and community, demonstrating complex cultural practices to establish new norms and how, through operating in alternative ways, they challenge hegemonic masculinity. This reflects findings from McCormack’s (2020) study, which explores how women use social media networks to establish connections and community and to share experiences of discrimination. Connecting through group rides promoted on social media enabled these women to ‘find each other’ and ride on their own terms. This sense of community is key to motivation, skill-building, and confidence. Most of the women agreed that they like to follow another woman down a technical trail because, as Jane (38) explained ‘…there is no pressure to be hardcore. I can opt out of riding hard sections if I want to. And nobody will call me a chicken’. Furthermore, Diana (37) explained how she had started a women’s only weeknight group ride which drew women ‘from a ninety-minute drive away’. This demonstrates how women in this context want to ride in a supportive and non-paternalistic environment whilst connecting with likeminded others. Women mountain biking and learning with other women creates a different atmosphere than when men are involved, there is no dominant masculine oversight or battle to claim space or territory (Laurendeau & Sharara, 2008; Olive et al., 2015; Thorpe, 2005). Nicole (30) alluded to this when she described how, ‘when you’re moving, you’re just a rider, not a gender stereotype, and there are no rules’. Despite the barriers working against this group of women, each of them found a way or a desire to keep riding, and in doing so, ultimately found a supportive community that allowed them to choose how they ride. Mountain biking allowed these women to transcend traditional gender roles and be ‘just a rider’ experiencing the mental-health benefits of being outdoors, exercise, and community that Hennigan (2010) explains is highly beneficial to the female psyche. Although all the women said they still enjoy riding with their male counterparts, it is the supportive experiences

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gained on women’s group rides that help them develop confidence, build skills, and challenge traditional beliefs about gender and ability (McCormack, 2020; Thorpe, 2005). Conclusion Lifestyle sports continue to reflect masculine hegemonies and patriarchal structures that exist in contemporary society. Mountain biking is heavily gendered and female mountain bikers experience multiple barriers to equitable participation in the sport. These barriers include entrenched ideas about female capacities for risk-taking and strength that marginalise women as less skilled, whilst demeaning them by positioning them as beginner riders. Women experience a lack of equitable representation in mountain biking media that typically highlights women as sexualised objects rather than as athletes in their own right. Throughout female experiences of mountain biking, gendered inequalities and entrenched normative behaviours therefore persist, despite attempts by both men and women to create inclusive participation in the sport. In many respects, the culture of mountain biking in Stellenbosch reflects these wider inequalities as evidenced by the experiences of these 15 female mountain bikers who experienced othering, sexualisation of themselves or other women, and encountered multiple barriers to equitable participation. Despite the barriers, these women continue to actively participate in the sport, and on occasion, their participation clashes with established patriarchal values and challenges accepted societal behaviours. This is evidenced when they ride despite fear and safety risks, when they refuse to purchase or wear pink bicycle-related clothing, and when they recognise and speak-out against gendered inequalities. In addition, and perhaps the most important for changing a gender dynamic that dictates how women ride, is when women purposefully make space to ride with other women, enabling them to act without being corrected or othered and ‘just be a rider.’ Note 1 The eight-day Cape Epic is considered the ‘Tour de France’ of mountain biking (The Citizen, 2015). It is the most televised mountain bike race in the world, broadcast to 175 countries in 22 languages and highlighted in The New York Times, LA Times, Sports Illustrated, and multiple other media outlets (Cape Epic, 2016).

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Women and barriers to participation in mountain biking  187 Netwerk24. (2021). Growing MTB locally. December 14. Available at: https://www. netwerk24.com/netwerk24/za/gazette/nuus/growing-mtb-locally-20211213-2 Olive, R., McCuaig, L., & Phillips, M. (2015). Women’s recreational surfing: A patronizing experience. Sport, Education, & Society, 20(2), 258–276. Physical Activity Council. (2021). Outdoor participation trends report. Boulder, CO: Outdoor Foundation. Available at: https://outdoorindustry.org/resource/2021outdoor-participation-trends-report/ Pohl, S., Borrie, W., & Patterson, M. (2000). Women, wilderness, and everyday life: A documentation of the connection between wilderness recreation and women’s everyday lives. Journal of Leisure Research, 32(4), 415–434. Powch, I. (1994). Wilderness therapy: What makes it empowering for women? Women and Therapy, 15, 11–27. Scott Shafer, C., & Scott, D. (2013). Dynamics of progression in mountain bike racing. Leisure Sciences, 35, 353–364. Skar, M., Odden, A., & Vistad, O. (2008). Motivation for mountain biking in Norway: Change and stability in late-modern outdoor recreation. Norwegian Journal of Geography, 62, 36–45. Stoddart, M. (2010). Constructing masculinized sportscapes: Skiing, gender and nature in British Columbia, Canada. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 46(1), 108–124. Taylor, S. (2010). Extending the dream machine: Understanding people’s participation in mountain biking. Annals of Leisure Research, 13, 259–281. Taylor, S., & Carr, A. (2023). Living in the moment: Mountain bikers’ search for flow. Annals of Leisure Research, 26(2), 285–299. Thorpe, H. (2005). Jibbing the gender order: Females in the snowboarding culture. Sport in Society, 8(1), 76–100. TimesLive. (2019). Cyclist Robbed and Stabbed on Table Mountain trail. April 13. Available at: https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-02-05-cyclistrobbed-and-stabbed-on-table-mountain-trail/ Tread Media. (2021). Biking in the Bosch changes hands. January 20. Available at: https://www.treadmtb.co.za/biking-in-the-bosch-changes-hands/ Van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. Albany: State University of New York Press. Walls, E. (2020). Cyclists are Shocked at Coetzenburg. Die Matie Student Newspaper, February 17. Wesely, J., & Gaarder, E. (2004). The gendered ‘nature’ of the urban outdoors: Women negotiating fear of violence. Gender & Society, 18(5), 645–663. Wheaton, B. (2010). Introducing the consumption and representation of lifestyle sports. port in Society, 13(7–8), 1057–1081. Willing, I., & Shearer, S. (2015). Skateboarding activism: Exploring diverse voices and community support, in Lombard, K.J. (Ed.), Skateboarding (pp. 44–56). London, UK: Routledge.

Chapter 12

Hegemonic masculinity and sexualisation in mountain bike trail naming practices What’s in a name? Benjamin Moreland, Alice Lemkes, Jenni Myers, and Jack Reed Introduction Place naming is often embroiled in the cultural understandings and structures which shape society, and the act of naming a place provides important foundations which may generate a sense of place and place attachment (Alderman, 2008). As Berg and Kearns (1996) describe, place names may be positioned as social constructions which define who a place is ‘for’. This sense of who is written into and out of a landscape through trail naming was picked up on by Reid-Hresko and Warren (2021). Their work provides a recognised exploration of trail naming in mountain biking. Exploring the relationship between trail naming, colonialism, and belonging, Reid-Hresko and Warren (2021) reveal the complexities of trail naming in Squamish, Canada. Their data suggest trail names have been constructed by settler trail builders and preserved through subtle but dominant colonial narratives that exist amongst those mountain bikers involved in the study. The consequence is that settler trail builders and riders dominate the natural landscape of Squamish, appropriating the space for their leisure pursuits, with little regard or awareness of the significance of the land for Indigenous people. Indeed, this research demonstrates the significance of trail naming, and how mechanisms are used by groups within society to maintain their power. It is from this foundation that we explore trail naming in this chapter. As four authors based in the United Kingdom, we are all in some ways familiar with the practice of trail building and naming as methods of participation and as a core aspect of mountain biking subcultures. We participate in a range of mountain biking disciplines across the UK and abroad, including enduro, ultra-distance bikepacking and racing, and cross-country. Ultimately, each of us may be recognised as a ‘mountain biker’ and we all participate in various forms of taking bicycles off-road. However, the act of trail naming is a field of thought that appears under-researched. The following excerpt from

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361626-17

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Alice offers contextual insight into the complexity and nuance that can stem from the seemingly simple act of naming a trail: I was told by a local to download the Trail Forks platform if I wanted to know where to ride. Without knowing anyone I plotted a route on trailforks, transferred it to my GPS, and set out for a ride. I went up ‘water tank track’ and then descended ‘oh deer!’, I then climbed back up ‘new mills, traversed ‘gorse track’ and descended ‘chutney’. Months passed before I was told that ‘chutney’ is actually shorthand for ‘chutney nudger’, which relates to anal sex and anal discharge. I was disappointed by the overt homophobic sentiment of such a wonderful trail. The exclusionary, masculine practices of place naming are the focus of this chapter, with specific reference to Strava and Trailforks; two popular online sites where segments and trails may be named and seen by users. Through a collaborative approach between the four authors, we present an initial foray into our experiences and perspectives of trail naming at our local mountain biking venues on Strava and Trailforks. In doing so, we uncover structures of power and sexism, alongside subversive reappropriation in some trail names which very often define a place and which generate a prescribed narrative on who these trails are for. The reading of the gendered landscape in relation to examinations of sporting practice has seen an increase in attention within non-traditional sports (Thorpe & Olive, 2016), yet little attention has been devoted to examinations in mountain biking. More specifically, at the time of writing, we contest that limited if any scholarly work as assessed trail naming practices in mountain biking as a vehicle to maintain consent and compliance regarding hegemonic masculinities. Exploring Antonio Gramsci: Power, ideology, and hegemony Gramsci’s work (1971) can be seen as part of a much stronger tradition of Marxists’ writing and counter-functionalist thinking that is acutely aware of the power relationships that exist within society. This awareness is built upon Gramsci’s acceptance of Marx’s analysis of capitalism that proposed the driving force of society was the unequal struggle experienced by the ruling and subordinate classes (Burke, 2005). Whilst Gramsci was in acceptance of the existence of the profound struggle, he takes issue with the Marxian view of how the ruling classes create and maintain power. For Gramsci, this struggle and the associated riches it promised the very few arw centred upon what he termed ideology. Closely related to the concept of power, ideology has its basis in a set of shared ideas which seek to serve the interests of the ruling class or the dominant groups. For Gramsci, the relationship it possesses with the concept of power is that ideology seeks to distort the existence of

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authority, legitimising the struggle and unequal distribution of authority that different groups hold (Carey, 2015). It is this complex understanding of power, and its interwovenness into the everyday, that led Gramsci to develop the principle of hegemony. Hegemony is more appropriate to understanding the relationship between the classes and focusses on a specific set of values, attitudes, and beliefs that permeate throughout society (Burke, 2005). This permeation is the vehicle through which the powerful seek to maintain the status quo, normalising forms of socialising for the unique benefit of the ruling class. Gramsci suggests the continued internalisation of a constructed set of norms and values brings about a natural order of things in social life that seeks to advantage the ruling elite (Burke, 2005). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gramsci’s work has been applied to lifestyle sports such as Kayaking, where both coercion and consent were examined (Tracey, 2013), and in examinations of everyday racism in sports such as skiing (Harrison, 2013). What becomes clear in work such as this is that structures of domination, power, and authority permeate and characterise lifestyle sport participation. Gramsci (1971) divided institutional structures into those that were overtly coercive and those that were not (Carey, 2015). We can see for Gramsci that institutions such as the government and legal system centre on what we regard as the state, whereas the non-coercive ones such as the family, churches, and sport are seen as civil society. The subtlety of this understanding set against Gramsci’s principle of hegemony is that civil society is the platform through which the dominance of the ruling class is discussed, consented to, and accepted. It is only when society is close to revolt that coercive institutions are mobilised, yet we can see throughout history that there has been little need for it. This ideological bond or common sense understanding between ruler and ruled, powerful and powerless, has afforded more recent theoretical examinations a vital entry point to various phenomena. We now move to discuss how Raewyn Connell has done so with her contributions to understanding hegemony in the context of gender relations. Raewyn Connell: Hegemony and masculinity To make sense of Gramsci’s (1971) work, we need to extend the relevant discussions of hegemony into the context of gender relations. To do this, the concept of hegemonic masculinity affords a lens to view the unequal gender relations in mountain biking and trail naming practices. According to Messerschmidt (2019), the concept was first introduced by Connell who suggested it afforded a position to view unequal relations and the compliance that consequently existed. These relations were patterns of practice that reproduced dominance of men over women and men over men. As such it is understood that hegemonic masculinity operates at the societal level, to the benefit of a

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small proportion of men. Since its early development, hegemonic masculinity has attracted much attention in the academic literature, providing an accessible concept to apply to the gender relations we might observe in this chapter (Connell, 2015). Yet, early in the 2000s, criticisms emerged detailing failings of the concept, most notably its fixed position on there being only one hegemonic masculinity at the societal level. Addressing this, Connell along with Messerschmidt (2005) reformulated the concept to recognise the plurality of hegemonic masculinities, and the existence of multiple masculinities at the local, regional, and global. This reformulation has seen exhaustive application and serves as an appropriate concept to explore the gender relations and naming practices that exist within mountain biking. However, we note that limited scholarly work has sought to examine hegemonic masculinity in mountain biking cultures. Whilst emphasis has been placed on the portrayal of masculinity in mountain bike magazines (see Fraysse & Mennesson (2009); Huybers-Withers & Livingston (2010)), there is limited application to in-person and in-place experiences from the trail. Of course, examinations of hegemonic masculinity in other lifestyle sports are more readily available. For instance, Manzenreiter (2013) examined ‘masculinity rites’ in Western Japan through climbing, skateboarding, and surfing and considered how conceptualisations of maleness are shaped in the lifestyle sports scape. Alongside this, Robinson (2004) has explored the relationships between risk, rock climbing, and masculinities, which demonstrates how masculine identities are wrapped up in lifestyle sport participation. With these articles in mind, it in intriguing that a more thorough examination of hegemonic masculine architectures is yet to be to fully considered in the mountain biking space. Yet, before we get to this, we need to acknowledge that there are cautionary tales of its use that focus on scholarly works that still seek a fixed masculinity, that lacks analytical depth and rigour (Flood, 2002; Schippers, 2007; Beasley, 2008). To counter, we apply Messerschmidt’s (2019) differentiated position between hegemonic masculinities and dominant masculinities. Key to the difference is that dominant masculinities are those encountered most readily within society exhibiting traits such as aggression and power, whereas hegemonic masculinities are idealised and the most desirable in any given context (Messerschmidt, 2019). This distinction affords a detailed conceptualisation of how hegemonic masculinities are distinct amongst the range of masculinities that exist. The hegemonic masculinities we seek to reveal here are those masculinities constructed ‘locally, regionally, and globally that legitimate an unequal relationship between men and women … acquiring their legitimacy through culturally symbolising superior masculine qualities against inferior qualities attached to femininity’ (Messerschmidt, 2019, p. 17). Furthermore, we are concerned with the ways nuanced constructions of masculinity are shaped and consolidated in online, networked, spaces, and how these constructions are generated in relation to trail naming culture.

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Online spaces to share and consolidate serious leisure Taylor (2010) defines mountain biking as an activity which brings with it a high level of risk, includes unfamiliar and remote landscapes, and requires a good level of physical fitness. All that to say that mountain biking is an outside activity. Of course, this may seem self-evident, but we suggest that other factors associated with mountain bike participation take place in (and rely on) online, networked, spaces. For instance, planning and navigating requires mobile technology and GPS, and the generation and sharing of images and stories of mountain biking on social media extends our ability to construct and maintain identity, connect with others, and consume user-generated content. For instance, McCormack (2017, 2019) identified the important roles online media play in the development and maintenance of communication and trust amongst mountain bikers. In McCormack’s (2019) later work, an analysis of female experiences of mountain biking identified online, networked, spaces as platforms where dominant cultures of ‘risk celebration’ may be challenged, and where supportive communities may be built and participated in. For our analysis trail naming, two online spaces which have reshaped the social and cultural constructions of mountain biking are considered: Strava (the Swedish phrase for ‘to strive’) and TrailForks. Strava is a digital self-tracking platform which allows those engaged in leisure activities such as cycling to record their activities and share activities with a community (Couture, 2021). Interestingly, Rivers (2020, p. 3) describes spaces such as Strava as ‘social constructs’ which frequently construct desired forms of practices and cultures for its community of users. This is important for us as it illustrates how online, networked, spaces such as Strava can replicate and reinforce the traditional cultural norms of the communities it serves. Meanwhile, Neumann and Mason (2022, p. 7) describe how platforms such as TrailForks ‘have been total game changers really. It has become the go to resource for finding mountain bike trails and finding trails that are appropriate for people’s skill levels or the type of trails they are interested in’. The increasingly seamless relationship between cyclists and online spaces such as Strava and TrailForks led to Royle (2022) to describe the contemporary cyclist as a member of the biodigital milieu. Here, the biodigital is referred to as the convergence of analog science (e.g., biology) with digital technological infrastructures (e.g., digital). For instance, for cyclists using Strava, evidence of biodigital participation may be seen through the sharing of location (e.g., where you have cycled), performance (e.g., heart rate, watts, and speed), and leaderboard positions (e.g., Strava’s King and Queen of the Mountain leaders). All of this to say the previously bounded, solitary, nature of cycling participation now has an important public-facing element in an online and global environment. For those engaged in researching online formulations of leisure and society, Lupton (2016, p. 710) offers a foundation when suggesting that ‘research

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into people’s use of digital technologies for recreation’ is critically important if we are to examine ‘the pleasures, the excitements and the playful dimensions of digital encounters’. However, we somewhat depart from notions of pleasure and playfulness here and examine the ways masculinised and heteronormative elements of mountain bike culture described by Huybers-Withers and Livingston (2010) present and persist in an online space such as Strava. This links to the work on virtual leisure by Reed et al. (2022, p. 9) in relation to the cycling platform Zwift. Here, it is suggested that online spaces for cyclists often reproduce ‘many of the gendered norms that influence cycling in everyday life’. In other words, the dominant cultural, social, and political forces at the heart of mountain biking may crossover and influence user experiences in online spaces. This is an important stance in this chapter as it offers a conceptual lens through which to make sense of the relationships between physical and virtual environments as we seek to explore the place and role of trail naming practices as they are presented within online environments. The social, cultural, and political foundations of trail naming The naming of landscapes has significant historical roots. For instance, Withers (2000) discussed Ordnance Survey’s naming of places in the Scottish Highlands in the 19th century, and in so doing, identified how place naming became both a social and political cartographic process. This resulted in native Gaelic populations being ‘written out’ of the land and demonstrates place naming as both a social and cultural practice. Whilst the subjugation of native people through naming is featured elsewhere (e.g., Reid-Hresko and Warren, 2021), Alderman (2008) describes how place names may conjure important understandings and meanings for society which may develop a sense of place and place attachment. Drawing on Berg and Kearns work (1996), place naming practice is positioned as a foundational social construction which often characterises what a place ‘is’ and who a place is ‘for’. Returning to Alderman (2008), naming practices may not only describe a landscape or place but can also lay claim to an environment in ways that develop and sustain cultural norms. It is evident that place naming, and its political and social role, provides versions of people’s understandings of these places. These social constructions are not immune to the structural conditions that shape wider society such as sexism, racism, ableism, and classism. For this chapter, a focus on sexism sees the broad landscape of outdoor leisure generally weighted in favour of men over women and particularly the ways in which spaces and places are named. For Humberstone (2000), this problem requires a subtle and critical examination of gender in outdoor leisure, and we contend, specifically, in the naming of trails. Outdoor leisure pursuits such as rock-climbing, mountain biking, or surfing require participants to engage with their environment, to ascend a rock,

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ride a trail, or surf a wave. What all these aspects have in common for many participants is an understanding of which rock, trail, or wave they are riding. In rock climbing, for instance, it is a customary practice when a specific route has been ascended for the first time that the person who completed this feat then must give it a name (Wigglesworth, 2021). As noted earlier, this naming of routes is subject to a social and political-cultural context that can privilege different groups or ways of thinking. For Wigglesworth (2021), this has been the case in rock climbing route naming with issues of misogyny, homophobia, ableism, and racism being prevalent across the UK and North America. This indicates the existence of a heteropatriarchy in rock climbing that ensures the participation of men is privileged over women. The visibility of these issues is often underplayed and hidden from the mainstream because they are held in subcultural platforms that permit access only to those who belong to the group (Wigglesworth, 2021). Furthermore, Wigglesworth (2021) found that the most discriminative names which existed in rock climbing came from routes that demanded the highest of skill levels. This indicates an environment exists that privileges particular individuals who have the means, desire, and subcultural position; for Wigglesworth (2021) this was white men. Wigglesworth’s (2021) findings present a unique insight into the privileging practice of route naming in rock climbing, yet this is not dissimilar to the ways in which trail naming occurs in mountain biking. Given these parallels, the authors sought to explore the naming practices of mountain biking trails across England and Scotland, focussing on Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Aberdeenshire. Gender relations and masculine attributes The extract from Jenni demonstrates the ways in which her experience has, and is, shaped by the privilege given to speed, power, and aggression in the subculture of mountain biking and the trails she rides locally: Having spent many years working in the rock-climbing industry, I have become accustomed to the regularity with which masculinity dominates route naming practices. It is not uncommon for route names to describe the perceived strength needed to complete the climb, often dismissing an alternative to strength which is skill and technique. However, this issue is not unique to rock climbing. My experience is that trail naming practices within mountain biking can also be found to refer to the same requirements. For example, trail names such as ‘Who’s got the biggest balls?’ or ‘Man up’ are indicative of this. As a woman, these trail names give me the impression that I am either incapable or unwelcome to ride them based on my gender, regardless of my riding ability. Similarly, the use of masculine language which refers to themes such as power, aggression or domination

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can place focus on speed and strength, creating a competitive atmosphere where only the strongest and fastest will prevail. Routes with such names are more likely to attract male riders and make female riders feel out of place. The extract from Jenni illustrates the ways her experience of mountain biking is characterised by masculine attributes and how these have been socially and culturally interwoven into the fabric of riding. Her reference to trails being designed in favour of strength and aggression demonstrates the methods used to create and maintain a subcultural context that privileges men and specific gender relations (Messerschmidt, 2019). Furthermore, the examples of trail names such as ‘Who’s got the biggest balls?’ seek to reaffirm this privilege in a way that infers, for Jenni at least, that she and her form of femininity are incapable of riding them (Messerschmidt, 2019). According to Messerschmidt (2019), this privileging of specific masculine characteristics over constructed femininities and the subtleties of trail names in mountain biking reinforce unequal gender relations, importantly legitimating hegemonic forms of masculinity (Schippers, 2007). Meanwhile, for Alice, her experiences illustrate the contextual nature of hegemonic masculinity and her reluctance to generalise all mountain biking spaces in the same way. Alice refers to how privileging gender relations are present in her mountain biking experience through trail naming and how these align with broader societal forms of hegemonic masculinity: I am reluctant to draw conclusions about the sexism of trail naming practices in general by just going to the apps and looking for sexist trail names. Strava, in particular, requires no further endorsement than the person who has decided to name a particular segment in a particular way. But my direct experiences reveal a discourse, one which is wider and deeper than mountain biking, around what is acceptable, appropriate and successful in terms of making a mark on the land and naming it, most notably for what is ok for men and women. One example of this is a trail called chutney nudger. Alice, whilst reluctant to generalise, extends Jenni’s point above surrounding the gender relations and social norms that exist within mountain biking, privileging the masculine experience. Alice’s specific experience encountering a trail named ‘Chutney Nudger’ (noted above and in the introduction) demonstrates the subtle and contextual dimensions gender relation reinforcement. Here the deceptive shortening of the trail to chutney seeks to mask the historical and hegemonic dimensions of the names focus and intention (Messerschmidt, 2019). For those oblivious to the name’s fullness, they are none the wiser, yet those with the power who have coined the trail name, this reinforces their dominant position through coercion and consent.

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Reappropriation of trail space and name For Gramsci (1971) a counter to the dominance of one group over another can be had. Enacted through resistance, this may provide a counter to existing privileges afforded to certain groups. The resistance for Gramsci can be created by organic intellectual(s), whereby the masses break free of their consensual shepherding, developing their critical consciousness (Jarvie, 2017). Mountain biking and hegemonic forms of masculinity are no different, they are not immune to resistance from women and men, who want to alter the status quo and gendered fabric of the activity. The reappropriation of existing forms of patriarchy and hegemonic forms of masculinity has been one way in which women have sought to redress the existing dominance. In mountain biking, this redressing may see women seeking to alter their physical surroundings; the natural landscape(s) that make up a large part of the mountain biking experience. We argue one specific way women might seek to disrupt the hegemonic effects of masculinity in online spaces such as Trailforks is through the conscious attempt to subvert and reconfigure trail names and the trail-building practices that exist through emphasising specific ways of feminine being. Alice demonstrates the attempts of a group of female riders to recapture and reappropriate the trail landscape, pushing the use of Trailforks beyond the geolocation and competence tool (Neumann & Mason, 2022), into an online space to counter dominant gender relations: I was later involved in the dig of a new trail, designed and built exclusively by women. We were completing it during the platinum jubilee. People were wearing crowns and masks of Queen Elizabeth II. The lead builder wanted, in honour, to call the trail ‘Lizzie’s lady lumps’ owing to the platinum jubilee as well as the slabs and features at the top of the trail. At the end of the trail, I spotted some stinkhorn mushrooms, and naturally we spoke about calling it ‘stinky’. In the end ‘stinky Liz’ was born. The intricate and complex process of building and then naming a trail after the Late monarch illustrates a particular form of resistance to the contextual masculinities within mountain biking. Here the riders and builders seek to construct and name a trail that can easily be overlooked when observing e-platforms such as Strava, yet it acts, for the riders at least, as a subversive jamming of culture, a resistance to overarching hegemonic masculinities. As Alice asked, if I was to call a trail ‘my beautiful cunt’, would that actually work against my attempts to reappropriate the word and place it as a landmark on the hillside, and instead be considered as part of the norm of sexualised trail names?

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It appears that one emerging problem for these forms of symbolic resistance, given the need for this ‘insider’ knowledge, is that whilst they have been developed and created as a resistance to the prevailing gender normative context, it can easily be mistaken as another trail name that reinforces rather than challenges dominance. However, what this demonstrates is an attempt to engage in resistance through critically examining the experiences of female mountain bikers, developing a counter-hegemonic position that transforms the consciousness of female riders. For Wigglesworth (2021), this resistance was more overt with participants lobbying various associations to consult and subsequently change the names of the routes deemed sexist and misogynistic. This approach may be one way to change the name, but this may not subsequently redress the balance of power Alice is seeking. Moreover, the routes for Wigglesworth’s participants are recognised by climbing associations, whereas the trails in this example are managed in a virtual world, one that is less open to dialogue and change. However, for Alice and those that built, and named, this experience of resistance is theirs and one that can be used as a foregrounding for further and more overt contributions. Another way in which Jenni sought to reappropriate the mountain biking space was through the positive and supportive experience she described in relation to ‘first rider down the trail’ during an all-female enduro race. Jenni suggested that: A particular example which comes to mind was riding a women’s only enduro in Gisburn Forest. At the top of each stage, the women would gather telling each other to go first because they didn’t want to hold each other up by being too slow. A conversation you are unlikely to hear among a group of men at an enduro. Jenni demonstrates how she and her fellow riders sought to subvert the dimension of masculine behaviours that are commonly demanded, in favour of positively reinforcing the sharing of fear and anxiety. Here Jenni notes this is something often frowned upon in the hypermasculine environment of mountain biking where going down a trail first is seen as a mechanism to assert masculine hegemony. Openly sharing your fear, an element often used by others to reaffirm existing gender relations, are woven in a complex web of adherence and rejection for Jenni and her fellow riders. In this all-female space and experience, this was seen as acceptable, behaviours that were celebrated and supported rather than being alienated and mocked. The complexity involves the initial adherence to masculine riding characteristics such as speed being offset with the open sharing of ‘you-go-first’. This interplay demonstrates the awareness of existing gender norms influenced by masculinity, but also a confidence to resist these, reappropriating the mountain biking space and specific behaviours

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for the female riders. This resistance was noted by Wigglesworth (2021) and her participants with some stating that whilst masculine dimensions were present, they pushed back by rejecting these existing norms. Conclusion and future directions The ways in which the hegemony of masculine norms rises to the surface in our exploration of trail naming practices on platforms such as Strava and Trailforks has revealed an environment where trail naming intersects with multiple layers of heteronormative cultural practices. Throughout Alice and Jenni’s narratives, both subversive and overt constructions of masculinity are present in trail naming culture. For instance, whilst trail names such as ‘Chutney’ may superficially not appear situated within masculine discourse, Alice’s later learning of the trail’s full name, ‘Chutney Nudger’, demonstrates the layers of ambiguity and insider knowledge which may characterise trail naming. However, with Jenni discussing trail names such as ‘Who’s got the biggest balls?’, the relationships between masculinity and dominant cultural practices around risk taking and ‘manliness’ are clear to see. We feel we have not been able to thoroughly explore all these layers, but, as Jenni noted, the masculine attributes that feature in certain trail naming practices place emphasis on male domination and contribute to a sense of placelessness and inferiority within mountain biking communities. As Jenni asked, what are the consequences if ‘the trail name makes reference to one perceived method of riding the trail?’ Given Alice’s discussion on reclaiming the female body through trail naming which either subversively or overtly counters heterosexist narratives, we have been puzzled by the following question throughout this chapter: how could a group of women name a trail that actively challenges the heterosexism that comes with some of the trails we have found in our local areas on Strava and Trailforks? Could the act of reclaiming work, or does it get reappropriated by heterosexism? As Alice suggested, if a female group were to call a trail ‘my beautiful cunt’ on Strava, would that actually work against their attempts to reappropriate the word and challenge masculine dominance? Instead, would such a trail name only place it as one more landmark on the hillside that is once again reappropriated by the hegemony and domination of the male gaze? As Alice wrote as a general question for herself: Are a group of women wanting to call a trail a name that in some way reclaims the female body being reappropriated by the dominant hegemonic discourse? What would be more revolutionary? Deep engagement with the history and wildlife of the space? Perhaps not building trails at all. Undoubtedly, this chapter has raised more questions than answers and, in doing so, we feel that we have achieved our initial goal. That is, to have explored and presented some of the structures of power, heterosexism, and

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reappropriation that can arise through the naming of mountain biking trails on Strava and Trailforks. It is evident there is much more to do, but what has become clear returns us to Alderman’s (2008, p. 208) work that there is a ‘normative power of naming … [and that] place names create a material and symbolic order that allows dominant groups to impose certain meanings into the landscape’. This gives rise to an important set of considerations for policymakers and for those who name trails. Whilst we do not present empirical evidence and much more work is required, it will be necessary for policymakers and trail builders to consider how the landscape is named and who is written out of the landscape or mountain bike culture through dominant masculinities. By way of example, the Glentress Bike Park ran by Forestry and Land Scotland had a section of trail called ‘The Bitch’ for some time which was removed following a Tweet asking for it to be removed (see Dunn, 2019). It may, therefore, be necessary for formal bike parks to review their trail names to ensure women and other groups are not being written out of the mountain biking landscape. Whilst ‘The Bitch’ has been removed from Forestry and Land Scotland maps, a brief examination of Strava demonstrates that the trail name is still present. On Strava, two segments cover this section of trail, at the time of writing they are called ‘The B*tch (accurate gps)’ and ‘XX-BITCH-PONDURO’. This demonstrates the important role online spaces have in reinforcing dominant heteronormative masculinities and provides challenging terrain for policymakers and trail builders to navigate. As far as we are aware, there currently does not exist a function on Strava to delete or edit a trail name. References Alderman, D.H. (2008). Place, naming and the interpretation of cultural landscapes. In P. Howard & B. Graham (Eds.), The Routledge research companion to heritage and identity (pp. 195–213). London: Routledge. Beasley, C. (2008). Re-thinking hegemonic masculinity in a globalizing world. Men and Masculinities, 11(1), 86–103. Berg, L.D., & Kearns, R.A. (1996). Naming as norming: ‘Race’, gender, and the identity politics of naming places in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 14(1), 99–122. Burke, B. (2005). Antonio Gramsci, schooling and education. The Encyclopedia of Pedagogy and Informal Education. Available at: http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-gram.htm Carey, S. (2015). Hoosier Whiteness and the Indiana Pacers: Racialised strategic change and the politics of organisational sensemaking, in Karen, D., & Washington, R. (Eds.), Sociological perspectives on sport: The games outside the games (pp. 363– 385). London: Routledge. Connell, R., & Messerschmidt, J.W. (2005). Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept. Gender & Society, 19, 829–859. Connell, R. (2015). An iron man: The body and some contradictions of hegemonic masculinity, in Karen, D., & Washington, R. (Eds.), Sociological perspectives on sport: The games outside the games (pp. 141–149). London: Routledge. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781315870854

200  Benjamin Moreland et al. Couture, J. (2021). Reflections from the ‘Strava-sphere’: Kudos, community, and (self) surveillance on a social network for athletes. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 13(1), 184–200. Dunn, C. [@_catherine_dunn]. (2019, August 3). Hey @7stanesGlentress, do you think it’s appropriate to have a trail section named ‘The Bitch’? Do you think women can’t ride hard trails? Using that name makes a progressive sport complicit in societal oppression of women. Mountain biking isn’t just for men, time for a change? [Tweet]. https://twitter.com/_catherine_dunn/status/1157676066602983424 Fraysse, M., & Mennesson, C. (2009). Hegemonic masculinity and femininities: The gender models in a mountain-bike magazine. Sciences Sociales et Sport, 2(1), 25–53. Flood, M. (2002). Between men and masculinity: An assessment of the term ‘masculinity’ in recent scholarship on men, in Pearce, S., & Muller, V. (Eds.), Manning the next millenium: Studies in masculinities. Perth: Black Swan Press. Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Harrison, A.K. (2013). Black skiing, everyday racism, and the racial spatiality of whiteness. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 37(4), 315–339. Humberstone, B. (2000). Her Outdoors. Risk, challenge and adventure in gendered open spaces. London: Leisure Studies Association. Huybers-Withers, S.M., & Livingston, L.A. (2010). Mountain biking is for men: Consumption practices and identity portrayed by a niche magazine. Sport in Society, 13(7–8), 1204–1222. Jarvie, G. (2017). Sport, culture and society: An introduction (3rd ed.). London: Routledge. Lupton, D. (2016). The quantified self. Cambridge: Polity Press. Manzenreiter, W. (2013). No pain, no gain: Embodied masculinities and lifestyle sport in Japan. Contemporary Japan, 25(2), 215–236. McCormack, K. (2017). Inclusion and identity in the mountain biking community: can subcultural identity and inclusivity coexist? Sociology of Sport Journal, 34, 344–353. McCormack, K. (2019). Blazing a New Trail: The Role of Communication Technology in Women’s Mountain Biking. Sociology of Sport Journal, 37(2), 117–124. Messerschmidt, J.W. (2019). The salience of hegemonic masculinity. Men and Masculinities, 22(1), 85–91. Neumann, P., & Mason, C.W. (2022). The influence of transportation and digital technologies on backcountry tourism and recreation in British Columbia, Canada. Tourism Geographies. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2 022.2098373 Reed, J., Dunn, C., Beames, S., & Stonehouse, P. (2022). E ‘Ride on!’: The Zwift platform as a space for virtual leisure. Leisure Studies, 42(2), 188–202. Reid-Hresko, J., & Warren, J.R. (2021). ‘A lot of what we ride is their land’: White settler Canadian understandings of mountain biking, Indigeneity, and recreational Colonialism. Sociology of Sport Journal, 39(1), 108–117. Rivers, D.J. (2020). Strava as a discursive field of practice: Technological affordances and mediated cycling motivations. Discourse, Context & Media, 34, 1–8.

Hegemonic masculinity and sexualisation in mountain bike trail  201 Robinson, V. (2004). Taking risks: Identity, masculinities and rock climbing, in Wheaton, B. (Ed.), Understanding lifestyle sport: Consumption, identity and difference (pp. 125–142). London: Routledge. Royle, K. (2022). Cycling in the time of the biodigital: Small acts towards a conscious uncoupling from non-regenerative digitised economies, in Peters, M.A., Jandrić, P., & Hayes, S. (Eds.), Bioinformational philosophy and postdigital knowledge ecologies (pp. 161–181). New York: Springer. Schippers, M. (2007). Recovering the feminine other: Masculinity, femininity, and gender hegemony. Theory & Society, 36(1), 85–102. Taylor, S. (2010). ‘Extending the dream machine’: Understanding people’s participation in mountain biking. Annals of Leisure Research, 13(1–2), 259–281. Thorpe, H., & Dumont, G. (2019). The professionalization of action sports: Mapping trends and future directions. Sport in Society, 22(10), 1639–1654. Thorpe, H., & Olive, R. (2016). Women in action sport cultures: Identity, politics and experience. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Tracey, J. (2013). Antonio Gramsci: Freestyle kayaking, hegemony, coercion and consent, in Pike, E., & Beames, S. (Eds.), Outdoor adventure and social theory (pp. 45–54). London: Routledge. Wigglesworth, J. (2021). The cultural politics of naming outdoor rock climbing routes. Annals of Leisure Research, 25(5), 597–620. Withers, C.W. (2000). Authorizing landscape: «authority», naming and the Ordinance Survey’s mapping of the Scottish Highlands in the nineteenth century. Journal of Historical Geography, 26(4), 532–554.

Chapter 13

Portrayals of ideals of authenticity in mountain biking multimedia Escaping to find yourself Jeff R. Warren and John Reid-Hresko Introduction Constructions of authenticity are both complementary and conflicting, and traces of these conflicts remain in cinematic representations of mountain biking. One common idea is that authenticity is being yourself ‘in the moment’, where you are in control and connecting to world around you. Alternatively, being yourself can be linked to innovation. It is what you do that differentiates you from others. Yet authenticity can also be outward rather than inward looking, equating authenticity with meeting an ideal established by the past or a culture. In this chapter, we ask: how do the historical trajectories of ideas of authenticity, and the socio-political conditions that frame them, inform contemporary mountain biking multimedia, and what can this media tell us about mountain bikers and the broader contemporary mountain biking sportscape? We investigate these questions through an examination of two exemplars of mountain biking multimedia as participating both in a history of ideas and contemporary social discourses of authenticity and power. Our examination of excerpts from two mountain biking films demonstrates how these constructions of authenticity are deployed in multi-layered ways: first, they construct and communicate ideals of authenticity in various capacities; second, they mobilise configurations of power in ways that make the specific appear universal, thus reproducing gendered, racial, and colonial inequalities. As such, these films do not simply reflect mountain biking experiences. Rather, they are co-constitutive of experiences in ways that both solidify and perpetuate particular constellations of authenticity and also reproduce socio-culturally situated forms of inequality. Constructions of authenticity Mountain biking is often framed as an escape from normal working or family life in search for something ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ in a new landscape (Poulson, 2016). Subtly communicated ideas of authenticity pervade and animate many of the arguments about the value of mountain biking as portrayed through

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361626-18

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mountain biking multimedia. Contemporary ideas of authenticity are heavily indebted to 19th-century ideals about the self, nature, and art. Charles Taylor’s book The Ethics of Authenticity examines how ideas of authenticity developed during a time where ideas of self and the role of individuals as political agents were under reconsideration, and Taylor evaluates the problems and the opportunities that the development of authenticity has created (Taylor, 1992). On one extreme, authenticity is being yourself, because being yourself is the only thing that can be good (Adorno, 2001, p.10).⁠ In this sense, authenticity is being yourself in the moment, when you are in control of and connected to the world around you. Taylor notes how this sense of authenticity is linked with Romantic ideals of nature, since: If authenticity is being true to ourselves…then perhaps we can only achieve it integrally if we recognize that this sentiment connects us to a wider whole. It was perhaps not an accident that in the Romantic period the self-feeling and the feeling of belonging to nature were linked. (1992: 102) This ideal of authenticity has seeped into popular culture and even into sport research. For example, the research into the idea of flow states developed from descriptive research of experience to considering flow as accessing the good life (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, 2002, p.89). The mountain biking films we examine hereafter portray the individual achievement of a flow state as the realisation of authentic fully actualised riding. Taylor is ultimately critical of this view of authenticity, finding that it is a self-centred form of authenticity that tends to: …centre fulfilment on the individual, making his or her affiliations purely instrumental; they push, in other words, to a social atomism. And they tend to see fulfilment as just of the self, neglecting or delegitimating the demands that come from beyond our own desires or aspirations. (Taylor, 1992, p.69) In short, Taylor argues that this view of authenticity focuses on the self and ignores wider political and ethical considerations. Feldman (2015, p.3) agrees that this ideal of authenticity ‘obscures a set of intersecting social, political, moral, and philosophical ideas that we would do well to give more attention’. In other words, the common view of authenticity as being yourself is a self-centred view that ignores wider social, political, and ethical structures that support the ideal of being oneself, and, in the case of mountain biking, also limit who can participate in this form of self-fulfilment. On the surface, such a critique may at first seem unfair, since what could be more universally authentic than being yourself? Yet, entire academic disciplines are devoted to the specific mechanisms through which this sense of

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agency and empowerment is systematically and structurally denied through systems of white supremacy, settler colonialism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, ablebodiedness, and other structural axes of oppression. Furthermore, as pointed out by Taylor (1992), this foundational assertion of authenticity is rooted in Western philosophical traditions, which themselves have been forcefully critiqued as fundamentally premised on structural, epistemological, and ontological inequalities (e.g., Mills, 1997). More specifically, sociology of sport scholars demonstrate how these dynamics function both in relation to (a) extreme sport participation and media representations and (b) the Romantic ideals of nature. The pervasive inequalities of the demographics of lifestyle sport participation, dominated by men, are supported by recent statistics suggesting that 86% of all mountain biker riders in the United States are men and masculine-coded bodies (Hill & Gómez, 2020).1 It is also noteworthy that media representations of these sports, which both create and celebrate an ideal type of active participant, present an alleged neutrality in which any body can be an authentic body, but are also heavily dominated by men and masculine-coded bodies (Evers, 2015; Forhlick, 2005; Nash & Moore, 2020; Stoddart, 2012). Similar patterns occur in racialised inequality in outdoor spaces (Boggs, 2016, Finney, 2014, Harrison, 2013, Thorpe, 2011), whereby historical legacies of racialised violence, exclusion, and Indigenous displacement have resulted in mostly homogeneous white, privileged outdoor recreation communities. Although there is a growing, important, and laudable movement to increase representation in both action sport communities and media working to expand framings of welcoming inclusivity to any body, the films we examine, which remain largely representative of mainstream action sports media, present a body of images that implicitly construct authentic participation (and excellence) in outdoor spaces as the domain of white, male, able bodies. Additionally, views of authenticity related to Romantic ideals of nature are entangled in colonial constructions of nature as a space ready to be controlled and dominated. As Cronon (1995) argues, contemporary ideals of nature and wilderness are rooted in settler colonial capitalist Romantic ideals that frame nature as a sublime feminised virgin landscape and as an uninhabited frontier space (once the Indigenous inhabitants were forcibly removed) ready for white male settler capitalist development. Prior to this Romantic shift, such spaces were characterised as dangerous and untamed places to avoid. In outdoor sports media, natural spaces are constructed as places of: …freedom in which we can recover the true selves we have lost to the corrupting influences of our artificial lives. Most of all, it is the ultimate landscape of authenticity. Combining the sacred grandeur of the sublime with the primitive simplicity of the frontier, it is the place where we can see the world as it really is, and so know ourselves as we really are. (Cronon, 1995, p.80)

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Yet, in complicity with Cronon and the two co-authors of this chapter, the seemingly inclusive ‘we’ to which Cronon gestures is, in practice, far more selective, populated primarily by the unmarked white, heteronormative, masculine, able body. Reproductions of this ideological framing of nature as a place that authentic experience and our true selves can be found are widely documented in action sports literature (e.g., Fletcher, 2008, Stoddart, 2012). Furthermore, as we document elsewhere (Reid-Hresko & Warren, 2021), this ideological framing of nature as a sublime landscape of potentialised pure expression obscures the settler colonial violence that is the foundation of North American mountain biking. A second articulation of authenticity is one of meeting or living up to some sort of ideal established by the past or by a culture. One area where this idea of authenticity is commonly invoked is in arguments surrounding cultural products. For example, it is common to express a view about ‘authentic’ foods or beverages made in a traditional form, authentic architecture of a period, or authentic music of a past ideal or cultural norm (Warren, 2014). We contend that outdoor sports and their artefacts, such as mountain biking and the films showcasing it, are similarly profound cultural products. In this sense, authenticity is related to something external to oneself. This view can attach to a product, but it can also attach to the memberships and affiliations of a particular person. For example, there are debates about whether someone outside of a particular community can authentically participate or create such products. In early mountain biking films such as the Kranked series, for example, affiliations with groups of riders and adherence to a particular lifestyle was a marker of authenticity in this sense of belonging and living up to an ideal. This idea of authentic membership has been productively addresses vis-àvis extreme sports generally (e.g., Coates et al., 2013; Wheaton & Beal, 2003), and mountain biking cultures, in particular (e.g., Donnelly, 2006; Hagen, 2012; McCormack, 2017). Wheaton and Beale, for instance, note the overrepresentation of male bodies and the ways that technicality, physicality, skill, and risk-acceptance are seen by other in-group members as authentic, while McCormack contends that core membership authenticity in mountain bike culture results from the accomplishment of certain practices and attitudes centring self-reliance, respect of nature, risk acceptance, and commitment. The cultural values of control over one’s own body and surrounding landscapes, self-reliance, and risk acceptance are all profoundly gendered and racialised phenomena, showing again how specific articulations of power and embodiment are represented as universal. Authenticity has at least one more construction we have not yet engaged: authenticity as involving innovation. Being yourself here means not copying others but instead making something new and unique. The concept of the genius as a god-like creator able to create something from nothing was articulated by Immanuel Kant and developed through the Romantic era thinkers

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including Gottfried Herder, whose views Taylor summarises as being that in which ‘the artist becomes in some way the paradigm case of the human being, as agent of original self-definition’ (Taylor, 1992, p.62). Such virtues are frequently evident in responses to mountain bike media, where authenticity as originality and creation is most often associated with technical prowess, skill, and the assumption of risk that informs performing ever-more-difficult technical feats on the bike. Thus, innovative creation, doing something that no one else has done before, actualises yet another version of authenticity. These three complex and fraught concepts of authenticity rumble beneath modern mountain bike cultures. Indeed, the way mountain bike media engages with trails, riders, other people, and motivations for participation is always in dialogue with larger ideas of authenticity that involve self, other, and belonging. Here, we follow Cook’s argument that ‘media such as music, texts, and moving pictures do not just communicate meaning, but participate actively in its construction’ (Cook, 1998a, p.x). In other words, escaping on a bike to find oneself involves more than just oneself and a bike and necessitates the active enrolment of other objects and media. In the remainder of this chapter, we apply this line of reasoning in our analysis of scenes from two popular mountain biking films, showing how they both recirculate ideas of authenticity and deploy related gendered, racialised, and settler colonial notions of belonging in mountain biking. We have selected these scenes because of their popularity and influence in mountain biking multimedia, and believe they provide analytical exemplars applicable to other films. Throughout our analysis, we argue that multimedia is an important artifact of mountain biking culture wherein ideas about authenticity are both reflected and created. Life Cycles: Opening sequence and prairie field scene The celebrated 2010 film Life Cycles is a touchstone for mountain biking media. While we acknowledge the commercial accolades and successful aesthetic of the film (after all, we are two white settler male mountain bikers and the target audience for the film) there is much to examine in the filming style, chosen landscapes, musical accompaniment, and narrative style that construct ideals of authenticity in the film.2 The opening shot begins with a close-up of the reflection of trees in standing water and then pans through closely framed shots of wet earth rutted by mountain bike tires, as a folksy narrator, in a voice immediately unmarked but obviously white and male, shares the wisdom of his grandad. Following Dyer (1997), the whiteness of the narrator is paradoxically unspoken but obvious, through tone, accent, and word choice. As the narrator shares grandad’s wisdom of how life is like a river, ‘barrelling straight through the impossible’, the camera begins to push through vegetation and the narrator invokes the idea of progress: ‘But no matter what direction, or how it

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moved, or what it looked like, the point, according to grandad, was that the river always moved forward’. At this point, the camera breaches the vegetation to reveal an industrial factory in an otherwise lush, vegetated setting. Given that the subsequent opening sequence is filmed in Vancouver, we are led to believe the factory is also in Vancouver, meaning it is located on the unceded territories of the səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), Sk̲wx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam) Nations. Thus, the film’s opening visually invokes settler colonialism and Indigenous displacement. We enter the factory to a barrage of molten metal, welding torches, pressure gauges, metal tubing, and machinery, all constituent features of the metaphorical birth of a bicycle, harkening back to the name of the film. Audio-visually, this scene is accompanied by an industrial soundtrack that references modernity and industrial settler-colonial capitalism. After a fadeto-black title slide, we then hear a garage door opening and a vintage truck ignition turnover. As focus sharpens, we see a complete, new bicycle secured into the bed of the truck, which exits the factory and travels through Vancouver. The music becomes ominous, and the shot is saturated in industrial grey tones while the bright orange truck traverses a seemingly threatening concrete urban environment. The truck navigates Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES), the city’s most significant concentration of relative material deprivation and human suffering. We see littered streets, broken windows, flickering neon signs, and menacing male bodies intended to be read as unhoused and threatening. Importantly, this sequence also shows the only non-white body of the entire film, a man dejectedly looking down towards the pavement. In this scene, the film suggests that we find our true, authentic selves by escaping the alienation of urban decay. As Barker (2021, p.134) contends, urban spaces can also be seen as spaces that stifle the individual identities of settlers behind the faceless masses, especially when these masses are increasingly neither heterosexual and cisgendered nor white, taken by many to be the definitive markers of authentic settler society. Life Cycles does so by literally following an unmarked white male body, in an authentically vintage truck, through the dystopian urban environment and then across the Lions Gate Bridge. We then arrive in North Vancouver, the birthplace of local mountain biking, a space suddenly filled with trees, as birdsong and rain infiltrate the menacing industrial music, which fades as the viewer recognises the industrial threat to have passed. Though North Vancouver is a thoroughly anthropocentric urban environment, no house, commercial building, or highway appears on screen. Instead, we see nature and hear rain, invoking the fantasy of a sublime authentic landscape undisturbed by human activity. It is in this act of escape that functions as the precondition of authentic self-expression in the following North Vancouver riding shots.

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Even the narration presents an alienation that can be escaped through authentic self-expression on a bicycle. As the narrator tells us: These days that mystery is hard to find. The river is distant, the sky clouded with concrete. For many of us, life’s great adventure, all its beauty, all its connection sails by unnoticed. Funny thing is, the river’s never that far off. This is the story of a way back into the rush of moving forward. Borne from the Earth’s crust, grown from the seeds of innovation, forged in the fires of industry, the earth’s most efficient machine creates its most efficient animal. The bicycle, our noblest invention. Innovative, efficient, and noble, the bicycle offers a path back into a meaningful and authentic life for all. Yet, recall that with one exception, every body in the film appears a middle or working-class white man. As such, the seemingly universal claim that people can use ‘our noblest invention’, the bicycle, to pursue authentic experiences and find our true selves in nature is situated in the scene as a form of self-actualisation only available to white able-bodied men. The opening sequence of the film suggests that modern settler-colonial capitalist industrialism, juxtaposed against the very first frames of a natural landscape, is paradoxically capable of both generating angsty alienation and urban decay, but also of producing the very technologies with which we can escape and find, actualise, and embody our true authentic selves, as long as ‘we’ is understood to mean an able-bodied white man with just the right mix of class privilege and authentic aesthetic style to drive a vintage, restored shiny GMC truck (Fletcher, 2008). Maintaining these themes, the setting of our second close reading is the Canadian prairie. Here the related meditation on the relationship between mountain bikers and land is developed through the metaphors of farming, whiteness, and settler colonialism. As the seasons cycle and the film progresses, the scene shifts to a prairie in Saskatchewan. The choice to film a jump scene in a wheat field in Saskatchewan invokes two of our framings of authenticity. First, filming this dirt jump scene in the prairies represents innovation, doing something no one had done before on film, a hallmark of authenticity. Second, it harkens to outside-of-ourselves constructed-as-true cultural essences, in this case the conjuring of an essential humanness embodied by a salt-of-the-earth hard-working farmer. This character is capable of both great destruction and great good, referencing agriculture, itself a quintessentially human activity, and the inclusion of the final element of the scene, the passing by of a train, a quintessential technology of settler colonial Canadian nation-building. As the prairie scene opens, we see an old barn-style building and swing and hear the rustle of a cultivated agrarian landscape. Then opening close-ups of weathered work hands accompany a bluesy slide guitar, referencing musical traditions of southern African American culture. The imagery and bluesy

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guitar sounds invoke nostalgia and authenticity, a culturally appropriated reference to days gone by. As the silhouette of an old white man recedes from focus, the narrator muses: Grandad was all about those connections. He had his hands in the earth as much as he did in machines. Maybe that’s why he understood both sides. Sure, we till and cut, we reap and we sow and, yeah, we do great damage. But, we’re also capable of great good. As manifested in the film, ‘narrative understandings of these spaces are also more strongly structured by a rugged, masculine violence that is closely associated with hardy pioneer efforts to carve ‘civilization’ out of ‘the wild’ and to defend homesteads’ (Barker, 2021, p.132). Embodied by imagery of an old white man and narration implicitly referencing him, we have a literal manifestation of the authentic, white folksy wisdom which the film uses as part of its narrative structure. Although we do not believe it is intended as such (these musings appear a clear reference to the imagery of industrial agricultural machinery that accompanies the narration), this narration invokes a deeper implicit level on which this narration can be read as a sweeping justification of Indigenous displacement and settler colonialism. Indeed, it is precisely these unintended but present undercurrents that we contend are worthy of examination. We argue they matter precisely because they subtly transmit messages about who belongs and what authenticity looks like and means. The wheat fields of Saskatchewan, images of modern industrial agriculture technologies, old barns, old tractors, and weathered white masculine hands combine with folksy narration to produce an atmosphere of hard-working, honest, white authenticity that becomes the novel and authentic landscape for Brandon Semenuk and Cam McCaul to enact their bicycle-based technical and innovative practices of authenticity, mobilising our framing of authenticity as innovation. Yet, they also implicitly construct and affirm that such landscapes are places where white settler men belong. At this point in the scene, the narration shifts as grandad inexplicitly provides cycling advice: ‘Balance a bike right, keep the pedals turning, forget about everything except right now, and there is no place you can’t ride’. With this, the frame centres a weathered, old white man, clothed in a plaid flannel and blue jeans, invoking an archetypal authentic salt of the earth (settler) character. Tensions between the destruction and nurturing of the land are here too easily resolved with a pivot to the invocation of a supremely present flow state, a central part of the stated allure of mountain biking (Poulson, 2016). Then the music shifts to the high-energy music typical of biking media, accompanied by incredible riding as Semenuk and McCaul fly out of the agricultural landscape, executing authentic technical expert tricks, interspersed with shots of farming equipment and weathered white hands. After

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the riding, the final shot is night falling over the fields, with the whistle and blur of a train rushing by.3 To be clear, we are not under the impression that the creators of Life Cycles purposefully deploy these gendered and racialised manifestations of settler colonialism and inequality in their film. On the contrary, these subtle presences are worthy of examination precisely because they are unconsciously deployed in the quest to present authenticity in sportscapes. Life Cycles succeeds in its quest for authenticity, but here we ask what other messages it send in doing so. In this film, authenticity is possible, indeed achievable, but only when built on a foundation of settler colonialism and gendered and racialised inequality. Our critique here is not intended as a condemnation of the film, but as an invitation to inquiry in which we invert a line from the folksy narrator: ‘yes we are capable of great good, but we are also capable of great damage’. But it does not have to be so, in mountain biking sportscapes or in the media that help construct and reflect them. UnReal: Get lost in the moment We now examine a film scene that a prominent mountain bike filmmaker claims is ‘possibly the greatest video segment of all time’ (Anthill, 2015). The 2015 film UnReal is described as following ‘several individuals breaking out of their mundane lives and entering into the adventurous thrill-seeking world of mountain biking’. Both Life Cycles and UnReal use multimedia techniques to construct an authentic world of biking where the rider/viewer can escape the complexities of everyday life. In UnReal, we complicate these ideas of authenticity and show that escape is itself a problematic construct that relies on a false sense of self-isolated from others. Levinas (2003, p.50) argues that the ‘conception of the ‘I’ as self-sufficient is one of the essential marks of the bourgeois spirit and its philosophy’ and ‘nourishes the audacious dreams of a restless and enterprising capitalism’. In short, authenticity is not an isolated case of ‘finding oneself’, but a symptom of a particular view of the world that requires criticism. Our criticisms of these ideas and films should not be considered as a reason to stop mountain biking, but rather a call for mountain bikers to critically rethink problematic ideals of authenticity and strive to understand one’s place within political and societal constructs and consider the ethical implications of our actions. The three-and-a-half-minute UnReal segment is shot near Cambria, California, the traditional lands of the Salinan and Chumash Nations, and opens with the title ‘Get lost in the moment’ (Jones et al., 2015). As in Life Cycles, it begins with the rider (Brandon Semenuk) driving a vintage GMC truck to the start of the trail. Shot in one take, it traces Semenuk riding a custom-built jump trail cut into a grassy hillside, featuring a change from a dirt jumper bike to a mountain bike, and is accompanied by Buffalo Springfield’s folkrock song ‘For What it’s Worth’. For many online commenters, it is the

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combination of the landscape, the filming techniques, the surprise of changing bikes, the music, and the riding that makes this a great piece of multimedia (Anthill, 2015). Two technical feats this segment is lauded for are the smoothness and ability of the rider and filming this segment in one continuous shot from a truck-mounted camera. But technical ability alone does not explain the success of this segment. Rather, the scene purports to present an ideal authentic experience through both escaping to be oneself and being innovative within the landscape and the soundscape. Buffalo Springfield’s 1966 song ‘For What it’s Worth’ contrasts with the high-energy guitar or electronic music typical in thrill-seeking sport films wherein the music communicates the adrenaline of the rider and seeks to induce that adrenaline in the viewer. Pinkbike.com, the world’s most popular mountain biking website, identifies its target market as 16–35-year-old males, making this song the music of parents or grandparents and mediated through conceptions of ‘classic rock’. The lyrics referencing the 1966 riots on the Sunset Strip or the popular reception as a protest song do not relate to the action in the film. Instead, the music facilitates escape, specifically escape to an imagined nostalgia. Escape forms the metanarrative of the film UnReal. Between riding segments are hyperbolised portrayals of modern life, work, and stress, and these images of regular life are portrayed as part of living a life that is not real. Like in Life Cycles, it is intimated that it is only through escaping the everyday that we can have experiences that are truly authentic. But as the title suggests, these escapes are beyond real and portray idealised experiences in environments of pristine landscape apart from intricately built trails. The argument that the (mostly) unbuilt environment provides an escape to nullify the negative effects of society draws upon the same ground that birthed ideas of authenticity. A late 19th-century German organisation that claimed that ‘hiking in the mountains was a chance to revitalize and re-energize the neglected and overstressed bodies of modern urban people’ (Dickinson, 2010, p.584). This idea channels Nietzsche’s ideal of ‘free spirits’, especially considering Nietzsche’s belief of the benefits of moving in the mountains: ‘Something happens not at the top, but along the way. One has the chance, in Nietzsche’s words, to “become who you are”’ (Kaag, 2018, loc. 55). If escaping the everyday is necessary, the next question is where the escape leads. The film describes escape ‘into the adventurous thrill-seeking world of mountain biking’, but this segment in particular also seems to conjure an escape into the nostalgia of an imagined past. The soundscape is filled with environmental sounds until the riding begins and from then on, all environmental sounds disappear. Sonically, the outer world is escaped; the mundanity of everyday life fades out. The soundtrack evokes an experience we recognise, putting in headphones to escape from the surrounding sound. This invokes the history of the individual listening championed in concert halls of the 19th century and contributed to the ideas of authenticity outlined in the opening sections (see Cook, 1998b, pp.19–22).

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Music and mountain biking is presented as an escape from the outside world through being subsumed by experience, or, as this segment is titled, getting ‘lost in the moment’. The audio-visual impact of the sound also creates contrast between the tempo of the song and the visual of a lone rider, challenging the perception of time and speed for the viewer. The preparation for riding takes place without taking out a phone to check the map, taking a selfie, or starting Strava. The song is recognised as old, an authentic invocation of the yesteryear hippie era of supposed free spirits. The landscape is idealised and picturesque, invoking another Romantic notion of visual beauty that is mediated by landscape images. And indeed, the picturesque beauty of this landscape might look a lot like one we have seen before. One online commenter notes that the landscape looks like the ubiquitous Windows XP default desktop image. And so, there is a cycle of reinforcement of images and ideals of authenticity: Microsoft selects a landscape already considered beautiful, at the same time reframing that landscape into one of the most reproduced images in recent history. Like the music in this film, the hard edges of social unrest have rounded through commodified repetition. We view the escape into the imagined past of pristine but familiar landscapes, lack of digital media, and oft-repeated music safely behind our screens, wilfully forgetting, if only for a moment, all that is necessary for us to be viewing: the technological mediation, the dispossession of land, and wider societal responsibilities. Unreal portrays mountain biking as an authentic escape into the natural world, but in doing so covers over the complexities of riding highly technological machines through trails that take hundreds of hours to build on land that is only there to be ridden as a result of Indigenous dispossession and settler colonialism. In both form and content, then, Unreal communicates several central themes surrounding authenticity and its complicated relationship to embodiment, culture, and history. Conclusion Nicholas Cook (1998b, pp.14–5) writes that the: …values wrapped up in the idea of authenticity, for example, are not simply there in the music; they are there because the way we think about music put them there, and of course the way we think about music also affects the way we make music, and so the process becomes circular. Relatedly, there is a circular process in mountain biking multimedia and mountain biking. Films do not just give us something to watch but give us ways to experience mountain biking. In this chapter, we have examined how three framings of authenticity animate two quintessential mountain bike films, constructing, not simply reflecting, claims of escape and belonging, and the

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modalities of power in and inequality that animate then. We aim not to simply to criticise mountain bike films for invoking problematic ideals of authenticity. Rather, authenticity should be taken seriously since it is a motivating idea within society. Yet, we ask readers and viewers to consider the role of the societally pervasive ideas of authenticity and consider how to respond. On the one hand, the focus on the self that led to ideas of authenticity also led to the development of modern ideas of human rights and modern democracy. Yet both ideas have also excluded groups of people from having rights and participating in democracy; a privileged self can achieve authenticity while others are deemed as not authentic and thus not considered fully human. Today, the idea of rights is being reformed in the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Like Charles Taylor, we believe that notions of authenticity can be rehabilitated through being conjoined with responsibility. Instead of escaping into an imagined history, escaping to find yourself, or escaping to connect with a landscape disassociated with the weight of history, we ask what a reconfigured aesthetic and experience of responsible authenticity might involve, as there is no escape from the responsibilities that we have to each other. A sense of self is not found in authenticity, but in ethically responding to those around us. We cannot escape the past and other people. Mountain biking has immeasurably enriched the lives of both authors of this chapter, but as we encourage readers and viewers to do, we ask ourselves how a morally and ethically responsible framing of authenticity might change both the ways that we think about mountain biking and the ways that we make and consume mountain biking multimedia. Notes 1 Gender disparities pervade lifestyle sports and have been amply documented by scholars: for example, mountain biking (Huybers-Withers & Livingston, 2010), skiing (Stoddart, 2010), rock climbing (Robinson, 2008), whitewater rafting and kayaking (Fletcher, 2014), and surfing (Waitt & Warren (2008). 2 The narration for the film was written by Mitchell Scott and performed by Graham Tracey. Both are white men. 3 While we do not have space to detail it here, Cowen (2019) makes a compelling argument for how the Canadian Pacific Railway functioned as a quintessentially racialised technology of settler-colonial expansion in Canada. The final shot of a passing train, seemingly out of place in a mountain biking film, makes yet another subtle claim to authentic white male settler belonging.

References Adorno, T.W. (2001). Problems of moral philosophy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Anthill Films. (2015). Video: The one shot - Brandon Semenuk's unReal segment. Available at: https://www.pinkbike.com/news/the-one-shot-brandon-semenuksunreal-segment-2015.html

214  Jeff R. Warren and John Reid-Hresko Barker, A. (2021). Making and breaking settler space: Five centuries of colonization in North America. Vancouver: UBC Press. Boggs, K. (2016). Toward a discourse on recreational colonialism: Critically engaging the haunted spaces of outdoor recreation on the Colorado Plateau. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona, Tucson. Coates, E., Clayton, B., & Humberstone, B. (2013). A battle for control: exchanges of power in the subculture of snowboarding, in Wheaton, B. (Ed.), The consumption and representation of lifestyle sports (pp. 26–45). London: Routledge. Cook, N. (1993). Beethoven: Symphony no. 9. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cook, N. (1998a). Analysing musical multimedia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cook, N. (1998b). Music: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cowen, D. (2019). Following the infrastructures of empire: Notes on cities, settler colonialism, and method. Urban Geography, 41(4), 469–486. Cronon, W. (1995). The trouble with wilderness: Or, getting back to the wrong nature. New York: Norton. Dickinson, E. (2010). Altitude and whiteness: Germanizing the Alps and Alpinizing the Germans. German Studies Review, 33(3), 579–602. Donnelly, M. (2006). Studying extreme sports: Beyond the core participants. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 30(2), 219–224. Dyer, R. (1997). White. London: Routledge Evers, C. (2015). Researching action sport with a GoPro™ camera: An embodied and emotional mobile video tale of the sea, masculinity, and men-who-surf, in Wellard, I. (Ed.), Researching embodied sport: Exploring movement cultures (pp. 145–162). London: Routledge. Feldman, S. (2015). Against authenticity: Why you shouldn’t be yourself. New York: Lexington Books. Finney, C. (2014). Black faces, white spaces: Reimagining the relationship of African Americans to the great outdoors. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Fletcher, R. (2014). Romancing the wild: Cultural dimensions of ecotourism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Fletcher, R. (2008). Living on the edge: The appeal of risk sports for the professional middle class. Sociology of Sport Journal, 25, 310–330. Forhlick, S. (2005). ‘That playfulness of white masculinity’: Mediating masculinities and adventure at mountain film festivals. Tourist Studies, 5(2), 175–193. Gibb, R., & Frankowski, D. (Directors). Life cycles [Motion Picture]. Stance Films, Canada. Hagen, S. (2012). The downhill mountain bike subculture in New Zealand. Unpublished Master’s thesis, University of Otago, Dunedin. Harrison, A.K. (2013). Black skiing, everyday racism, and the racial spatiality of whiteness. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 37(4), 315–339. Hill, E., & Gómez, E. (2020). Perceived health outcomes of mountain bikers: A national demographic inquiry. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, 38(2), 31–44. Huybers-Withers, S., & Livingston, L. (2010). Mountain biking is for men: Consumption practices and identity portrayed by a niche magazine. Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics, 13(7–8), 1204–1222.

Portrayals of authenticity in mountain biking multimedia  215 Jones, C., McCullough, D., & Wittenburg, D. UnReal (2015). [Motion Picture]. Anthill Films, Canada. Kaag, J. (2018). Hiking with Nietzsche: On becoming who you are. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Levinas, E. (2003). On escape. Translated by A. Clarke. Stanford: Stanford University Press. McCormack, K. (2017). Inclusion and identity in the mountain bike community: Can subcultural identity and inclusivity coexist? Sociology of Sport Journal, 34, 344–353. Mills, C. (1997). The racial contract. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2002). The concept of flow, in Snyder, C.R., & Lopez, S.J. (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 89–105). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nash, M., & Moore, R. (2020). The influence of paternal co-participation on girls’ participation in surfing, mountain biking, and skateboarding in regional Australia. Leisure Studies, 40(4), 454–467. Poulson, S. (2016). Why would anyone do that? Lifestyle sport in the twenty-first century. London: Rutgers University Press. Reid-Hresko, J., & Warren, J. (2021). ‘A lot of what we ride is their land’: White settler Canadian understandings of mountain biking, Indigeneity, and recreational colonialism. Sociology of Sport Journal, 39(1), 108–117. Robinson, V. (2008). Everyday masculinities and extreme sport: Male identity and rock climbing. Oxford: Berg. Stoddart, M. (2012). Making meaning out of mountains: The political ecology of skiing. Vancouver: UBC Press. Stoddart, M. (2010). Constructing masculinized sportscapes: Skiing, gender and nature in British Columbia, Canada. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 46(1), 108–124. Taylor, C. (1992). The ethics of authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Thorpe, H. (2011). Snowboarding bodies in theory and practice. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Waitt, G., & Warren, A. (2008). ‘Talking shit over a brew after a good session with your mates’: Surfing, space and masculinity. Australian Geographer, 39(3), 353–365. Warren, J. (2014). Music and ethical responsibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Warren, J. (2018). Music ethics politics. New Sound, 50, 25–41. Wheaton, B., & Beal, B. (2003). ‘Keeping it real’: Subcultural media and the discourses of authenticity in alternative sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 38(2), 155–176.

Chapter 14

Reflections on trails, mountain biking, and Indigenous-settler relations in British Columbia Ride, (re)connect, and (re)build Tavis Smith, Patrick Lucas, Tom Eustache, and Thomas Schoen Introduction The Indigenous Youth Mountain Bike Program (IYMBP) is a non-profit society with the mandate to bring Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders, community members, and youth together to build mountain bike trails and foster reconciliation through the sport of mountain biking. Over the past ten years, the IYMBP has worked with dozens of First Nations in British Columbia, training Indigenous youth to ride and build singletrack mountain bike trails. It has become a vehicle for collaboration and attempts to foster meaningful reconciliation between Indigenous Peoples and settler Canadians. In this chapter, we reflect on some activities of the IYMBP and in particular, its work with the Simpcw First Nation. The Simpcw people are part of the Secwépemc (Shuswap) Nation, one of 17 Bands who lived (and currently live) in the Thompson River Valley of British Columbia. In recent years, Simpcw First Nation has presented themselves as a mountain bike nation (among a diverse set of community characteristics) in both the mainstream press and mountain bike media. They’ve done so partially through press coverage of the trail network that they have developed in the community of Chu Chua, located north of Kamloops, British Columbia. These trails have become one of the anchor points for discussions of mountain biking, reconciliation, and broader settler colonial politics in British Columbia. Over years of collaborative efforts, the IYMBP and mountain bikers and trail enthusiasts in Simpcw have developed approximately 17 km of singletrack trails, ongoing relationships, and have also organised the Allies Mountain Bike Festival, which was held on 30 September 2022. In developing this chapter, we sought to capture the nature of the partnership between the IYMBP and the Simpcw First Nation that has contributed to the construction of the trails and the organisation of the Allies Festival. Co-authors and IYMBP leaders Patrick Lucas, Tom Eustache, and Thomas Schoen have worked for several years on developing trails in Simpcw and in other Indigenous communities throughout British Columbia, and as a result, their insights in this chapter represent an intimate knowledge of the Simpcw Trails

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361626-19

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and the process of building trails and promoting mountain biking in many communities. To advance our understanding of the role of mountain bikes and mountain bike trails in society, we have attempted to engage with mountain biking and the Allies Festival through the lens of postcolonial thought. Postcolonial thought and sport represent a fruitful opportunity to engage with the politics (e.g., Norman, Hart, & Petherick, 2019), processes (e.g., Downey, 2018; Mason, 2014), policies (e.g., Forsyth & Giles, 2013), and power relations (e.g., Saavedra, 2018) that shape the many forms that sport takes in (settler colonial) society. In extending these concerns, this chapter proceeds in three parts: first, we lay out the foundations of the chapter, including the need to consider power and social relations from multiple standpoints, and the importance of narratives in articulating nationhood; second, the leaders of the IYMBP craft a narrative of their perspective on the Allies Festival; third, and finally, we draw on some aspects of postcolonial thought to think through the implications of those reflections, in the hope of contributing to a better understanding of the role of mountain biking in Indigenous-settler relations. Mountain biking, trails, and postcolonial thought In this chapter, we blend postcolonial thought and social theory to work through some of the complex intersections between settler colonialism, reconciliation, and mountain bikes. The IYMBP motto, Ride, reconnect wasn’t picked just because it has a nice ring to it. The notion of re-connection to land, culture, community, and one another is fundamental to the work of the IYMBP and our understanding of its role in society. Thus, a theoretical approach that specifically articulates the need to understand people and places as both (post)colonial and fundamentally relational, we argue, has potential for this volume because it places mountain bikes and trails squarely in the ‘hyphen space’ (Cooke, 2017, p.42) of Indigenous-settler relations. In other words, on the trails of rural British Columbia, mountain bikes help to mediate these relationships in complex ways. Go (2016) argues for this relational perspective, in part, by drawing on Said’s critique of the ‘law of division’. For Said (1993), the law of division is a habit or structure of thought that suggests an essential existence of an ‘us’ and a ‘them’. In the realm of culture, this thinking imagines that both ‘us’ and ‘them’ are constructs that contain homogenous internal logics. As a result of this habit, Go (2016) argues that there is an analytic bifurcation of social relations in social science research, including in research on sport. Analytic bifurcation describes a tendency to imagine that groups or communities can be understood as inert, disconnected from other groups. We argue, following Go (2016), that engaging theoretically with the IYMBP, mountain biking, and trails, requires us to overcome this tendency to imagine that peoples are socially, culturally, or analytically disconnected.

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Said suggests that a strategy for overcoming analytic bifurcation is to adopt a ‘contrapuntal perspective’ that attends to ‘overlapping territories’ and ‘intertwined histories’ (Said, 1993, pp.32, 48). The material and political implications of describing territories as overlapping are complex and possibly beyond the scope of this chapter. Instead, we view this perspective as one that holds space for narratives and counter-narratives of experiences and relationships on and through mountain bike trails. In so doing, we hope to de-centre some of the settled expectations (Mackey, 2016) that have come to shape relations in the world of mountain biking and outdoor recreation in Canada. One concept from postcolonial thought that helps engage the notion of analytic bifurcation and its cultural and political implications is Said’s (1978) Orientalism. Orientalism is a way of thinking and representing the ‘Other’ that was (is) prominent in myriad forms of Western discourse. These forms produce all manner of constructions of the ‘Orient’, its people, customs, and traditions. Said makes the argument that Orientalism is not just a product of colonialism, but that on several levels is required to underpin it. Darnell (2014) has argued that Said-ian analyses of sport can help us to understand the role that sport plays in reproducing (or, perhaps, disrupting) colonial discourses. The same concept can provide us with some insight into Indigenous-settler relations by sharing perspectives on the trails that are not dominated by a one-directional flow of power, culture, and experiences. Rather than just being the product of dominant settler narratives about people and places, sports (like mountain biking) are places where Indigenous communities can, and do, articulate their nationhood and their relationships to settlers and each other (Downey, 2018). Researchers have begun to explore the ways that mountain bikers make sense of such places. For example, Reid-Hresko and Warren (2021) showed that settler Canadians employ rhetorical strategies around ignorance, ambivalence, and acceptance to situate themselves among the discourses shaping mountain biking and the political landscape writ large in Canada. Still, opportunities remain to understand how people and communities co-constitute these discourses. Go argues that by recounting the ways that the ‘West and East, colonizer and colonized were constituted ideologically, discursively, and materially by their relations with each other, a certain type of agency on the part of the colonized is retrieved’ (2016, p.113). What this means for this chapter is that the contrapuntal approach provides the basis to engage with narratives (and products of narratives, like trails) that connect the histories and cultures of multiple groups, rather than imagining them to have developed and stayed distinct. It also includes ‘a simultaneous awareness both of the metropolitan history that is narrated and of those other histories against which (and together with which) the dominating discourse acts’ (Said, 1993, p.51). In other words, a contrapuntal approach to this chapter holds space for settler and Indigenous narratives and perspectives on mountain biking but, even more, places these narratives in relation to each other.

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Therefore, the principal aim of this chapter is not to separate the colonizer or the colonized, or Indigenous and settler Canadians, but to connect histories and territories, including trails and mountain biking, under one analytical umbrella (Go, 2016; Said, 1993). So, in the narrative recount that follows, the leaders of the IYMBP tell a story from Patrick’s perspective but weave insights from all three vantage points into a reflection on the experience of planning and executing the Allies Festival. Reflections (Patrick Lucas, Tom Eustache, and Thomas Schoen) The Allies Mountain Bike Festival A thick, wet fog hung low over the field as nearly a hundred people spread out to form a large circle, all standing shoulder to shoulder. The mist rolled in just as we started to gather, rising up from the North Thompson River and covering us in wet mist that soaked through our clothing. ‘Before we can ride, we have to put in the work’, Tina Donald, a respected elder and elected councilwoman of the Simpcw First Nation directed us to find our place in the circle. ‘I want everyone to share who they are, and the Indigenous lands where you have come from’, Tina instructed. ‘We must orient ourselves to who we are, where we are, to our relations, before we can step out onto the land’. I found my spot in the circle and looked up at the sky. It was supposed to be a sunny day, but the fog continued to roll in, thick and cold. I stood shivering, rubbing my arms, hoping the sun would break through. One by one, each person in the circle stepped forward and introduced themselves, their name and the First Nations from whose territories they were visiting. It was a mix of Indigenous Peoples: Secwépemc, Cree, Navajo, Wet’su’weton, Ojibway, Sk̲wx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw, Nuu-chah-Nulth, as well as non-Indigenous settlers from communities across British Columbia, Canada, as well as the United States, the United Kingdom, and India. I listened carefully as each person spoke of their hopes for the weekend and the stories that brought them to the festival. Many of the Indigenous riders were eager to learn more about the Simpcw experience, and how they might create partnerships and build trails that would foster health and healing in their own communities. For the non-Indigenous visitors, they spoke of wanting to learn and better understand how they could become better allies themselves, and how they could participate in mountain biking and outdoor recreation without perpetuating and upholding the colonial systems that cause so much harm. The speaking circle was the opening ceremony for the Allies Mountain Bike Festival, an event hosted by the Simpcw First Nation in partnership with the IYMBP to mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Situated on the banks above the North Thompson River, approximately 80 km northeast of the City of Kamloops in the interior of BC, the Simpcw reserve is a popular

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destination for mountain biking with nearly fifteen kilometres of trails, all hand-built by the youth and community members; they are a source of pride to the Nation. The Allies Festival is a shared vision, a fantasy, held between myself and my two best friends and fellow trail builders and riders: Thomas Schoen, a first-generation immigrant, and Tom Eustache, a member of the Simpcw First Nation and a Secwépemc man. For the past eight years, the three of us worked together through our non-profit society, the IYMBP, to build mountain bike trails and teach Indigenous youth to ride. The festival was intended to bring people together to celebrate all we had achieved, share epic rides, and foster authentic reconciliation between our peoples. In the months leading up to the festival, we would learn there were still more lessons for us to confront and overcome. I started the IYMBP back in 2012. I was working as a community planner with First Nations throughout the province. As I struggled to build meaningful connections, I had a growing sense that I was part of the problem, upholding a system that was actively harming Indigenous Peoples. My co-founder of the IYMBP is Thomas Schoen, an entrepreneur and artist who immigrated to Canada from Germany in the mid-1990s. We both used riding and trail building as means to build community and a sense of place and belonging. Tom Eustache is the Director of Public Works for his people, the Simpcw First Nation. After many years of living away from his community, he returned. Both of his parents were residential school survivors and he grew up disconnected from his culture and his people. ‘For years, I felt ashamed to be an Indigenous man’, he would tell me. ‘And then I felt guilty that I didn’t know my culture, I couldn’t speak our language. I wanted to make a change. I didn’t want my kids growing up with that sense of loss’. Chief Nathan Matthew, a highly respected Chief of the Simpcw people, and a mentor to Tom, always told him an important first step to connect with Secwépemc ways and culture was to get out on the land. During a visit to a local bike park, Tom watched mountain bikers shredding down the trails and was immediately captivated and inspired. He returned with his son, daughter, and nephew and they all started riding together. ‘We saw all these mountain bikers having fun, riding trails, and we thought, we should build trails in our own community’. Together, with his son Skylar and nephew Leon, Tom set out to rebuild a series of trails on the hill above their reserve. Thomas and I were invited by Tom Eustache to visit his community after he learned about our programme. We rode the trails they built. They were fast and fun, but rough and could use some help with new building techniques. For the next five years, we worked together, raised funds, and trained Simpcw youth and community members to build trails. Tom saw an immediate impact on the community. We had a group of women who started running the trails, the school used the trails to teach our students about the land, to harvest plants and medicines, elders walked them every day. It was just as Chief Matthew told me,

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connect to the land and health will follow. ‘I ride the trails, and see people living healthy lives, and I feel pride about who I am and where I come from. For Thomas and I, it was all about people coming together and building and riding together. We created a space where we could share stories and navigate difficult conversations, exploring and understanding the link between recreation, colonialism and reconciliation. One of these spaces was The Allies Festival, developed as an opportunity for the Simpcw community to share their trails in a way that would bring people together over a common bond around mountain biking and a desire to open dialogue. We set a date for the end of April 2022. Tragedy within the Simpcw community On the last day before the Festival, as we made the final preparations to the new trail, we heard a sound that would upend everything: the church bell in the community started to ring, the deep metallic chime echoing across the community and up through the pine forest where we stood. As we would soon learn, the bell tolling meant a tragedy for the Simpcw people, the end of our fantasies, and the greatest challenge our relationship had yet encountered. There is only one reason the church bell would ring on a weekday: a death in the community. It is common throughout First Nation communities in British Columbia that cultural protocols stipulate when there is a death in the community everything shuts down to allow the community to grieve. We would soon learn it was the Chief’s brother, who passed suddenly and unexpectedly. This meant that the Allies Festival had to be cancelled. The Simpcw Nation has made significant strides to enhance the health and well-being of their people in the face of inter-generational trauma inflicted by more than 150 years of colonialism. The Nation had been deeply impacted by the discovery of 215 unmarked graves at the Kamloops Residential School, which likely contained the remains of Simpcw ancestors; sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters kidnapped who would not return home. COVID-19 had claimed many elders and knowledge keepers as well as those struggling with addictions, so the community was doing everything they could to provide space for people to grieve and heal. Naturally, Thomas and I supported the decision to cancel the festival without question. We thought we understood the importance of cultural protocols. We started making phone calls. People were on their way, coming from across BC, Canada, the US, and even around the world. Sponsors had to be informed, and the catering cancelled. As we worked, I couldn’t help but notice a sensation that started in my stomach. It grew and gradually formed a voice, whispering in the back of my mind, starting as simple questions. Will

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we ever recapture the level of interest for Allies again? Would people understand why we had to cancel? What of all the work we had put into this, for Tom, for the Simpcw People? Was it all for nothing? I felt torn in half. We both knew we had to support Tom and the community, and we wanted to, but the voice just kept hammering away in my head, getting louder and more insistent. This is a huge loss! No one would take us seriously or anything we say about reconciliation ever again. The three of us walked the new trail we had just completed in time for the now-cancelled event. Thomas and I gathered up our tools and equipment, preparing to leave and give the community space to grieve. There was a tension between the three of us I had never felt before. I couldn’t bring myself to look Tom in the eye. Whatever fantasies we might have had about bringing people together, about reconciliation, were over. The Allies Festival returns ‘It’s a good-looking trail’, I heard Tom remark, gazing down the trail. The track flowed down the hill below us, a streak of dark brown dirt weaving through towering spruce and bull pines. ‘Yeah, would be a fun ride’, I said. Tom paused and then he spoke, quietly: It took many years, but I understand now why our protocols are important. They make us who we are. If we don’t follow them, even when it’s hard, then who are we? I used to feel ashamed for being Indigenous. And then I felt ashamed for not being Indigenous enough. I’m not doing that anymore. Tom looked at me. I realised I hadn’t taken the time to actually look at him. His face was mixed with hurt, his usually straight proud shoulders hunched inwards. Everything I thought I cared about fell away: the festival, the people sharing rides, the accolades, the trails, reconciliation. All I saw was my friend, a fellow human in front of me, hurting. I stepped forward and embraced my friend in a hug and said the only thing that made any sense at that moment: ‘I see you’. We didn’t need to say anything else. The three of us all walked back down the trail together. Tom even made a few jokes. ‘You’ll have to come back for a ride, so I can leave you in my dust!’ ‘You can certainly try!’ For weeks, I kept thinking about what had happened, wondering about that voice that had consumed my thoughts, and obscured the reality that was right in front of me. I had gotten so caught up in the idea, the fantasy of hosting the festival, I lost sight of what was important: my relationship with Tom and Thomas. Like so many before me, I’d been playing out a fantasy of ‘reconciliation’ based on my own vision and narratives. And when my identity as an ally, as a beacon for reconciliation, was threatened, I projected my needs,

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my shame, my failures as a human being onto a people who were simply trying to heal. A month later, I received a call from Tom. ‘So, people keep asking about the festival’, he told me. ‘They’re asking when we’re going to reschedule’. I sighed. Perhaps the mountain bike community was just as incapable of understanding as I was. ‘I’m sorry’, I told Tom. ‘Many folks don’t understand the importance of cultural protocols’. ‘No, no, you got it all wrong’, Tom said. ‘I mean, my people, Simpcw, my leadership, elders, they keep asking me about the festival’. Tom explained how, as the community gathered and carried out their ceremonies and grieved together, throughout the process, his family and friends, neighbours, pestering him: ‘So, when is this festival happening? I was planning to come out with my kids’. ‘I was looking forward to shredding the new trail on my new bike!’ ‘We have to do this’, Tom said. ‘We don’t have a choice’. The festival was back on. The Nation set the date: 30 September, National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Tom, Thomas, and I found ourselves standing together with our bikes at the top of the new trail. Riders on bikes flocked past and down the track, bobbing and weaving through the trees, Indigenous and non-Indigenous folks riding together, laughter echoing across the hill. The fog had finally lifted, and the sun was warm. Perhaps reconciliation is a fantasy, a projection we use to cover our own shortcomings and fears, to shield ourselves from uncomfortable truths: that as settlers we have yet to reside on these lands without perpetuating the system of erasure and genocide our country has been built on. For those of us who are the descendants of European colonisers and settlers, for the past 500 years we have used Indigenous Peoples and their lands as the blank canvas onto which we can project our needs and hopes, our shortcomings and insecurities. And when those projections falter, or they threaten to break the magic spell with the complexities of their lived realities, or by simply existing, we lash out, sometimes violently, but always with the same goal: protect the fantasy. Every great idea, every new possibility, starts as a fantasy. If we can let go of our fears, and face the truth of our history and the colonial nature of our country, perhaps then they have a chance to become real. First, we need to step back and give Indigenous Peoples the space they need to heal. Discussion: Narratives, postcolonial relations, and the contact zone The narrative composed by Patrick, Thomas, and Tom, and told from Patrick’s perspective, describes some of the tensions encountered (and engendered) by the IYMBP. Certainly, reflecting on the tensions that came along with the decision to postpone and then re-organise the Allies Festival points to the complex role of mountain biking and the trails within the Simpcw community, and

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within the mountain bike community writ large. Patrick, Thomas, and Tom refer to ‘fantasies’, told about themselves, each other, and their communities, which evoke the kind of discursive constructions of the colonial self and the colonial Other that Said (1978) illuminates in Orientalism. For Patrick and Thomas, especially, reflecting on the Allies Festival means reflecting on the role of narratives in shaping their aspirations as allies. For Tom, too, the importance of narratives is clear. Coloniality has been, in part, underpinned by the narratives told about colonisers and the colonized, about Indigenous and settler peoples. Patrick’s recognition, for example, of the contingent nature of his subjective personal investment in the Festival means that it’s open to renegotiation and disruption, but it does not make it a foregone conclusion. Patrick’s desire to construct a new narrative about and through mountain biking and trails may challenge some of the entrenched stories that are told about Canadian national identity and sport (e.g., Robidoux, 2002). But there is a risk of re-telling familiar narratives of modernity and the centrality of settler society in mountain biking culture. Tom, envisioning the Allies Festival, was unsure about the narrative that it would allow him and his community to tell. For each of the IYMBP’s leaders, the idea of fantasy played, and plays, a unique role. For all of them together, the idea of fantasy and narrative becomes fundamentally important to understanding their vision of the role of mountain biking in (partially) shaping Indigenous-settler relations. For Said (e.g., 1978) and other postcolonial thinkers including Bhabha (1994), colonial relations are produced and reproduced (in part) by stories. Said (1978) argues that Orientalist discourses, which also help to illuminate the stories that Canadian governments have told about Indigenous Peoples, have obscured counternarratives that challenge entrenched relations of power. To challenge this tendency, we have read Patrick, Thomas, and Tom’s narrative with the intention of ‘find[ing] constitutive relations and interdependencies’ (Go, 2016, p.111) in the Festival. Rather than obscuring the relationships between Indigenous and settler people, the narrative told here highlights the relationships between three friends as well as the relations between Indigenous and settler people from many nations constituting the Allies Festival. The purpose here is not to obscure unequal power relations or to imagine that the Allies Festival is a panacea for reconciliation. Rather, it is to recognise the important function of narratives in (post)colonial discourse and to consider how they can be used to reconnect relations (Go, 2016) by challenging the notion that Indigenous and settler communities do anything, let alone mountain biking in British Columbia, without co-constituting relations with each other. The importance of narratives to postcolonial concepts of mountain biking and to making sense of our own experiences with the IYMBP is not all-encompassing; at times, we found that the notion of (colonial) fantasy and discursive constructions of the Other did not help us to engage with our

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reflections on the Allies Festival as fully as we would like. Though these fantasies (and their eventual or partial disruption) are instructive, we found ourselves wondering further about the role of the Simpcw Trails. We considered that the Simpcw Trails are both a product and a progenitor of (some of) the narratives that Patrick, Thomas, and Tom have told themselves and others about community, colonialism, and preferred futures. To reflect more fully on the Allies Festival is to understand mountain biking, and the Festival in particular, as a ‘contact zone’. The contact zone is a term coined by Pratt (2008). The term refers to spaces of colonial encounter, where ‘peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict’ (p.8). The original use of this term was taken up in postcolonial critiques of travel discourse(s), but its conceptual and analytical value has seen it identified in a variety of scholarly applications. Pratt (2008) notes that the contact zone is sometimes used synonymously with the ‘colonial frontier’ (p.8) whether that frontier is material or discursive, but the contact perspective marks an important shift. Where the colonial frontier suggests a decidedly Eurocentric and expansionist perspective, the contact perspective ‘shifts the centre of gravity and the point of view’ (Pratt, 2008, p.8). Shifting the centre of gravity in this sense means that we can understand the Allies Festival, or the trails, as a centre of culture, as a source of knowledge, and as an anchor for social relations. In other words, mountain bike culture and knowledge do not just flow from Marin County or Vancouver’s North Shore. A contact perspective shows us that mountain bike culture and discourse can, and does, flow from small communities and trail systems, including Indigenous communities. At the same time, colonial discourses are ambivalent and unstable (Bhabha, 1994), and it is for this very reason that it is possible for them to be disrupted. So, the mountain bike contact zone represents an opportunity to understand potential disruptions of colonial (discursive) authority. In Kelm’s (2007, 2011) work on contact zones, rodeo is used to explore the interactions and co-presence of Indigenous and settler people. Here, we find some similarities with the Allies Festival and mountain biking. For example, Kelm (2011) found that rodeos helped to build communities by producing shared narratives ‘that offered value in the present and the future’ (p.51). The Allies Festival, viewed through the contact perspective, possesses similar potential. For Patrick, Thomas, and Tom, it was the catalyst through which their shared narratives about community, culture, and mountain biking were (re)produced. The videos, images, and individual stories that emanate from the event are all part of the production of shared narratives. To be sure, those narratives have particular standpoints and do not represent a universal experience. But this is exactly the point; mountain biking and bike trails facilitate the production of shared and diverse narratives that have the potential to counter the dominant colonial discourse.

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In Downey’s (2018) work, lacrosse is also explicitly presented as a contact zone. One of the fundamental insights from his work that has informed this reflection is that the contact perspective helps to excavate and apprehend social processes from multiple perspectives, while still maintaining a critical eye on structural antecedents to, and ongoing conditions of, coloniality. This suggests that the Allies Festival can be understood as a centre of gravity for social relations without ignoring the socio-material conditions produced by broader settler colonial politics and policies. To be sure, Patrick, Thomas, and Tom have reflected on the role of settler colonialism in structuring the world of mountain biking as it exists today. In the IYMBP’s broader body of work, Patrick, Thomas, and Tom work with communities to grapple with the implications of doing outdoor recreation in light of colonial land dispossession (Lucas, 2019). Downey (2018) notes that in the contemporary history of lacrosse, though colonial power structures are never absent, nation-building activities can belong to Indigenous nations, rather than solely the nation-state of Canada. The recognition of lacrosse as a space of Indigenous nation-building speaks to some aspects of the Allies Festival as well. During the event, as well as during the planning stage, Simpcw and the Simpcw Trails were highly visible. People from nearby communities, and multiple continents, gathering at the Allies Festival show that there is space for Indigenous communities to assert their presence in the culture of mountain biking worldwide. Reflecting on the Festival from a contact perspective illuminates the power dynamics at play; unsure of how sponsors and visitors to the community would react, Patrick’s reflexive self-consciousness as an ally and the fleeting uncertainty about the future of the Festival after its first cancellation speaks to the perception of the entrenched nature of settler colonial values in mountain biking culture. The honouring of cultural protocols in this instance represents a disruption of the power dynamics along the same lines as a ‘shift’ in the centre of gravity towards the Festival contact zone. The cancellation of the event in light of the tragedy in the community is nonetheless a public articulation of community values and identity, one that was reinforced once the Festival was rescheduled. Then, once the event was rescheduled and visitors were welcomed into the community, the Festival was run on the terms of the community. Reflecting on the event this way gives attention to uneven relations of power without papering over the potential for creative or generative interactions in Indigenous spaces (Kelm, 2011). Settler (un)certainties and mountain bike culture in Canada To be sure, mountain biking and trail use are implicated in broader debates about land rights and property regimes in countries such as Canada, United States of America, and Australia (see Reid-Hresko & Warren, 2021). Mackey

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(2016) argues that ideas about property are underpinned by power that secures settler certainties. In other words, the entrenched relations that favour the settler Canadian political and legal framework concerning land, shape the ways that people relate to land, property, and each other, including through recreational activities such as mountain biking. Scholars have shown that sport and recreation have been key aspects in the process of settler colonisation (e.g., Mason, 2014). This has been well documented by examining sport as a tool for assimilation (e.g., Downey, 2018; Forsyth, 2020) but in more general terms, sport and recreation have been part and parcel of the hegemony of property relations and settlement as we know them today. Mackey’s notion of entitlement is an instructive concept in settler colonial thought. Though settled expectations is a term used in legal cases, Mackey (2016) argues that it can also be used as a metaphor for the institutional and cultural processes that support the idea that ‘the settler nation is entitled to the land’ (p.9). Mackey adds that in this context, the notion of entitlement refers to ‘a longstanding, structured, collective privilege. In this sense, it is more akin to class because it has been socially legitimized as a “right” to land and other privileges, historically and in the present, through colonial and national projects’ (2016, p.9). Throughout this chapter, Patrick, Thomas, and Tom’s reflection on the Allies Festival has illuminated Mackey’s (2016) argument that part of the way forward for Indigenous-settler relations is to chip away at settler entitlement and certainties in relationships to people and to land. Such (un)certainty is part of Patrick’s discomfort and anxiety around the original cancellation of the Festival. This is the case not only because of the cancellation of a riding event, but because the cancellation is the result of cultural protocols in the community. The result is that the future, of the Festival, of access to the trails, is by definition uncertain and contingent (Mackey, 2016; Black & Cherrington, 2020). That the Festival was reinvigorated by Tom’s conversations within the community first demonstrates the potential of embracing uncertainty for the mountain bike community. The concepts of narrative, nationhood, and settler uncertainty have helped us make sense of the work of the IYMBP, the Allies Festival, and mountain biking in British Columbia. Our objective in this chapter was to reflect on the work of the IYMBP through the lens of postcolonial thought, engaging the notion of narrative in part through producing one. Led by the reflections of those working in the contact zone, we have attempted to grapple with some of the implications of mountain biking and mountain bike trails and their contributions to a more just and relational future in Canada. Future work in this area can, and should, take the opportunity to explore the material implications of these relations in more depth, building on the material aspects of the narratives we have attempted to excavate. Overall, though, we consider mountain biking and trails to hold notable influence over other stories that get told about Indigenous communities and Allies alike.

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References Bhabha, H.K. (1994). The location of culture. Oxon: Routledge. Black, J., & Cherrington, J. (2020). ‘Nature doesn’t care that we’re there’: Re-Symbolizing Nature’s ‘Natural’ Contingency. International Journal of Žižek Studies, 14(1), 1–26. Cooke, L. (2017). Carving ‘turns’ and unsettling the ground under our feet (and skis): A reading of Sun Peaks Resort as a settler colonial moral terrain. Tourist Studies, 17(1), 36–53. Darnell, S.C. (2014). Orientalism through sport: Towards a Said-ian analysis of imperialism and Sport for Development and Peace. Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics, 17(8), 1000–1014. Downey, A. (2018). The Creator’s Game: Lacrosse, identity, and indigenous nationhood. UBC Press. Forsyth, J. (2020). Reclaiming Tom Longboat: Indigenous self-determination in Canadian Sport. University of Regina Press. Forsyth, J., & Giles, A.R. (Eds.). (2013). Aboriginal peoples and sport in Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press. Go, J. (2016). Postcolonial thought and social theory. New York: Oxford University Press. Kelm, M.E. (2007). Riding into place: Contact Zones, Rodeo, and Hybridity in the Canadian West 1900–1970. Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 18(1), 107–132. Kelm, M.E. (2011). A wilder west: Rodeo in Western Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press. Lucas, P. (2019). Working in a Good Way: A best practices guide for engaging and working with Indigenous Peoples on trails and outdoor recreation projects in British Columbia. British Columbia Provincial Trails Advisory Body. Mackey, E. (2016). Unsettled expectations: Uncertainty, land and settler decolonization. Black Point, NS: Fernwood Publishing. Mason, C.W. (2014). Spirits of the rockies: Reasserting an indigenous presence in Banff National Park. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Norman, M.E., Hart, M., & Petherick, L. (2019). Indigenous gender reformations: Physical culture, settler colonialism and the politics of containment. Sociology of Sport Journal, 36, 113–123. Pratt, M.L. (2008). Imperial eyes: Travel writing and transculturation (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Reid-Hresko, J., & Warren, J.R. (2021). ‘A Lot of What We Ride Is Their Land’: White Settler Canadian Understandings of Mountain Biking, Indigeneity, and Recreational Colonialism. Sociology of Sport Journal, 39(1), 108–117. Robidoux, M.A. (2002). Imagining a Canadian identity through sport: A historical interpretation of Lacrosse and Hockey. The Journal of American Folklore, 115(456), 209–225. Saavedra, M. (2018). SDP and postcolonial theory, in Collison, H., Darnell, S.C., Giulianotti, R., & Howe, P.D. (Eds.), Routledge handbook of sport for development and peace (pp. 208–217). London: Routledge. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Random House. Said, E. (1993). Culture and imperialism. New York: Knopf.

Index

Pages in italics refer to figures and pages followed by “n” refer to notes. Activism 4, 8, 11 Adventure 4, 7, 11, 53, 118, 125, 208 Advertising see Marketing Action camera see Media Action sport 17–18, 30, 31, 80n2, 83, 114, 116–119, 121, 123, 143, 177, 178, 204, 205 Affect see Body, Phenomenology Allies Festival 216–227 Anthropocentrism 8, 126, 136, 157, 207 Anti-­social behaviour 5, 8 Assemblage 10, 11, 84, 99, 106, 113–114, 118, 120, 123, 164 see Ecology, Nature, Non-­human Australia 7, 19, 51, 83, 97, 158, 167n1, 226 Autoethnography 82, 85 Berms 1, 51, 97, 103, 104, 160, 175 Bikepacking 3, 157, 188 Black, J.: on catastrophe 125; on conflict 5, 7, 136; on dirt 5; on disability 53; on e-mountain bikes 1, 51, 52, 58; on enclosure 5, 6; on non-­humans 146, 154, 161; on retroactivity 3; on technology 5; on trail building 5, 106, 141; see also Cherrington, J. BMX 35, 114, 115, 117, 141, 153 Bodies 4, 6, 7, 9–10, 87, 89, 91, 99, 135, 158, 161, 177, 204, 207; able-­bodied 53, 204, 205, 208; body-­bike 98, 99, 116, 164; body image 175; conformity 2; embodiment 2, 5, 10, 30, 66, 67, 72, 88, 95, 100, 116, 117, 161–163, 175, 209; movement 77, 82;

senses 82, 84–88, 164–167; see also Flow; Risk Branding 44, 58, 114, 116–119, 122, 123, 135; see also Commercialisation; Marketing; Media British Cycling 19, 21–25, 27–31 Brown, K.M.: on conflict with other outdoor users 4, 54; ecology 84, 175; on hybrid body-­bike 99; on land access 3; on mountains 3; on the senses 9, 72, 86, 87, 99, 100; on trail etiquette 57, 128; on trail grading 55, 97, 98; on transport geography 66; see also Body; Conflict; Phenomenology Californication 35, 43 California Mountain Bike Coalition 7 Canada (CAN) 1, 11, 174, 188, 213n3, 218–221, 226–228 Cape Mountain Bikers 7 Capitalism see Colonialism, Commercialisation, Enclosure, Economic impacts Care 5, 8, 10, 53, 128, 141–149, 151, 153, 154; see also Community; Environment; Nature Cherrington, J.: on catastrophe 125; on conflict 5, 7, 136; on dirt 5; on disability 53; on e-­mountain bikes 1, 51, 52, 58; on enclosure 5, 6; on history of mountain biking 82, 83, 84; on nature 3, 53, 55, 84, 175, 160; on non-­humans 146, 154, 161; on technology 5; on trail building 5, 106, 141

230 Index Climate change 5, 7, 11, 125, 160–162, 165 Climbing (rock) 17, 191, 193, 194, 197, 213n1 Clothing 4, 80n3, 100, 158, 183, 184, 209, 219; see also Identity; Lifestyle; Prosumption Coaching 21, 22, 25, 26, 29, 180–182; education 17–20, 24, 26–28, 30, 31, 56 Codification 3, 35; see also Guttman Colonialism 3, 5, 10, 11, 119, 188, 202, 204–212, 213n3, 216–219, 221, 223–227; see also Said, E (on Orientalism) Commercialisation 3, 11, 36, 83, 117, 147, 206 Commonwealth Games 51; see also Competition; Olympics Community 4, 6, 115, 129, 131, 133–135, 137, 143, 144, 146, 147, 149, 151–153, 164, 173, 178, 192; groups 7, 18, 130; indigenous 8, 11, 216, 220, 221, 225; learning 31; of practice 73; of women 183–184 Competition 1, 3, 9, 34–45, 96, 114, 116–118, 123, 174, 177, 195 Conflict 4, 5, 7, 9, 53, 54, 65, 72, 78, 79, 98, 127, 134, 136, 202, 225 Consumption 2, 36, 44, 45, 50, 96, 98, 115–117, 119, 122, 125, 135, 192, 213; see also Commercialisation; Economic impacts; Prosumption Commons 148, 150–152, 154; see also Enclosure; Forestry; Law Corporate social responsibility 123, 128 Counter-­culture see Subculture COVID-­19 see Pandemic Crashing 9, 11, 66, 67, 73–78, 79, 82, 87–92, 98, 144; see also Bodies; Pain; Risk Cross country 3, 37–43, 45, 51, 53, 160, 180, 188 Culture 1, 52, 79, 114, 115, 127, 179, 184; cultural politics 7–11; of bikepacking 157; dominant, residual and emergent 3–4; of dirt jumping 143–153; of electric mountain biking 52–53; global 122; graffiti 119; Indigenous 167n1, 216–227; of learning 18; of lifestyle sports 17, 18; in mountain bike media 202–213;

nature-­cultures 146–160; of pain 88; as structure of feeling 2–4, 6; of trail naming 188–219; Western 83; of winning 43 Deviance 35, 36, 41 Demographics 51, 52, 54; see also Market Developing Intereuropean Resources for Trail Builder Training (DIRTT) 133 Desire lines 56 Dirt 1, 5, 9, 37, 44, 75, 116, 137, 141, 143–145, 147, 148, 152, 208, 210, 222 Downhill 3, 8, 10, 37, 38, 40, 44, 51, 65, 113–117, 119–123, 127, 141 Drops 51, 79, 82, 87, 89, 98, 102–104, 118, 147, 179 Ecology 4–8, 10, 84, 99, 126, 127, 133, 136, 141, 157, 158, 162; see also Climate change; Nature; Sustainability Economic impacts 1, 8, 10, 50, 55, 83, 96, 97, 123, 125, 129–131, 134; see also Commercialisation; Enclosure; Gibbs and Holloway (on experience landscapes) Education: of coaches 18–20, 23–26, 31; of riders 8, 57; of trail builders 133, 134, 137 Enclosure 3, 5, 6, 150 Environment 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 20, 50, 54, 55, 57, 87, 88, 95, 98, 102, 106, 119, 128, 136, 158, 162, 193; Environment Agency 160; natural 3, 19, 50, 53, 125, 129, 164; outdoor 99; pro-­environmental behaviour 130, 133, 135, 137; remote 52, 160, 176, 211; urban 50, 51, 58, 113–114, 116, 119, 123, 207 Enduro 3, 8, 37, 51, 127, 188, 197 Electric-­bikes 4, 6, 7, 9, 49–58, 106, 163; see also Technology Emergent ecologies see Ecology Enduro 3, 8, 37, 51, 127, 188, 197 Escape 44, 53, 55, 202–208, 210–213; see also Flow; Risk Ethnomethodology 65–67, 73, 79, 80n1, 80n2 Extreme sport see Action sport

Index 231 Flow 72, 73, 75, 77–79, 87–88, 95, 97, 100–105, 165, 176, 203, 209, 222; see also Risk Forestry 55, 105, 128, 148, 149, 160, 199; see also Enclosure; Geography; Governance Freud, S:. on the pleasure principle 34, 39; on mastery 42 Freestyle 38, 40, 115, 118 Gender 10, 51, 150, 174, 176, 189–191, 194, 202, 205–207, 210; and community 183–184; disparities 173–174, 213n1; exclusion 150; and fear 178–180; femininity 174, 175, 180, 191, 195, 196; masculinity 91, 174, 176, 177, 183, 190–191, 194–195, 197, 198; media representations of 176, 180–181; and outdoor leisure 193; paternalisation 181–181; relations 194–195, 197; resistance to 196; roles 174, 175, 193, 197 Geography 8, 66, 119, 120; see also Sociology GoPro see Media Governance 3, 7, 8, 18, 30, 31, 41, 49, 50, 57, 58, 83, 127, 135, 143, 150–152, 154, 176, 190, 224; see also UCI; International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) Gibbs, D and Holloway, L. (on experience landscapes) 96–97, 125 Guttman, A.: on modern sports 34, 41, 42 Hagen and Boyes: on affect 9, 86, 142, 143, 205 Hegemonic masculinity see Gender Health 158, 219, 221; benefits 1, 50, 52, 53, 55, 131; conditions 53; mental health 52, 55, 58, 129, 175, 183; problems 166; see also Crashing History 36, 83, 115, 119, 120, 190, 198, 202, 211–213, 223 Identity 2, 4, 9, 35–39, 41, 43–45, 50, 91, 92, 95, 96, 179, 192, 222, 224, 226 Idioculture see Subculture Ideologies: of colonialism 10, 218; cultural hegemony 189–190; gender

184, 190–191, 195–198, 177; identities 4; ‘mountains’ 3; of nature 6, 8, 205; of movement and behaviour 9; rationalised sport 2, 3, 34, 66; of space 8, 227 Injury 53, 88, 90–92, 98, 152, 176, 177; see also Crashing; Pain; Risk International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) 6, 55, 56, 101–103, 127, 129–131, 133, 135, 175 Inequality 11, 78, 121, 202, 213; relating to gender and mountain biking 210; relating to poverty and mountain biking 120; relating to race and mountain biking 204, 210, 225; see also Colonialism; Ideologies Jumps 1, 37, 44, 51, 65–67, 73, 74, 75, 77–79, 80n3, 86, 87, 97, 102–104, 115, 116, 118, 141, 143–148, 151, 160, 208, 210 Land managers 6–8, 56, 58, 128, 133, 134; see also Conflict; Enclosure Latour, B. 11, 114, 146 Law 3, 57, 127, 128; see also Conflict; Enclosure Legislation see Law Leisure 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 34, 86, 88, 95, 97, 106, 125, 126, 130, 141, 157, 164, 188, 192, 193 Lifecycles (2010) 206–210 Lifestyle sport 5, 17–18, 30, 31, 35, 43, 83, 92, 141, 176, 184, 190, 204; and gender 191, 204, 213n1; and learning 30; and mountain biking 17–18, 44–45; and policy 83; see also Commercialisation; McCormack; Subculture; Wheaton Logic model of evaluation 8 Marin County 36, 115, 225 Market 86, 211; data 45, 50, 125, 174; segments 36; worth 49; see also Economic impacts Marketing 44, 45, 117, 123, 136; see also Commercialisation; Consumerism; Market McCormack, K. 2, 5, 149, 150, 176, 177, 182, 184, 192, 205

232 Index Media 4, 11, 58, 114–116, 142, 173, 174, 184, 202, 206, 216; digital media 10, 114, 117; economic contributions 1; films 144, 202–213; GoPro 65, 114, 116, 121, 122; GoPro gaze 117–119; representations of women 176–178, 180–183; representations of nature 204; rights 117; social media 7, 21, 28, 38, 65, 67, 115, 118, 122, 142, 144, 149, 192; studies 8; see also Marketing; Mountain bike industry More-­than-­human see Non-­human Mountain bike industry 36, 44–45, 49–50, 55, 57, 131, 135–137, 174, 182; see also Commercialisation; Market; Media Misogyny see Gender Nature 3–6, 8, 9, 10, 17, 44, 52, 53, 58, 96, 100, 128–130, 136, 146, 147, 154n1, 158, 160, 173, 175, 203–205, 207, 208 Narrative 218; analysis 178; colonialist 188, 217, 218, 223–226; of control 34, 177, 189; counter-­narratives 218; cultural narratives 35; in film 206, 209; heterosexist 198; identity 38, 44, 45, 198 National Governing Body (NGB) 3, 8, 18, 24, 25, 28–31, 58, 135; see also British Cycling; International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA); Sport England Neo-­sportsman 36–38, 43, 45 New Zealand 1, 54, 67, 97, 158 Noise 4, 54, 116 Non-­human 11, 99, 114, 120, 152, 161, 162, 165, 166 Off-­piste trails 4, 6, 7, 95, 103–104, 127, 128, 142; see also Conflict; Trail building Olympics 3, 17, 36, 51, 83, 115 Outdoors: activities 5, 6, 19, 51, 86, 95, 96, 99, 106, 174, 193, 205; appropriate behaviour 4; health benefits 183; sector 19; spaces 1, 2, 5–7, 10, 97, 99, 114, 175, 204; users 52, 54, 96–98, 135

Pandemic 83, 127, 221 Pain 9, 10, 11, 53, 82, 85, 87–92; see also Crashing; Phenomenology; Risk Peak District MTB 7 Phenomenology 86, 88; see also Bodies; Flow Pinkbike 211 Pollution 10, 130, 145, 158–162, 163, 165–167; see also Climate change; Environment; Trash Free Trails Post-­capitalist space 10, 142, 146 Postmodern 35, 43, 116 Prosumption 96, 117; see also Consumption; Marketing; Media Psychology 8, 34, 38–40, 42, 44, 87, 100, 176 Racism 109, 193, 194, 204–206, 210, 213n3 Red Bull 117–119, 121–123; see also Consumption; Marketing Regenerative sustainability see Sustainability Repack group 36 Resistance: to formal governance 18; to mountain bike culture 18, 30; to patriarchy 196–198; see also Ideology; Lifestyle sport; Subculture Rinehart, R. on alternative physical activities 3, 36, 43, 150 Risk 2, 5, 9, 37, 38, 44, 52, 53, 55, 57, 58, 78, 87, 98, 129, 149, 161, 174–180, 184, 191, 192, 198, 205, 206; see also Injury; Pain Road Cycling 1, 10, 85, 182 Rock 141; gardens 1, 87, 98, 100, 103 Roots 1, 51, 98, 104, 121, 166 Rural 50, 51, 52, 53, 159, 160, 217; see also Nature Said, E. (on Orientalism) 218, 224; see also Ideologies; Racism Science and Technology Studies (STS) 142, 143, 147; see also Assemblage; Latour, B.; Technology Scotland 1, 22, 24, 95, 101, 103, 104, 107n1, 128, 129, 132, 135, 194 Senses see Phenomenology Sexism see Gender Shimano 50 Skateboarding 17, 35, 36, 78, 80n2, 117, 141, 191

Index 233 Skill 18, 36, 43, 56, 65, 97–100, 106, 118, 123, 133, 176–179, 181, 183, 184, 192, 194, 205, 206 Social sustainability see Sustainability Sociology 8, 78, 80n1; of the body 84; of sport 141, 204 South Africa 10, 173, 176, 178 Spectating 65, 75, 77–79, 116, 177 Sport England 1, 17, 51; see also Governance Stiegler, B.: on entropy 5; on pharmacological objects 8 Strava 5, 149, 189, 192, 193, 195, 196, 198, 199, 212; see also Trailforks Subculture 2, 9, 35, 36, 43, 44, 45, 84, 188, 194, 195; see also Deviance; Lifestyle Sport; Resistance Surfing 17, 35, 80n2, 141, 191, 193, 194, 213 Sustainability: as a concept 9, 125, 126–128, 135–137, 152; of mountain bike culture 10, 134, 150; promotion of 127, 137; of trails 7, 125, 127– 134, 136; see also Climate change; Governance; Nature; Trail building Technology 2–7, 50, 53, 87, 100, 106, 114, 115, 117–119, 192, 208; see also Electric-­bikes; Latour, B.; Science and Technology Studies (STS) Thorpe, H.: on coach development 17, 18; on digital technologies 17, 65; on gender 176, 177, 182–184, 189; on Olympics 17, 36; on popularity of extreme sports 36, 80, 141 Tourism 1, 5, 7, 8, 96, 97, 106, 125 Trail building: care 5, 10, 106; standardisation 8, 98; sustainability 7, 103, 105, 127, 128; trail associations 133, 134–136; unsanctioned 7, 103, 105, 127, 128; see also Trail centres; Nature

Trail centres 3, 10, 53, 55, 95, 97–101, 102–107, 127, 160 Trailforks 134, 189, 192, 196, 198, 199; see also Strava Trash Free Trails (TFT) 130, 144, 145; see also Climate change; Sustainability Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) 3, 160; see also Governance United Kingdom (UK) 1, 7, 17, 19, 21, 49–51, 55, 57, 95, 97, 101, 103, 105, 144, 145, 147, 148, 158, 188, 194 United States of America (USA) 51, 116, 145, 174; African American 208; America 80, 115, 144, 226; Latin America 114, 119, 120, 123; North America 6, 97, 194, 205; South America 119 UnReal (2015) 210–212 VitalMTB 67, 127 Volunteers 19, 103, 105, 130, 134, 135, 137, 160 Wales 22, 97, 147; Bike Park Wales 101, 104 Wild trails see Off-­piste trails Williams, R.: on structure of feeling 2–3 Wheaton, B.: on gender 205; on lifestyle sport 17, 35, 36, 174; on mountain biking 17; on Olympics 17, 36; on professionalisation 17, 36; on subculture 2, 41, 43, 83; see also Lifestyle sport; Subculture World Cup 3, 121, 160; see also Competition; Governance; Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) World Health Organisation (WHO) 158, 165; see also Governance; Health YouTube see Media