BigRedSnackFoam

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!

CRUM

The beauty of cycling is that it can be enjoyed on many levels and more importantly anywhere there are roads and/or trails. It can be a be an important and integral part of your day to day lifestyle. Or it can be a release from that lifestyle. Cycling is enjoyed by people from the age of 2 or 3 right up to and just before the geezer disease gets us. There are no hard and fast rules. It is not expensive to get into but offers the chance to suck huge dollars if the cyclist is so inclined. Cycling is pretty much an equal opportunity activity.

As to it's popularity. It's popular. But it has been around so long that it has woven itself into the fabric of our culture. Once entwined, it disappears.

Wurm

Having the good weather to participate is a large reason why. You should all live in the Snow/Rain Belt and see how many Cali riders would be participating, and for how long.

randya

ZooBomb is decidely for the over-21 ADULT cyclist who is never-the-less still a kid at heart...

allgoo19

Regarding the popularity of cycling, here's something interesting to look at.

In Japan, cycling in both spectator sports and activity sports(including transportaiotn) are really big as far as the market size are concerned.

As a spectator sports: Keirin, track racing = gambling.

As an activity: Transportation and much smaller in size, recreation. You see bicycles in hundreds if not thousand around the local train station with surprising minimal protection.

People involved in two activities above are totally unrelated. People watch cycling and gamble don't ride bycycles. People ride bicycles regularly don't (usually) go to keirin racing. Watch keirin racing doesn't inspire people to ride bicycle of any kind. People inspired to become keirin racers are the young kids who don't have money to gamble. Most of those kids are attracted to the money. As far as I know, keirin racer is not taken as a glamourous job, except the money they make.

Trek7000ZX

The three most popular sports in terms of participation get very little television time. A couple years back I was reading a washington post article about the most "played" sports in the USA. Cycling came in third. Your guess of running/jogging was indeed number one. Coming in number two was swimming. Which I guess makes sense when you think about it in terms of money. To run you just need yourself. To swim you just need a body of water, the neighborhood pool or that pond down the street. But for a bike, helmet, etc. you are going to have to pull that wallet out of your pocket and make a significant purchase.

EDIT: Sorry about no link, post articles online don't go back that far

jgeezer

There is two questions really in the thread, why aren't more people interested in bike racing, and why aren't people more interested in bicycling as an activity. As far as bike racing goes the spectating audience doesnt' understand the concept of a Grand Tour. If you compare the TDF to a season in NASCAR then it is hard to imagine someone winning NASCAR without winning a race or in the case of cycling a stage. Lance came close this year and others have done it. I suppose it is possible but unlikely in auto racing. I think that means that the tactics of bicycle races are lost on the American audience. Winners win by, well, winning races. So if Lance isn't winning races/stages the sports commentators say "At the Tour Lance maintained his lead by 1 minute." If you hear that 5 days in a row it sounds as if nothing happened.

Cycling as an activity suffers from the same marketing disease as another sport I play, volleyball. How hard is that, everyone is familiar with it from the backyard, or a picnic etc. It's easy, but when played at a high level the action is fast and very athletic. Most people have tried to hit a pitched ball or sink a basket. They at least can see the height of a hoop and you can see the collisions in football even if you have never played. Most people think of adults cycling in terms of a childhood activity engaged in by eccentric adults wearing silly looking clothes.

madprofessor100

I think the main difference between NASCAR and the Tour de France is that the Tour de France is dominated by Europeans. I mean, the bicycle was invented by a European and is still much more of a part of European culture than American culture. I think this is also why professional soccer isn't popular in the U.S.--the U.S has a terrible soccer team!

Road biking is never going to become popular because it is way too expensive and time-consuming for the average American. The average cyclist spends way more time on a bike than, say, the average runner. And as people have already said, it is elitist as hell.

As far as cycling as a form of transportation goes, it can't become popular until better bike paths and acommodations for commuters are made. Creating bike-friendly communities is difficult because it's expensive, and most of the U.S. is rural. As a result, most people won't be willing to bike long distances to get around, especially on roads that aren't close to anything and, therefore, don't give cyclists a place to stop in case of emergency.

randya

European auto racing is way better than NAZCAR too - I'd go to a Formula 1 or Le Mans race first anyday. The only US-based auto races I'd ever be interested in are Can Am races, not sure they're even around anymore. Oval tracks for 500 miles are just boring.

Wurm

We should all move to Holland.

PainTrain

OMG, you should actually sit in a poker room sometime. You'd think you were in Death Valley with all the caps and sunglasses.

I've played casino poker for years.... just my luck I got married about six months before the WPT show and the 'poker explosion'. I'd be on one of those friggin' shows by now!

cryogenic

to add something that's not been mentioned yet, while cycling is more popular than we realize a lot of people would rather spend $30/month to go to the health club and work out in a big air-conditioned room... ride a stationary bicycle and not get anywhere... go figure.

allgoo19

They don't ride the same kind of bikes as we do. If you want to take the bike with you, you also need to bring a heavy duty lock weighs just as much as the bike itself.

bkrownd

Volleyball is a good illustration of why people should probably stop wishing cycling would become "popular". Volleyball is starting to suffer from attempts to market it to an audience for a profit. The real indoor 6-a-side game is being corrupted by stupid rules changes that are designed to make it more "accessible", "exciting" and "TV-friendly", and the dusty abomination called "beach volleyball" is taking interest away from the true graceful indoor game. Once the corporations and the masses get hold of something, they corrupt and transform it into something that is not what you originally loved. Enjoy the relative obscurity of your sport - that's what keeps it pure.

paintballdude

People in america are lazy

I-Like-To-Bike

Some people post gross generalizations and stereotypes and expect their prejudices to be taken seriously.

Trek7000ZX

I'm with you on hockey being a great spectator sport. But I think one reason they haven't been watched lately is that they don't play. That turns a lot of people off, besides, you know, you can't watch something that doesn't happen. It's like after the baseball strike though, it took me many years to get back into really caring about that sport, and it's hard even now, and it'll be the same with hockey, I won't watch it whenever it decides to come back.

bkaapcke

You should be glad biking isn't that popular here. If it were, the trails & bole paths would only be more crowded. I live near the best bike trail in our county, and I make a point of not spreading the word. BK

baj32161

Well tell me....if you didn't cycle, would you still eat? If that is the logic you plan to use, then nothing you do is ever free. There is such a thing as taking things too literally, I know, I am the king of that

baj32161

You sir(?) are brilliant!!! Beach Volleyball is laughable. I played Volleyball back in college and we never even heard of Beach volleyball...of course going to college in Oswego, NY didn't hurt.

Call me crazy, but I don't give two hoots about 4 skinny, flat-chested beach babes jumping around in the sand. I would much rather watch the flow of the 6 person game.....men or women. Beach Volleyball sucks!

Puppypaws

My husband bought a new hybrid Trek in June. It looked like fun and it was such a pleasure to ride compared to the old, too small, handles too low, chain rattling, hurts my rump and wrists, 9 year old walmart special bike that I had. It inspired my new found interest in cycling. So I went out and got a Gary Fisher and we enjoy cycling together now. It is one of the few exercises I can do that actually makes my bum hip feel better.

I wonder if people knew that there are much more comfortable/responsive bikes out there if there would be an upsurge in cycling.

mntbikemt

I hate to say it, but there aren't too many developed countries that are bike friendly. And I don't think bicycle commuting is a viable option for the majority of the people in the world, given the way we live today. We have to look at mass transit that can carry people from outlying suburbs to the cities in a fast and efficient manner.

Just go to Paris London, Rome, Brussels, or Frankfurt. I've been fortunate to travel abroad for my work and from my observations, there aren't many more bicycles being used for commuting in those cities. Most people are in cars or use mass transit. AND YES, MAJOR US CITIES HAVE ABOUT AS MUCH MASS TRANSIT AS EUROPE. What we lack in the US are more routes for commuter trains for long distance travel to all parts of the country and any mass transit for rural communities away from the Eastern seaboard. (At least in Europe there are more established train routes that can reach many more rural communities.)

Look at housing patterns world wide and you will see that there is a universal pattern. More people around the globe now work in cities. The cost of living in safe parts of inner urban areas has continuted to climb. The cities develop outlying suburbs to house families that cannot afford to live at a certain level in the safe urban areas. These families need to get adults and children to school and jobs quickly and dependably in all types of weather--good and bad.

The bicycle will always be around, but I suspect the majority will continue to be used for hobby/recreational activities. And that's fine. There's no universal panacea for various problems facing humans today, including energy and polluition issues.

What's allowed an under regulated futures market to drive up the cost of oil is the changing patterns in the two most populated nations on the earth--India and China. It's inevitable that individuals and cities in those regions will expand their use of energy as the majority of their populations continue to move away from rural areas in to cities or suburbs over the next several decades. With respect to pollution issues, what I find interesting is that we humans tend to overlook our own biological make up and its role in greenhouse gases. As individuals, we're emitting carbon dixode at a pretty significant level 24/7 /365 and our numbers around the globe have increased exponentially over the past half-century with the development of medical miracles, like antibiotics.

Stv

IMHO, the bike was degraded to TOY status post WWII in North America as the result of several culminating factors that all worked in unison. The construction of the Interstate Highway Systems coast to coast at the expense of the Rail System, cheap oil, the selling and acceptance of the car culture and the population flight to the sterile suburbs. And, incidentally enough, in the 1900's, the bicycle itself pushed ahead the development of the automobile industry.

Many countries around the globe still are dependant on the cycle for basic transportation for a large portion of the population, except for some of the wealthier European nations who have adopted the American model of isolating ones self from any human contact whatsoever inside the safe confines of 4 to 6 tons of glass'n steel.

The era of cheap global oil is over. This is not the fabricated oil crisis of the seventies. The Bell curve is flattening out on new oil reserves. We are on the cusp of the resurgence of the bicycle as an integral conveyance device within our society.

Be patient.

genec

Hey, if they got out there and exercised, maybe their nekkid bodies wouldn't be so atrocious...

genec

Good point... to far too many Americans, "a bike" is that thing from XMART that is a pain to ride and even harder to keep adjusted.

I remember talking to a good friend that bragged about his great bike... only to show it to me and I realized it was a stamped out piece of junk... yeah, he liked it, but he only rode it a couple of miles now and then... I had just toured the state on my well machined "machine."

This came up on another thread... why aren't the LBS taking a role in local bike promotion... everything from riding lessons to promoting local group rides... much as SCUBA shops do? There are certainly more Bike shops in my area than SCUBA shops... yet I don't hear "bike activities or news" like I do hear "dive conditions" on the local broadcasts.