The sport of mountain biking has been around for about 40 years in the UK and Tracy Moseley has been at the forefront for most of it.
From a young girl growing up on a dairy farm in Worcestershire, descending fearlessly through the woodland on a bike with a larger frame than she rides now, to becoming a world champion downhill and enduro racer, and more recently an ambassador for e-bike racing, it’s been an adrenaline-fuelled rush, with plenty of twists and turns, all expertly handled.
“Mountain biking started with cross-country and then downhill followed in the early Nineties, like downhill skiing – one person at a time and against the clock – before evolving to the discipline of enduro around 2011,” she explains.
“Enduro is a mix between cross-country and downhill, but a comparison with a car rally is perhaps the best description. There are normally five or six timed stages in a day, predominantly downhill, but the endurance element is that you’re out for five-to-six hours and might cover 50-to-60 kilometres getting between stages.”
Typically, the critical downhill sections might last for just three-to-four minutes, although it all depends on the course. Head to the Alps, for example, and you could enjoy an extended descent of up to 15 minutes. The winner is the rider with the lowest cumulative time on the timed stages.
Don’t dawdle though. There are fixed start-times for each stage and if you arrive late, you receive a time penalty. On particularly challenging terrain there might be a shuttle service or even use of a ski lift to reclaim the altitude, but usually it’s down to pedal power, which plays into equipment choice: a fast rolling tyre to help between stages or a more grippy alternative for the all-important technical descents.
This mix of demands is why Moseley deems enduro the “people’s discipline” of mountain biking. “It’s the biggest appeal. Downhill mountain biking is not for the faint hearted,” she explains. “Most people wouldn’t be able to ride a lot of the courses, and at the other end of the scale, the physical element of a cross-country race – 80 minutes flat-out effort, up and down technical terrain – is probably not in most people’s ability range or desires either.”
She likens enduro to riding up a fireroad with friends in her local playground, the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, before finding a fun single track to descend. An example of the perfect morning’s entertainment. The equipment doesn’t have to be inordinately expensive and a regular full suspension mountain bike will do the job. “A couple of hours of social pedalling to get there, and then see who is fastest down a trail,” she explains. “That’s what a mountain bike ride generally is these days and why it appeals to me so much.”
More recently the sport has evolved further, with a promising, at times contentious, and still slightly awkward embrace of e-bikes. As an ambassador for Trek and Bosch, Moseley has just returned from the inaugural UCI Enduro World Mountain Bike Championships in Canazei, Italy, where she finished fourth. There is much potential and much to be resolved.
“Simply, it has allowed us to do more,” she explains. ”They tend to give us an extra loop, or more stages, and also add a climbing element – called a power stage – which is an uphill technical climb that is also timed. It showcases what you can do on an electric bike and it is crazy what you can climb and how steep it can be.
“That’s the bit I've enjoyed the most; something new that I didn’t have in the previous years of downhill and enduro. It’s learning how to ride a bike in a different way to handle the power of a motor, with skills and techniques and body position to balance and not spin the wheels.”
Most readers will have noticed the rise in popularity of e-bikes, both on and off road, but while it has made riding more accessible to the general public, Moseley still sees some reluctance to adopt it in competition.
“It’s not grown as much as I think the bike industry expected and there are various reasons. There are purists who don’t want to give into the idea of e-bike racing – “That’s for when I get old! – but it’s also about finding the right format. If we just do the same thing on an e-bike as a normal bike, what's the point?”
There are examples when the motor assistance comes into its own. Moseley recalls a multi-day event on Mont Blanc, the highest peak in France, which followed the hiking trails. “It was amazing, but we would never have done it over three days on a normal bike, so it enabled us to do so much more.” The only drawback being the extra weight when carrying the bikes over the toughest passes.
Fresh challenges have arisen over regulation too. Each bike must be a registered Electric Pedal Assisted Cycle (EPAC) and there is a white list of approved brands, with organisers able to run diagnostic checks before, during and after racing. Currently a maximum speed of 25 kilometres per hour is in place, and battery sizes are restricted.
It’s a tricky balance. The UCI, cycling’s governing body, is not shy of rules, but more red tape to try and ensure fairness in a sport that is all about freedom and adventure can grate at times. Then there is the drive towards professionalism and the growing pains that brings. Two years ago the UCI sold the broadcast rights to mountain bike racing to Warner Bros Discovery.
“When a global company wants to make money in a relatively niche sport, big changes happen,” Moseley says. “The last few seasons we’ve seen a huge amount of change to allow the sport to become more broadcastable, which has influenced a lot of the racing. Downhill and cross-country have benefitted from that, but enduro is the one that has suffered.
“In essence it’s not a broadcastable discipline. It doesn't happen in one concise location over three minutes where you can get 30 cameras and showcase what's going on and see the expertise. Enduros are about participation and the fun of doing it, not something you can really take into millions of people's homes to watch on TV.”
There are other marketable attributes. Moseley fondly remembers enduro’s formative years, not just because she became a three-time world champion, but because the sport could showcase amazing locations, all around the world.
“We headed to Chile, a place in Spain that no-one had heard of before, and were uncovering all these unknown destinations for mountain biking.” she says. “There’s lots of evidence to show that the places we went to have had incredible booms in their bike tourism. That’s still the appealing part of enduro riding and I’m confident that because it’s a mass participation sport it will re-find its feet. I just don’t think it’s going to fit the box of Warner Bros. Discovery’s broadcasting model.”
Whatever direction the mountain biking heads from here, it’s a safe bet that Moseley will somehow be involved. In a sport with minimal prize money – “around 1,000 euros for winning a world cup race” – hers has been a unique trail, founded on a mastery of her art and shared through a passion for outdoor life spent on two wheels.
“It’s crazy to think that I started racing when I was 15 and went through school and university and it was never a defined career pathway, just: ‘I’ll see where it goes’,” she continues. “Even now I find it incredible that I can still be involved in this sport and that I’ve elongated that career more and more.”
Titles help, of course. National honours as a junior before racing full time on leaving Sheffield University in 2000, culminating in an overall World Cup downhill win in 2006, and eventually a World Championship title in 2010 after several near misses. There were three years of back-to-back world enduro titles in her early thirties, “when I really understood the need to be fit and learned to train”, before the more recent switch to nascent e-bike enduro racing.
“I love cycling in whatever capacity because it gives us so many opportunities to meet so many amazing people, stay fit and healthy and have a purpose. Now being a mum, I feel another avenue has opened up to share that passion with other mums.”
With Toby now being of school age, step one has been to get a bike bus started. An idea that largely sprung from Barcelona and has spread globally, it’s a group cycle to school that collects children and their parents or guardians along the way. It encourages families to embrace cycling while providing safety in numbers as they move as a collective.
“I see how many hurdles there are for most people to get outside to exercise and how I am not the norm and actually very weird,” she adds with a smile. “I've spent so long in that bubble of sport and now I’ve entered this world of school where I want to share the passion [for cycling] because it would bring so much richness to so many people’s lives if they also got off their phones and sofa and enjoyed the outdoors. So much has changed since I started and enjoyed cycling for being the fastest person down a hill.”
Progress has been slow, but that’s ok. “We’re one of the first to try to do it in a rural area and it’s not easy, but since February we’ve been riding once a week to school together. The kids love it and I love the conversations we have and it’s an amazing way to start the day as opposed to being behind a steering wheel with the kids looking out of the window in the back seat.”
Moseley understands the safety fears and time pressures that add to the challenge of a successful bike bus, but remains thankful for the contrast of her own upbringing on a dairy farm, with the freedom to explore and a brother, Ed, two years her senior, to constantly attempt to upstage.
“I was very competitive and always trying to beat my older brother at everything. We’d set up BMX courses with bricks, planks and ramps and when he went along to a cycle club in the midlands, I went along as the little sister. I just loved going downhill. That was fun, but having to pedal up, no, thank you. I wanted the adrenaline buzz without slogging my guts up the hill.”
Moseley says her skills were developed simply through trial and error on the farm. “It was purely from being playful. In any sport you generally have lessons where you’re taught the technique. As kids we didn’t get taught to ride a bike. Some of it has to be naturally there, but we were mainly exposed to our environment.
“We had steep woods. I look at them now and think they’re steep! I was riding a bike that was way too big for me, with the seat slammed down and brakes that barely worked. It just seemed normal. Mum and dad had no idea what we were doing and would have definitely said no had they realised, whereas now kids probably don't get the chance to challenge themselves and there is way too much concern over safety.”
But calculated not reckless is the answer. “Look before you leap is one of my mottos. I’ve won World Cups having not jumped some sketchy gap, but found other places on the course to make up time. You shouldn’t be falling off the bike every time you get on it or you’re definitely doing something wrong.”
Finally, while she has enough knowledge to fix a puncture or get her out of a sticky situation on the trails, she admits her mechanic skills (most of it is left to the expertise of husband James) are about on par with her business acumen. “I’m a terrible business person, so this career has not set me up for a life with a house in Monaco. But to be honest the sport wouldn't have the same feel if it was like that anyway. It’s such a nice niche sport, where I get to meet lovely people, and for me that’s very important.”
