Great article with some good points.
However, I would argue 2 counter-points:
1\. Do we really want mountain biking to become a sport where the only way to get into it properly is to sacrifice everything else in life and go all in?
2\. Given the examples in the article, yes, surfing, skiing and fishing can be expensive, but the core item needed to participate in those sports are very simple, with few individual components. A 10 year set of ski's will still perform pretty much as good as they did when they were new. Yes, ski tech may have improved, but everyone was doing fine on them 10 years ago.
The same cannot be said for mountain bikes, especially full suss. A 10 year old bike thats been well used will likely have had nearly every component replaced at least once. This is fine, however, once a bike gets too old it reaches the point where maintenance costs become too high in comparison to the value of the bike. Very few people would shell out ~$200+ on a suspension damper service on a bike worth $500, $600 , even $1000.
So the second hand market is full of very tired cheap bikes that need some loving to make them work as good as possible, and also just be safe. As a newcomer into the sport though, most people have zero or little maintenance skills and even fewer tools required to perform those repairs. The cost of taking an older bike that needs a lot of work to a shop to get sorted can easily exceed the cost of the entire bike.
Couple this in with the myriad of standards on bikes (which often need unique tools ) and it seems that people with lower budgets and/or lower time to ride face an uphill struggle to even get to the first rung on the ladder of mountain biking.
Now, you can definitely have as much fun on a sorted hardtail as you can on a $6000 carbon enduro bike, but if everyone else around you is riding high end full suspension whizz-bang machines, it's easy to get the impression you simply can't afford to enter this sport, no matter how dedicated you might be.
Nov. 8, 2017, 11:52 p.m. - kiksy
Great article with some good points. However, I would argue 2 counter-points: 1\. Do we really want mountain biking to become a sport where the only way to get into it properly is to sacrifice everything else in life and go all in? 2\. Given the examples in the article, yes, surfing, skiing and fishing can be expensive, but the core item needed to participate in those sports are very simple, with few individual components. A 10 year set of ski's will still perform pretty much as good as they did when they were new. Yes, ski tech may have improved, but everyone was doing fine on them 10 years ago. The same cannot be said for mountain bikes, especially full suss. A 10 year old bike thats been well used will likely have had nearly every component replaced at least once. This is fine, however, once a bike gets too old it reaches the point where maintenance costs become too high in comparison to the value of the bike. Very few people would shell out ~$200+ on a suspension damper service on a bike worth $500, $600 , even $1000. So the second hand market is full of very tired cheap bikes that need some loving to make them work as good as possible, and also just be safe. As a newcomer into the sport though, most people have zero or little maintenance skills and even fewer tools required to perform those repairs. The cost of taking an older bike that needs a lot of work to a shop to get sorted can easily exceed the cost of the entire bike. Couple this in with the myriad of standards on bikes (which often need unique tools ) and it seems that people with lower budgets and/or lower time to ride face an uphill struggle to even get to the first rung on the ladder of mountain biking. Now, you can definitely have as much fun on a sorted hardtail as you can on a $6000 carbon enduro bike, but if everyone else around you is riding high end full suspension whizz-bang machines, it's easy to get the impression you simply can't afford to enter this sport, no matter how dedicated you might be.