[Critical Analysis] New School MTB

Following the example of the fun sports like snowboard, new school mountain bike is above all an underground sport. A French author, Alain Loret, has described the sociological fundamentals of this new kind of sport, known under the generic term of sliding sports, or free sports. He has analyzed the roots of the free sports and has highlighted that all the marketing strategies made by brand nowadays rely on the fun spirit.

According to Alain Loret, the free sports are directly related to sliding sports. However, he defines sliding sports from a socio-cultural point of view – sports associated with a kind of counterculture – and not from a technological point of view – sports instrumented to slide. As a consequence, according to him, skating does not belong to sliding sports, contrary to the mountain bike. This fundamental distinction is the result of the appearance of a new kind of modern sports values.

The world of the traditional sport is made of classifications, measurements, which allow distinguishing the first from the second, the record from the absence of record. It is made of figures, and takes places in a cultural system of numerical nature, that can be qualified as a “digital sporting culture”, as explains Alain Loret. On the other hand, the new forms of sports that have appeared since three decades include other dimensions like sensitivity and subjectivity.

Most of the alternative sports appeared after 1970 and still continue to develop today. They usually are in direct connection with the nature. Actually, they are always individual sports and they presuppose a kind of rebel attitude, a specific language and a look. This is what Alain Loret calls "The sliding generation" in his book. The point is that sliding sports cannot be reduced to an innovative repertory of techniques or to a simple physical activity. Actually, it has to be considered rather like a new configuration of values, behaviors and motivations that strongly differ from the traditional sports model. Sliding represents a real kind of sporting counter-culture, which is clearly different from the traditional sports that are basically built on federal organizational structures.

This analysis is part of a sociological & marketing study that I realised on eXtreme MTB. Released in spetember 07.