Targeting China's Cycling Masses

New Dirt-Track Bike Races at '08 Games
Should Raise Sport's Profile

By LORETTA CHAO
January 15, 2007

China has long been known as a land of bicycles. Even with the advent of cars, the streets of many cities are filled with people riding them.

But to many, if not most, of the cyclists, the bike is transportation -- a tool for getting from here to there rather than a source of healthful exercise or fun.

Now, that is beginning to change and may change even more when next year's Olympic Games get under way in Beijing. At least, that is what cycling enthusiasts, the organizers of the Olympics and makers of sports bikes are hoping. For along with bicycle-track racing, the organizers are trying to raise interest in the sport by adding a bicycle-motocross, or BMX, event. Using modified bicycles, BMX riders will race along a dirt track of jumps and banked corners in the Summer Games.

The addition of BMX racing follows a series of new events meant to appeal to the Generation-X crowd, which considers many of the standard Olympic events to be boring. Beach volleyball, snowboarding, cross-country mountain biking and the triathlon all have been added to the roster since the Atlanta Games in 1996.

"The Olympic committee has been under a lot of pressure to modernize the Olympic program," says Johan Lindstrom, the technical delegate from the International Cycling Union, the nonprofit umbrella organization for national cycling federations that is coordinating the event for 2008. "Snowboard cross was very successful in the Winter Olympics," he says. "Now, hopefully, BMX racing will be the first to have the same success in the Summer Olympics."

Tang Mingxi, sales manager at one of China's largest bicycle makers, Shenzhen Xidesheng Bicycle Co., is optimistic about BMX's future, even though fewer than 5% of the company's domestic sales are BMX bikes. In the not-too-distant past, Mr. Tang says, "you would never see people on the street using their bicycles for exercise, but beginning last year, you see it everywhere. You'll see -- the market for BMX and other specialized bicycles is going to grow. When something is popular here, it catches on quickly."

While the Olympics will include only racing, the bikes also are used in freestyle BMX, featuring tricks such as the Bunny Hop, where the rider lifts the bike off the ground without help from a jump, or the Endo, where the rider stops the front of the bike, raising the rear wheel in the air.

BMX, a sport homegrown by California teenagers in the 1960s that has gained global popularity, was introduced to young riders in China's southern provinces who had limited exposure to it from riders in Hong Kong, where it was popular in the 1980s.

For more than a decade, interest in the sport in China was limited to the small group of people who were exposed to it and had enough money to buy modified BMX bicycles, which have 20-inch wheels and handlebars that can turn 360 degrees.

Since the International Olympic Committee decided in 2003 to replace two track races with BMX racing in the 2008 games, competitions have been televised throughout China. "I think more people will appreciate BMX as a sport and a passion after they see it in the Olympics," says Max Chen, the 26-year-old sports-marketing coordinator for Pacific Cycle Inc.'s Mongoose brand in China and one of that nation's veteran BMX freestyle riders.

Pacific Cycle, owned by Canadian consumer-products concern Dorel Industries Inc., has recently begun to sell the Mongoose bikes in China but has signed up to sponsor four of China's top BMX freestyle riders. The company also will provide Mongoose race bikes and gear to the National BMX Race Team.

"The number of active riders is small but rapidly growing. Market opportunity is strong," says Mo Moorman, spokesman for Pacific Cycle.

Mr. Chen still remembers the day 11 years ago when he saw his first BMX freestyle performance on the grounds of his school: "I saw them doing flips, flying off of jump boxes, and I thought, 'Wow, you can do that with a bike?' I'd never seen anything like it. I was really amazed."

Two years later, he bought a secondhand BMX bike from a local store, where he said the storekeepers didn't know what they were selling. He started gradually by just following a group of riders around, all of whom were older than he was. He watched as they jumped and did various tricks, and borrowed the precious magazines they somehow got from overseas, which were tattered from being passed around from rider to rider.

"We read and reread those magazines," says Mr. Chen, who today travels throughout China giving performances and competing in freestyle competitions. He says he won't try out for the Olympic team, because he prefers freestyle over racing.

Mr. Lindstrom says China's BMX riders have improved in the past year, increasing the country's international ranking to within the top 12 spots from the 20s. Only 32 men and 16 women world-wide will qualify to compete in Beijing in 2008, with the U.S., France, Switzerland and Australia likely to dominate the top slots for entrants.

The Olympic BMX track is expected to be built by this June, Mr. Lindstrom says. The track will be more elaborate than most, which he says will "push the limit for elite riders" with bigger jumps and higher speeds. The event will have three rounds of quarterfinals, three rounds of semifinals and one final round for about a two-hour program, much shorter than current BMX races, which often take several hours with hundreds of participants.

If the program is successful, Mr. Lindstrom says he hopes it will make way for more awareness world-wide of BMX.

Jeffrey Sheu, spokesman for Taiwanese bicycle maker Giant Manufacturing Co., says "there's a definite market" for BMX in China. His company began selling BMX bikes to the Chinese 10 years ago, following a craze for the sport in the U.S. and Japan. Still, sales of the BMX bikes have remained a tiny share of the company's overall sales in China.

Will that tiny share mushroom? "That's hard to say," says Mr. Sheu, but he adds: "The Olympics will definitely spur some more interest in it."

Write to Loretta Chao at [e-mail]

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