Is the motorized bike a piece of sports equipment? Why, surely! Today there are even world championships.
The e-mountain bike is booming: today more and more people are being carried up the slopes.
Uwe Moser / Getty
The electrification of individual road transport is still a long way off. According to Energy Switzerland, only 3.5 percent of cars in Switzerland are currently powered by batteries. However, sales of electrically powered bicycles continue to rise. According to the industry association Velo Suisse, sales of fast e-bikes with support of up to 45 km/h boomed in 2023. A total of 26,559 such bicycles were sold. This corresponds to an increase of 16.6 percent compared to the previous year. Of the approximately five million bicycles on Swiss roads today, 1.25 million have an electric drive.
The so-called e-mountain bikes continue to be very trendy, with 49,880 units sold in 2023. A good one in three bikers in Switzerland today use a motor (37.3 percent). The image immediately emerges of contemporaries who are mostly already a little gray and wearing Velo-Tenus that are a little too tight. They pedal up the mountain seemingly effortlessly and then reward themselves for their effort with a cream slice in the restaurant with a picturesque panoramic view of the Alps.
The sweet treat has an average of 425 kilocalories per 100 grams (source: Betty Bossi). This corresponds to around a quarter of the average daily requirement of an adult man. If you wash down the pastry with a wheat beer (44 kilocalories per deciliter) to balance the electrolyte balance, this will only put you in an uplifted mood and give you an additional boost on the descent. However, it doesn’t help the line. You could have just as easily spent the afternoon in a deck chair.
Any reasonably conscientious doctor will vehemently contradict this. Because we have long known that any movement is better than complete inaction. Even if we then destroy their health-promoting effects with sweets and alcohol.
The e-mountain bike has established itself on the market as a piece of sports equipment
Bicycle sales from 2015 to 2023
Long recognized as sports equipment
Until recently, ambitious recreational athletes mocked the so-called “Buchtäschli faction,” which only dares to tackle hills with a gradient of more than two percent, supported by electricity. But this image is outdated. Athletes from other sports also use the bike and its electrically supported twin to train basic fitness and speed strength.
The mountain bike was developed by inventors from California in the 1970s. It quickly spread to all corners of the world and opened up a new customer segment for cycling. Mountain biking has been an Olympic discipline since 1996. The first gold medalists at the Olympic Games in Atlanta were the Latvian Maris Strombergs and the Dutch Bart Brentjens. Silver in the men’s race went to the Swiss Thomas Frischknecht, one of the great mountain bike pioneers in Switzerland.
The now 53-year-old from Zurich also became world champion the following year and is now the manager of the currently internationally most successful mountain biker, Nino Schurter. Who other than Frischknecht should be able to better assess the question: Is riding an e-mountain bike a sport? He says: «Of course. But in my opinion, e-mountain bikes have no place in top-level sport. Our sports equipment, the bicycle, should be powered solely by the athlete’s muscles and not by an electric motor. I don’t see any point in holding world championships on e-mountain bikes.”
Considers e-mountain bike riding to be sport, but criticizes world championships on sports equipment: Thomas Frischknecht, one of the great mountain bike pioneers in Switzerland.
Baumannn / Imago
Frischknecht’s skepticism is well known in the scene. He is far from alone with her. But since 2019, the world cycling association UCI has recognized electric bikes as sports equipment and has also held world championships with them. Last year in Glasgow, Scotland, both gold medals went to the Swiss Cycling team. Nathalie Schneitter won among the women and Joris Ryf among the men. The year before, Briton Tom Pidcock won gold. He also became Olympic champion on a normal mountain bike in Tokyo in 2021 and had already won a Tour de France stage on a racing bike. To a certain extent, he is freed from the suspicion of being an armchair athlete who draws his power exclusively from the battery of his e-mountain bike.
The Brit Tom Pidcock is just as successful on a racing bike as he is on an e-mountain bike. In 2022 he became motorized world champion.
Javier Martinez De La Puente / Imago
Like Pidock, Joris Ryf from Bern does not fit the cliché of the slightly overweight, wealthy biker who can be carried up the slopes in a mobile armchair. The 26-year-old says: “The fascinating thing about an e-mountain bike is the speed at which you travel on the mountain. You have to drive very cleanly, especially in difficult terrain. We often tackle inclines that are so extreme and technically demanding that they would be impossible to drive without motor support.” Ryf says the races on the e-mountain bike only lasted about an hour. “During this time we are traveling at full speed and constantly driving at the limit. The weight of the bike makes the whole thing even more demanding and is particularly demanding on the upper body.”
Ryf also knows the prejudices and the fight he had to fight for the acceptance of the e-mountain bike. But e-mountain bike riders are now also recognized as athletes in the scene. Precisely because there are more and more athletes who do both, reservations about the scene have now practically disappeared.
Thomas Binggeli is one of the real pioneers and best experts in the Swiss bike scene. At the age of 17, he founded the company “Velo Service Oberried” on his parents’ farm near the city of Bern. He later expanded his company with the import companies Pro Cycle and Cycle Craft Bikes and developed his own bike line from 1998 onwards. For this he was honored as Entrepreneur of the Year in the Espace Mittelland economic area.
Binggeli supports Swiss cycling and maintains a successful professional team under the name “Thömus maxon Swiss Mountain Bike Racing Team”, for which Mathias Flückiger, one of the currently most successful Swiss mountain bikers, rides. «No other device combines different aspects such as strength, endurance training in the anaerobic area and also dexterity and upper body training so perfectly. The e-mountain bike has made cycling extremely popular again. It’s a huge achievement from a tourism perspective, but also from a medical perspective.”
Binggeli, of course, speaks from the perspective of a businessman who has opened up a new customer segment through the development of electrically powered bicycles. The e-mountain bike melts away distances and incline percentages. Amateur athletes who are no longer very young and often no longer very fit can use it to achieve goals that were unattainable for them until recently. At the same time, a workout simulates interval training in an almost perfect way. Phases of high stress can be combined with those of regeneration thanks to electrical support. How hard a workout will be is literally in the rider’s legs.
The fun factor of the e-mountain bike is great
But the booming sports equipment also has a social component. Fit people can easily go out and even train together with slightly less fit partners. Thanks to e-mountain bikes and e-bikes, cycling holidays have become a booming tourist segment. Today, the support is freely selectable on practically all bikes. The engine support varies from Eco to Boost, with the latter you seem to take off on the bike.
But if you let the electric motor drive you unrestrained, you will soon find yourself standing on the side of the road with empty batteries. Martin Plattner, the managing director of the Velo Schweiz industry association, says: “During competitions, the heart rate on the e-mountain bike is even higher because the higher weight of the vehicle also places greater demands on the core muscles.”
For him, the question of the extent to which an electric bicycle is a piece of sports equipment is therefore wrong. “You could just as easily ask whether a shoe is sports equipment. What matters is how you use it or the bike.” One thing is clear: the fun factor on an e-mountain bike is great. Anyone who has ever driven such a device is reluctant to part with it again. And after a day’s tour of 70 or 80 kilometers and over 2000 or more meters in altitude, the question of whether this is sport or not becomes unnecessary.
Today there are a variety of providers who compete for customers with their bikes.
What: Youtube
The normal bicycle is not threatened by the boom. Thomas Binggeli says that conventional bikes without electrical support are still very popular, especially among younger people. But younger people are now increasingly using e-mountain bikes. Binggeli says that around 40 percent of his buyers belong to the younger customer segment and 60 percent belong to a slightly older customer segment.
The latest trend is the so-called “Lightrider E”, a type of light e-mountain bike that, with a built-in 250 watt-hour battery, is not quite as powerful as conventional e-mountain bikes, but weighs only 15 kilograms ride as light and maneuverable as a conventional bike. It closes a gap between the previous two variants and appeals to a slightly older clientele who still like to be active and occasionally want to push their limits.
But the boom with electrified bicycles also has a dark side. The bikes attracted a segment of customers back to the streets who were no longer used to using bicycles and, above all, underestimated the speed. Accordingly, serious accidents are increasing. Last year, 24 people died in accidents involving e-bikes. So caution is advised.