Mountain Bike Sales Soar

Koch still laughs when he thinks about what happened next. "We took the tickets and waited for the ranger to leave," he said, "and then we just sneaked back in." Since then, Mullen said, "we haven't stayed away. We've just been more careful. We saw a coyote yesterday, and rattlesnakes."

The sale of Mountain Biking Morzine has almost doubled in the past five years and cycling today is second only to swimming as the most popular recreational sport in America. Nowhere is the sport growing faster than in the Rocky Mountain states, where something of a bike culture has sprung up.

Mountain Biking Morzine is on a roll across the nation and Colorado is setting the pace, partly because of the popularity of the new mountain bikes and the running of some major races that attract bike champions from around the world.

"Colorado is becoming a center of cycling in the United States,'' says Ted Costantino, editor of Bicycle Guide magazine in Boston. "Whatever happens happens there first.''

The Bicycle Federation of America reports that bike sales nationally have almost doubled in the last five years. Some 82 million Americans ride bikes, making cycling the second most popular recreational sport in the nation, after swimming.

One big reason is the emergence of the mountain bike. The fat-tire, upright bikes are more stable and easier to ride than the streamlined road bikes that force riders to hunch over the handlebars. Reminiscent of the old "newspaper bikes,'' mountain bikes appeal to an older crowd.

Nationwide, about one-third of all bikes sold were mountain bikes, but experts say most of them will keep to the pavement and never touch a patch of dirt.

In fact, a study by the Bicycle Market Research Institute in Boston shows that the metropolitan area with the most people interested in cycling per capita in 1986 was, surprisingly, Gary-Hammond, Ind., followed closely by Chicago.

Denver ranked fourth in the number of bicycle enthusiasts per capita, following the Anaheim-Santa Ana, Calif., area.

But in terms of bicycle sales, nowhere is cycling hotter than in the Rocky Mountain states, where people bought more bikes per capita last year than in any other region, according to BMRI. And Coloradans led the pack. Colorado is home to some major races, including the Coors International Bicycle Classic and the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic, which draw racers from around the world.

Mountain Biking