Bikemag.com Exclusive Interview: Ned Overend
When were the first mountain bike world championships? When did the UCI step in and become our governing body? These questions recently came up at the office and nobody had any answers. When our library of text books didn't even help, I knew just who to call—Ned Overend.
Overend was not only around in those early days, he was schooling the field. But what really sets him apart is the fact that, nearly twenty years later, he's still winning races and influencing the sport on many different levels. Here's what the first-ever mountain bike world champion had to say about the original world championships and how the sport has changed since then.
BIKE: Were there world championship races before 1990's UCI worlds?
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OVEREND: Europe's Winning Magazine sponsored the first world championships in the French Alps in 1987. We also had a worlds here in Mammoth, CA in 1987. I won both of those in '87, actually.
The UCI became the main governing body in 1990 and that changed everything. It gave mountain biking more credibility, now as world champ you could wear the rainbow jersey. In fact, the UCI's early support is what helped us get into the Olympics so quickly. Look at triathlon; they've been around longer than mountain biking and they didn't get into the Olympics until 2000 because two dueling federations governed them. Adventure racing is in a similar situation and people aren't taking it as seriously. When the UCI became our governing body it gave us a lot of significance.
BIKE: What do you think about where NORBA is today?
OVEREND: They're doing a great job right now, the administration is a great crew. As far as membership, competing promoters that don't require NORBA licenses to race are really hurting things overall. There are too many non-NORBA sanctioned races and tons of racers without NORBA licenses.
BIKE: You recently won the mountain bike stage of the Red Bull Divide and Conquer relay, how did that compare to a standard mountain bike race?
OVEREND: It was a point-to-point similar to the mountain bike races we had in the eighties. But that Divide and Conquer was one of the steepest, longest climbs I've ever done. The prize money was pretty big [$17,500 cash purse to the winning five-man team], and I have to say, if they had stuff like that in my early days of racing, I probably would have focused on that instead of mountain bike racing. When you're racing professionally you have to take prize money into account.
BIKE: You were one of the first to make a living racing mountain bikes; about how many of today's mountain bike racers are getting salaries?
OVEREND: Maybe 25 or 30% are getting salaries, and by salary I only mean they might be getting a couple thousand for a year of racing. Probably less than 25 guys are making a full-time career of it. When I was racing pro we had about 50 guys making a decent living off racing, but things were different then.
BIKE: What do you think contributes to the downturn in sponsorship?
OVEREND: There are so many other sports for sponsors to dump their money into. In mountain biking alone you have freeride and downhill and cross country. Back when salaries were higher sponsors didn't have so many options.
BIKE: Do you think freeriding's popularity is reviving the sport?
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OVEREND: First of all it's not going away, it's a growth area. I'm not against it by any means; my son and his friends are into it, I even mess around with them sometimes. But I don't think it's helping anything but freeride. It's sure not helping cross country.
If they're not careful with it, they could really hurt the trail access side of the sport. A lot of freeriders go out and build ramps and stuff on public land, that's not good. IMBA's doing a great job, they're getting involved and setting guidelines.
BIKE: What's your opinion of the short track XC at the NORBA Nationals in Sonoma?
OVEREND: They need to weed out road bikes. Expense wise it hurts the small guy. If they keep having courses where road bikes have an advantage, all riders have to start worrying about bringing road bikes. But they can't really create a regulation wheel size with all the 29ers out there. All they really have to do is make a challenging course. All it would take is one short technical section and they wouldn't be able to ride road bikes at all.
BIKE: You've seen the sport go through some big changes, do you think it'll ever return to its “heyday” status of the ninties?
OVEREND: I don't think you'll ever have so much racing participation. There are just too many sports going on. I would like to see more [cross-country racing], that would really help sponsorship and salaries. There are a lot more people out there riding, but they're doing different types of riding, not just racing.
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