Amy Nolan insists that her son Eli is no bike prodigy. Yes, this 12-year-old from Crested Butte, Colorado rails switchbacks and hucks ledges. And yes, he races enduro against bearded teens that are four to five years his senior, and still places in the top 50 percent. But he’s not a particularly gifted athlete, Nolan says. Eli just happened to get a balance bike when he was 18 months old.
“We bought him a Strider in November 2007, a few days after they’d arrived in stores,” says Nolan, who had heard about European versions but had never seen anything like the pedal-free two-wheeler that her son soon used to rip down neighborhood streets and local singletrack. Before he’d even turned two, Eli learned to balance on two wheels.
So did my 7-year-old daughter, who started biking shortly after she’d taken her first tentative steps. As a toddler, she figured out how to negotiate curbs and roots. Now, she regularly passes adults stalled on technical trails in Fruita and Gunnison. Some guys talk about the humiliation of getting chicked, but the rise of the balance bike generation presents a new reality: getting tyked.
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Since 2007, when the Strider and other balance bikes first appeared on the U.S. market, kids have been redefining what learning to ride looks like. My generation had to wait till we were 6 to 10 years old before we were big and strong enough to pedal our heavy, 35-pound “kiddie” bikes. Now, training wheels are becoming obsolete, and many kids learn to balance on two wheels before they even learn to talk. Balance bikes have radically accelerated the rate at which children develop bike-handling skills, and what’s emerging is a new breed of cyclist that promises to transform all of this sport’s norms—from gear to racing to trail design.
“When I was racing, kids were 17 and 18 years old before they were ready to compete on a national level,” says Damion Smith, a former downhiller and current racing team manager for Yeti Cycles. “Now, we’re seeing 12- and 13-year-olds that are real contenders because they’ve got the same skill set.”
Raised on balance bikes, these kids are notching milestones that the rest of us couldn’t tackle till adulthood—if ever.
Many of today’s precocious groms started their cycling careers on an invention that Ryan McFarland jury-rigged in his garage. A bicyclist and motorcyclist since he was five years old, McFarland was impatient for his son Bode to start biking, but the two-year-old could barely get his anvil-heavy tricycles to move. So McFarland hacked away at a little K-Mart pedal bike, lowering the seat and removing the top tube, pedals, and drivetrain. “My goal was to make the lightest, lowest, simplest possible machine,” says McFarland, who suspected that his rig would offer a better, easier alternative to the existing bikes they’d tried.
When Bode got on his creation, McFarland witnessed a revelation. “The things he was doing just blew me away,” he recalls. Bode was negotiating tree roots, hopping curbs, and popping wheelies over downed trees. “I realized, something powerful is happening here,” says McFarland. So in January 2007 he founded Strider Bikes, which weren’t the first-ever balance bikes—Karl Drais developed one in 1817, and in 1997 Kokua introduced the LIKEaBIKE to German kids, who gradually adopted the new rigs—but Strider brought the balance bike concept to U.S. toddlers and opened the door for other brands (such as Islabikes and Woom) to follow suit.
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“We’re tapping into kids’ innate desire for mobility,” McFarland says. Toddlers may still be unsteady walkers, but on balance bikes, they quickly become speedy and sure. Developmentally, toddlers are still forming new neural pathways and connections—so when two-year-olds learn to ride, bike skills get hard-wired into kids’ brains.
Now, two-year-olds are increasingly spotted on local pump tracks and bike parks, where they hone basic and advanced skills. By the time they’re four, they’re ready for real bikes—though they themselves may only weigh 40 pounds. That’s prompted some companies to develop better pedal bikes for kids: Trailcraft, Cleary, Prevelo, and Spawn are among the companies that have sprung up to meet growing demand for light and capable kids bikes.
Even existing bike brands have noticed the surge in ridiculously skilled young riders, and are angling for a piece of that market. “When you go to Squamish now, you’ll see dozens of 8- to 12-year-olds riding the same high-level trails as the adults,” says Joe Brown, Kona’s product manager for youth bikes. So Kona overhauled its entry-level Makena and Hula models for 2018, shaving five pounds off each. The company also plans to redesign its full-featured youth models for 2019. Transition, meanwhile, expanded its size range for the full-suspension Scout and Patrol models, which are offered in XS for the first time this year. “We were motivated by the promise of reaching into the kids’ market,” says Lars Sternberg, Transition’s marketing manager.
Not only is gear adapting to kids’ needs, but the race scene is also seeing a surge of conspicuously young participants. Nationwide, many downhill and enduro races are reporting that the under-18 age group is growing faster than any other category. At a recent race at Stevens Pass Bike Park in Skykomish, Washington, 78 of the 330 participants were under 14 years old. And coaches are struggling to find new ways to challenge kids who, in many cases, have already mastered local trails. Crested Butte nine-year-olds regularly ride Doctor Park, a classic descent with steep drop-offs and loose sandy sections. “It’s a totally appropriate challenge for them,” says Nolan, who heads up Crested Butte Devo. “But we’re starting to ask ourselves, ‘What are we going to do with these kids in three years?’”
Most parents feel eager to have their progeny share their passion, and cyclists are no exception. “Balance bikes have gotten kids participating in the race scene, and it’s really great to see that at such a young age,” says Yeti’s Smith, who has two daughters (they’ve already started racing at two and five years old). Many adult competitions now include balance bike events, and the 2- to 5-year-olds that participate in the annual Strider Cup series of international races prove that you don’t have to be an adult—or even grade-school age—to exhibit real racing prowess.
But some coaches worry that kids who start racing as toddlers could burn out by the time they’re teens, when they finally approach physical maturity. Smith also has concerns about kids’ readiness for racing’s risk and rigors. “All the training protocols are for adults, not kids who are still developing physically,” he explains. Plus, the 12 and 13-year-olds that Smith and other talent scouts are now targeting haven’t always developed the ability to accurately assess a trail’s dangers. “Most still need a parent or mentor to help with that,” says Smith. As the Strider kids advance into expert terrain, the gap between their physical skills and their psychological maturity only widens.
That’s one key difference between the balance bike generation and today’s adults: Most of us ventured into riskier riding after we outgrew our childlike sense of invincibility. Alison Dunlap, an Olympic cyclist and the 2001 World Mountain Bike Champion, didn’t start riding trails till she was in college. “But I’m sure I would’ve been more inclined to ride the ‘extreme’ stuff earlier if I had started at 18 months,” she says.
And if 10-year-olds are riding Squamish and Doctor Park, what kind of trail features will they require by the time they’re in their twenties? Even Rampage-style stunts may seem too tame for such a born-and-bred ridership. “Bode can ride sketchy rock drops and can stoppie into a rear wheel hop—and when I look at his sheer ease and calm on the bike I think, ‘No matter how much I practice, I can’t do that, and never will,’” says McFarland. “Most of us have to think about our riding, but he’s got a connection to the bike that makes riding as natural to him as walking.”
More than spiking cyclists’ skills, balance bikes’ best consequence might be their ability to recruit and retain new riders. “Electronics have a huge appeal for kids, and organized sports like soccer and swimming now start when kids are four, not eight or ten as they used to,” says McFarland. “If we want to get kids excited about riding bikes, we’ve got to get to them before all that. We’ve got to make biking number one again. We’ve got to reach kids first.”
[Related: The 12 Best Kids Bikes of 2018]
