16/11/2025
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14QAt4dCZwC/
The new “inclusive” cycling clubs are going to kill someone.
And I’ll be the one who gets called a gatekeeper for saying it.
I watched a group ride last week. 30 riders. Zero hand signals.
Overlapping wheels everywhere.
One guy braking mid-corner in the bunch.
It was the most “welcoming” ride I’ve ever seen.
No intimidating rules. No stuffy customs. Just “show up and ride.”
It was also a ticking time bomb.
I LOVE that cycling is becoming more accessible.
The traditional club model, with its unwritten rules and insider knowledge, has kept too many people out for too long.
But the pendulum has swung too far.
These “rules” we’re abandoning? They’re not there to exclude people.
They’re cycling’s version of Darwin.
Holding your line through corners. Signaling when you stand. Never overlapping wheels. Calling out road hazards. Knowing how to ride a crosswind in formation.
These customs weren’t invented by stuffy club elites to make newcomers feel small. They were developed over 100+ years of trial and error.
They exist because the alternative was crashing, injury, and chaos.
Every mature industry has “unwritten rules” that seem like gatekeeping but are actually compressed wisdom.
In surgery, there’s a protocol for everything.
In aviation, there’s a checklist culture.
In cycling, there are bunch riding customs.
Calling these “barriers to entry” misses the point entirely.
I rode with a new club last month that throws out all the “old school” rules.
They’re growing fast.
Everyone’s having fun.
Until someone hit a pothole and went down.
Then three more riders went down because they were overlapping wheels and couldn’t react.
The organizer said: “Crashes happen, it’s part of cycling.”
No.
Preventable crashes happen when you ignore 100 years of hard-earned knowledge.
I want to mix up the status quo
I want new clubs that challenge stuffy customs
I want fresh energy and perspectives
I want lower barriers to entry
But
I also want these clubs teaching the fundamentals that keep people safe
I want them respecting why the rules exist before breaking them
You can be inclusive AND have standards.
The most welcoming thing you can do for a new rider isn’t to eliminate all the rules—it’s to teach them why those rules exist and give them the skills to ride confidently in a group.
We don’t need to choose between tradition and inclusion.
We need to teach the newcomers what took us decades to learn.
Because the group ride is more fun when everyone knows what they’re doing.
And the rules aren’t there to exclude you, they’re there to bring you home safely.
