14,499 euros for a mountain bike, 1,300 francs for an annual lift pass: mountain biking is getting more expensive. And as the money flows in, the sport is changing. It’s shaping not only the prices, but also the trails, the range of offerings, and the character of the sport.

A bicycle disappears every two minutes. It’s not the work of opportunistic thieves, but of organized networks. They operate systematically and quickly, and the police often look on helplessly. Their most lucrative target: expensive mountain bikes.

Every mountain bike tire sheds rubber. That’s common knowledge. Until recently, however, little research had been done on the impact these particles have on the forest floor. Now there are figures that are raising eyebrows.

Ride it for two seasons, then sell it to finance your next mountain bike: That plan won’t work in 2026. The used mountain bike market is saturated, prices are falling, and private sellers are facing pressure from all sides.

The industry stokes fears of outdated designs and markets new carbon technologies and so-called recycling as a green cycle. Neither stands up to fact-checking.

A serious collision on the hiking trail. The police arrive on the scene. But the investigators aren’t just looking for skid marks on the singletrack; they’re also removing the GPS device from the handlebars. Swiss court records show that riders’ own data is systematically seized as evidence following accidents.

The industry is debating wattage limits. Lutz Scheffer considers this a red herring. The designer and engineer, who has been developing mountain bikes for decades, warns against declaring peak values to be the main problem, while heavy systems and tuning have a greater disruptive impact. His guest article is a plea for more physics—and against rules that look good on paper but fail to solve the actual problem in practice.

Almost everything on mountain bikes has gone digital: gears, motors, suspension. Only the brakes remained off-limits. Too close to that split second when a rider doesn't want to calculate, interpret, or hope. They just want the bike to brake. Now, that boundary is beginning to shift. Publicly available documents show how Shimano is reorganizing the direct connection between the lever and the braking force. In contrast, the publicly available evidence for the often-touted completely wireless SRAM brake is much weaker. The dilemma is clear: the more sensors and software there are between the hand and the braking force, the more immediate control, reparability, and trust come under pressure.

Three days of operation in winter. After that, a bike park is supposed to save what an old model can no longer support.

A World Cup bike packed with electronics is set to finance bikes that don't even need gears. It is precisely this contradiction that makes the Scott raffle more than just a charity event.

Two-tenths bar tire pressure displayed in real time. At the end of February, Tubolito presented SYNCD, the world's first inner tube that transmits air pressure live to the cockpit via Bluetooth. The tech community applauds. But if you take a step back and look at developments in the bike industry, you quickly realize that the smart inner tube is just a symbol of a much bigger problem. Mountain bikes are suffering from massive sensor overkill.

With the Meta Vanguard, Oakley is launching performance eyewear that films, processes training data and communicates directly with the Garmin ecosystem. An exciting approach. Also for use on a mountain bike?