English bike guide faces imprisonment in France
Alistair Jamieson has been running a guiding company specializing in bike vacations in France since 2003. But now he is facing trouble: the French state has officially banned him from riding guests as a guide on French territory. The reason given for the measure is that Jamieson does not have sufficient training. This is also confirmed by Julien Rebuffet, head of the French guide training program: "The work of a mountain bike instructor or guide is highly regulated in France, and it is necessary to have a mountain bike guide diploma to ride guests on a mountain bike. These diplomas are issued by the state in France. French guide training is very extensive and takes around 600 hours, whereas guide training in England is much shorter or does not exist at all in other countries. The consequence of this is that foreign diplomas cannot be accepted in France, as the training levels are too different."
Risk for Swiss guides
Guiding in France is therefore also not permitted for Swiss guides. The Swiss Cycling Guide national guide training course lasts around 250 hours over 30 training days. There is currently no recognition of the Swiss diploma in France, but a first attempt at European recognition will be made at the end of September. Under the leadership of Swiss Cycling Guide, IMBA Europe and the French guide training organization MCF, representatives of national training programs will come together in Davos for the first "European Guide and Instructor Summit". "Our aim is to create a uniform understanding of quality across Europe and to establish a common guide title. Swiss Cycling Guide is playing a leading role in this and will strive for quality," says Claude Balsiger, Head of Training at Swiss Cycling Guide.
Improved training for the Swiss market
According to Balsiger, the guide market in Switzerland is completely underdeveloped: "We keep hearing from tourism that more trained guides are needed, yet there are still many untrained guides out and about". While there are clear guidelines for winter and alpine sports, the market for mountain bike guides is not regulated. Swiss Cycling Guide has been working for some time on national recognition of the profession and insurance solutions for mountain bike guides. While collective professional liability insurance for Swiss Cycling Guides can already be offered from 2015, recognition of the profession will take a few more years. Efforts are being made not only to raise the thresholds, but also to simplify access to training. "J+S mountain bike experts, snow sports instructors or already very experienced guides will have a simplified entry into our training. We can see that there is already a lot of experience in many segments of outdoor sports, but snow sports and mountain biking, for example, are two different sports and cannot be covered by a ski instructor training course," explains Balsiger.
Note: This content has been automatically translated from German. Please report any incorrect translations.