It wasn't actually time for a new "Sport Switzerland" study until 2026. Before that, the Federal Office of Sport Baspo published a survey of people's sporting behavior in Switzerland in 2008, 2014 and 2020. However, coronavirus forced the research team to take a "snapshot", as Baspo calls the somewhat slimmer study. "Sport Schweiz light 2022" is its name and it shows how the pandemic and the associated restrictions have changed recreational sport in Switzerland.

First, the less expected result: the Swiss population did less sport overall in the pandemic years from March 2020 to March 2022 than in the previous years, but more than in 2017 and all other years studied before that. A minority were more active during the pandemic, but a significant proportion of the population stopped playing sport altogether.

From a mountain biking perspective, the good news is that our sport has increased its "market share" by 3 percent since 2020. 10.9 percent of people aged 15 and over ride wide tires on trails. According to Switzerland's age distribution, that's just under 800,000 men and women. According to Sport Switzerland, the gender distribution is around 30 to 70, with an average age of 44.5 years.

Unfortunately, the total number of male and female bikers is diluted, adulterated or whatever you want to call it. We'd love to know how many of these 800,000 only ride mountain bikes, how many gravel exclusively and how many do both. Are gravel bikers responsible for the additional 3 percent? After all, that's almost 220,000 more people than in 2020 who regularly pedal off-road.

The sales curve for gravel bikes is indeed pointing steeply upwards, from 5992 bikes in 2019 to 21,562 in 2022 according to the statistics from Velosuisse. However, even if you add up the gravel bikes sold since 2019 (since these have been recorded separately), at 46,767 (including e-gravel) this is significantly fewer than the additional 220,000 bikers. In the same period, Swiss specialist retailers sold 358,705 mountain bikes and e-mountain bikes.

So despite the gravel boom, the majority of the growth is attributable to mountain bikes. Welcome, dear new bikers!