{"id":2089382,"date":"2026-08-12T09:54:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T06:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2089382"},"modified":"2026-08-12T09:54:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T06:54:00","slug":"this-1994-norba-race-video-shows-how-much-mountain-biking-has-changed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2089382","title":{"rendered":"This 1994 NORBA race video shows how much mountain biking has changed"},"content":{"rendered":"
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File photo: Jeff Barber<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A friend recently shared this video<\/a> of the 1994 NORBA Championship Series men\u2019s cross-country mountain bike race in Helen, Georgia, and I had two thoughts.<\/p>\n

One: Sports broadcasters made really questionable fashion and music choices back then.<\/p>\n

And two: This looks nothing like mountain bike racing today.<\/p>\n

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From the bikes to the course to how pro racers rode their bikes, it\u2019s clear that everything has changed. At the same time, if you look closely enough, you\u2019ll see that one important thing has stayed the same.<\/p>\n

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The bikes were comically under-gunned<\/h2>\n

Watching this video, you can see the top riders like John Tomac, Tinker Juarez<\/a>, and Dave Wiens<\/a> getting absolutely beat up riding hardtails across the rocky and rooty trails. It doesn\u2019t appear that anyone was on a full-suspension bike, and every fork looked to have 100mm of travel or less. Just watching the descents gives me arm pump. And also a headache.<\/p>\n

And check out those tires. They\u2019re even skinnier than today\u2019s gravel tires, which clearly made handling a challenge. Judging by the video, the riders were running extremely high pressures, no doubt to avoid pinch flats, which had the bikes skittering through the roughest sections. Not to mention the wheels were small-diameter 26ers.<\/p>\n

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The wheels, in part, make these pros\u2019 bikes look ridiculously small for the riders by today\u2019s standards. The handlebars are incredibly narrow and the wheelbases are short. All appear to be running double or triple chainring drivetrains. <\/p>\n

Contrast that with today\u2019s bikes featuring 100-120mm+ of suspension travel front and rear, high-volume tires, and modern geometry, and it\u2019s not surprising that XC races are much, much faster in 2026. In fact, Canyon recently noted that over the last 10 years, professional cross-country race speeds have increased by 33%, and I would argue that\u2019s due in large part to how much bikes have improved.<\/p>\n

But race courses have changed a lot, too.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
1994 NORBA race video screenshot.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Are today\u2019s cross-country mountain bike race courses more or less technical?<\/h2>\n

The answer depends on who you ask, and also what you mean by the word \u201ctechnical.\u201d <\/p>\n

In 2018, Singletracks\u2019 Matt Miller concluded cross-country race courses had become more technical<\/a> in part to satisfy television audiences and also to take advantage of how capable modern bikes had become. When I put this to three-time Olympian Geoff Kabush on the Singletracks podcast<\/a> recently, he pushed back against the idea that modern courses are more technical.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI would argue there\u2019s more features, but I wouldn\u2019t necessarily say they\u2019re more technical. They hold up a lot more in the weather.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which is to say, today\u2019s courses are generally purpose-built and lean toward man-made features rather than natural terrain. And boy, did that Helen course lean on the wild side.<\/p>\n

For starters, you\u2019d never see a creek<\/s> river crossing like this in a professional cross-country bike race for safety and even environmental reasons. Perhaps not surprisingly, most riders chose to run across the raging stream rather than take their chances trying to ride it.<\/p>\n

A mountain bike trail guidebook published after the race rated the course a triple<\/em> black diamond.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
File photo: Jeff Barber<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At one point in the video, Penny Davidson says, \u201cthis is a downhill approach to a very tight and technical hike-a-bike section.\u201d Hike-a-bike<\/em> on an XC race course? I\u2019m not sure if the course was designed to force riders off their bikes, but it\u2019s clear the riders found it challenging. That\u2019s not to say riders bike every inch of today\u2019s courses either; check out this pileup at the 2022 Snowshoe World Cup XC race above.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>
This may not be a technical feature, but it\u2019s clear that today\u2019s XC riders are highly skilled. File photo: Jeff Barber<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To be fair, modern XC race courses have their own share of challenging features, though perhaps \u201ctechnical\u201d isn\u2019t the right word for them<\/a>. Riders today will find jumps, rock gardens, and root drops in short bursts that make for great photos even if they don\u2019t separate the riders like a sustained climb or technical stretch might have in years past.<\/p>\n

Overall race times and distances are shorter today as well, which some attribute to the demand for more spectator- and TV-friendly courses. Whereas some NORBA races stretched to more than 30 miles and nearly three hours, today\u2019s professional XC races are generally under an hour and a half and cover less than 20 miles.<\/p>\n

How we ride our mountain bikes has changed<\/h2>\n

Another friend who watched the NORBA video commented that the riders seemed to be pedaling in really high, grindy gears at a slow cadence, especially uphill. Not only that, we see riders jumping off their bikes and charging through steep and technical sections on foot, cyclocross style, which makes me think the gearing wasn\u2019t optimal, at least for this particular course.<\/p>\n

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In this video, at least, nobody\u2019s wheels leave the ground. It\u2019s all smash and no float. Here again, modern bike features \u2014 like high-volume tires and suspension that actually works \u2014 allow riders to pedal in a much smoother, more controlled way. <\/p>\n

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Mountain bikers are as passionate as ever<\/h2>\n

The one thing that hasn\u2019t changed since 1994 is mountain bikers\u2019 passion for the sport. Just look at those crowds and the intensity of the racers sprinting to the finish! <\/p>\n

Is mountain biking easier today? I\u2019m not sure about that, though clearly it\u2019s changed a lot. Work is underway to clean up parts of the old Helen NORBA course, and I\u2019d like to get up there one day soon to see how the trails stack up against today\u2019s trails.<\/p>\n

But you can bet I won\u2019t be riding them on a 1990s mountain bike.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<!–<\/p>\n

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Related articles<\/h4>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t–><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/a><\/p>\n
Mountain Bikes and Gear<\/a><\/div>\n
The trails got smoother and the bikes got burlier. Something has to give.<\/a><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Interior<\/a><\/p>\n
Mountain bikes<\/a><\/div>\n
Today’s mountain bikes are the cheapest they’ve been in a decade. We have the receipts.<\/a><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/a><\/p>\n
Cross Country Bikes<\/a><\/div>\n
How TV and Bikes are Making World Cup XC Courses More Technical<\/a><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Close-up<\/a><\/p>\n
Mountain Bikes and Gear<\/a><\/div>\n
Which old-school MTB feature do you miss the most?<\/a><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

File photo: Jeff Barber A friend recently shared this video of the 1994 NORBA Championship Series men\u2019s cross-country mountain bike race in Helen, Georgia, and I had two thoughts. One: Sports broadcasters made really questionable fashion and music choices back then. And two: This looks nothing like mountain bike racing today. From the bikes to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,274],"class_list":["post-2089382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-singletracks-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2089382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2089382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2089382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2089382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2089382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2089382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}