Bike for all: Cycling more popular than football, says government survey

Sport England’s Active People survey has revealed that cycling is the fourth most popular sport and recreational activity, beating football. But cycle commuting was not factored in to the findings so the activity’s popularity is even greater than the survey suggests.

The new survey revealed that 3.1 million adults take part in recreational cycling every month at levels beneficial for health. Cycling came out as the fourth most popular sport and recreational activity in England, ahead of the national sport, football, and behind only walking, swimming and gym activities.

British Cycling’s chief executive Peter King believes the actual levels of cycling could be even higher than the survey indicates:

“We are clearly a nation of active cyclists and cycling is already making a key contribution to the sporting and physical activity agenda of the Nation.

“However, the survey excludes cycle commuting and placed gym-based cycling within the gym figures. British Cycling’s Everyday Cycling programme has identified that commuting represents as much as a third of all cycling activity in England.

“If you add the people who are riding for active travel purposes, such as commuting to work or school, which were not counted in the survey, plus the growing popularity of exercise bikes and spinning in gyms, then the news for cycling is even better.”

To support the results of Sport England’s Active People survey, British Cycling is now setting the nation a million miles cycling challenge for 2007 through its Everyday Cycling programme. Everyday Cycling is aimed directly at the recreational cyclist and promotes cycling through an interactive website and a programme of cycling events.

Cyclists nation-wide are challenged to visit everydaycycling.com and log their cycling activities through the site’s “Activity Log”. In the last 6 months, a rapidly growing number of users have already logged over 100,000 miles, including 35,000 miles of commuting.

To help the million miles challenge get moving, Everyday Cycling has launched a series of cycling challenges to encourage more people to dust down their bikes and get riding and join in the fun. There are set challenges to adopt, such as riding 500 miles, or riding to work 100 times in 2007. However, users can also create their own unique challenges.