Mountain biking skills instructors – they’re everywhere these days. That’s a good thing because most mountain bike crashes are inadvertently self-inflicted and a decent level of skill and confidence can help reduce the risk of crashing. But how did we get so many and is the standard by which mountain bike skills instructors are measured, too low?
By Sean Badenhorst
I need to mention here that I am a mountain bike skills instructor. I gave myself that title in 2010 when mountain biking was really growing but the skill level of riders was very low. I took over a series of mountain bike skills clinics from a colourful Aussie bloke named Geoff Vorpagel.
I started in Joburg, then expanded to Gauteng and then nationwide. I taught a couple of thousand riders skills between 2010 and 2017 and had sponsorship at various stages for my skills business from MiWay, Nedbank, Peugeot and Volvo. In late 2017 I stopped the TREAD Skills business because I had other interests to pursue and I felt it had run its course. Oh, in 2015 I also trained six others to teach skills using my system/syllabus. They were based where I wasn’t so that we could teach TREAD Skills Clinics at all the major centres all year round. I did that by design because I felt it didn’t make sense to create my own competition in Joburg, where I live.
Around 2015 I noticed a few other skills instructors making an entrance to the market. They seemed to be experienced mountain bikers or really good riders and had what I perceived to be a reasonable level of judgement. Although at the time they were competition and I initially felt they were encroaching on ‘my domain’. But I have always wanted the best for the mountain bike market as a whole and quickly moved on from feeling concerned. Besides, I had built a good reputation by then.
Since 2017 I have only taught private skills lessons and I don’t really promote this widely because I have a lot on my plate and don’t really want to make that a primary form of income. I really enjoy teaching skills though, which is why I still do it.
What I have noticed in the past five years is the arrival of two internationally accredited mountain bike skills programs in South Africa – PMBIA https://pmbia.org/ and BICP https://icp.bike/ . This is in addition to ‘organic coaches’, who have come through the UCI coaching system or have just used their high profile as a racer to create a skills business. So what we now have is a melting pot of skills instructors – a great many of them – with no real minimum standards. Maybe that’s not entirely correct, but no widely accepted level of minimum standards.
Yes, both PMBI and BICP instructors use ‘Internationally Accredited’ in their marketing, but I have ridden with some of their accredited instructors and noticed that they are not highly competent riders. Surely you need to be a highly competent mountain bike rider to be able to teach others how to ride better? One of the key characteristics of any sports technique coach is not only to be able to show you what to do, but to be able to quickly see what you’re not doing – and correct this. This comes from a combination of experience and competence.
Kevin Record is a passionate cyclist and mountain biker, who is retired from actual work and has volunteered to head up the Cycling South Africa Coaching Commission. He holds a UCI Level 1 coaching certificate and a Training Peaks Level 1 certificate – these are essentially physiological coaching qualifications. He is also qualified as a BICP skills instructor. He invited me for a coffee in late 2021 for a catch up chat and one of the topics we discussed was the lack of accreditation for mountain bike skills instructors in South Africa.
It’s a tricky topic because while you want to encourage the expansion of skills instructors, at some point, the governing body of the sport needs to have some level of involvement or say. Mountain biking isn’t the same as golf. In golf you can get a sunburned neck. In mountain biking you can actually break your neck. The fact that a person’s safety is at risk during a skills lesson means that the person that’s been paid to take responsibility during that lesson must have experience in mountain biking, experience in reading people and experience in First Aid.
Then, as Kevin pointed out, there’s the fact that we live in a sick world and anyone taking some kind of authority over minors should have some kind of police clearance. This had never occurred to me, but probably because I have only really focussed on teaching adults skills. He sent me the Australian Cycling’s Coach Pathway and Instructor Pathway documents as these are what he intends to mimic to a certain extent through Cycling South Africa.
For a cycling discipline skills instructor, Australia has four levels – Community, Foundation (Bronze), Development (Silver) and Advanced (Gold). Each has a set of minimum criteria and you generally progress through the ranks over time. This all makes sense and should really be in place in South Africa. But how? That’s Kevin’s challenge and he’s been speaking to the various dominant skills instructors and skills instructor trainers about it. Unfortunately he hasn’t had a great response because he’s essentially trying to create some kind of accreditation and structure for something that’s had no regulatory limitations until now.
“We are going to have a Recognised Prior Learning document that should be ready by May 2022. This will ensure that even though someone like yourself that has no official qualifications as a skills coach, you have more than 10 years of skills coaching experience and that must count for something in terms of recognition and accreditation” explained Kevin.
The Cycling SA Skill Instructor Certification will require the following too:
- Police Clearance Certificate, which will cover Child Protection, Sexual Offenders Register & Criminal Clearance.
- A valid First Aid Certificate (Level 1 minimum)
- Professional Indemnity Insurance
The Sexual Offenders Register clearance is particularly important for the growing female segment of the mountain bike market, especially where minors are involved. Unfortunately a number of sports coaches (in various sporting codes) have abused their positions of authority and athlete access for predatorial purposes and its essential that Cycling South Africa offers whatever protection is possible where it can.
Professional Indemnity Insurance is also interesting. I have never had this as a skills coach, but I have always insisted on teaching skills at an established mountain bike trails facility where the pupils sign the park indemnity. When I had the TREAD Skills business there was also a personal indemnity form that pupils signed. But it does make sense and I will look into it.
I started mountain biking in 1991 and have enjoyed watching the sport grow from a fringe discipline to the dominant cycling discipline and one of the most popular participation sports in the country. Much of mountain biking’s growth in South Africa is because it was largely unregulated for many years. Too many rules can crush a sport’s ability to grow. But now that it’s so big and has spawned hundreds of a small businesses, it’s only fair to expect some kind of regulation. And Kevin pointed out that CSA doesn’t intend to interfere and make money from an instructor accreditation system, it just wants to be the responsible governing body it’s expected to be.
For various reasons, Cycling South Africa and its predecessor, the SA Cycling Federation, have never really gained much credibility. That’s unfortunately what happens when a national sporting body relies almost entirely on volunteers, most of whom generally have a business or family interest in the sport. When you’re not paying someone to perform a role, you can’t expect consistent accountability.
I realise that the current Cycling South Africa structure under president Ciska Austin is working hard to change this, which is admirable. It’s also the environment in which Kevin is trying to bring some structure and accountability to the coaching and instructor segment of the market. I feel that it should be given the support it asks and will be the first to publicly criticise any shortcomings should they arise.
So to the many, many internationally accredited and non-internationally accredited mountain bike skills instructors in South Africa, I implore you to join me in following Cycling South Africa’s request to formalise our status, at least administratively for now, to ensure we work in an environment with minimum standards and a basic level of trust.
To find out more, email Kevin on kevin@vtconline.co.za
