Åre - A Biking Story

Text: Tobias Liljeroth / Magasin Åre (translated)

If common sense and economical interests had been allowed to govern [prevailed?], Åre would never have become one of the world’s greatest biking resorts. Fortunately, the locals have never really listened to those sorts of arguments.

When Jörgen Lindman and March Archer dragged their prehistoric mountainbikes onto the Åre cable car in the summer of 1987, neither of them had any idea that 35 years later, Åre would have become one of the world’s biggest biking resorts. Nor did they believe that the rough, bumpy, rocky and brutal terrain they then navigated with their bikes (without suspension forks but with steel frames and cantilever brakes) without wearing much more than styrofoam helmets, would have över 30 biking trails that even children could manage. At that point, it was more a question of survival.

”I was introduced to the mountain biking phenomenon circa 1987-88, and as a skier, it was love at first sight”.

Johan Lindström was also there, in the very early days of mountain biking in Åre. Trendy as ever, and at the time a complete madman who, among other things, managed to get his ski pass revoked after jumping over the funicular with skis, for him this new pop sport from North America seemed to be a perfect complement to skiing during the bare ground season. The feeling was the same, as was the playground.

“The first years on Åreskutan were tough. Biking was rock hard and the consequences of falling were major. We had no nice flow rides and the only lift to the top was Kabinbanan. This often meant stopping halfway down, at Hummeln, to change the brake pads as the old ones were usually ground down. The only trail that in any way resembled a modern bike trail was the Serpentine transport trail, where there were actually a couple of velodromes and jumps”.

It’s preposterous to compare that to today’s Cobra or Shimano trails, but by the standards of the time, the feeling of flow and flying were pretty similar. Because while biking as a sport has evolved enormously over the last 35 years, the basic sensations have not. Biking was fun and exciting then, as it is now, and elicited adrenaline and endorphins, just like today. The bikes looked and were deadly when used on a mountain like Åreskutan. With very steep angles, high seats, no or poorly functioning suspensions, narrow handlebars and brakes that only marginally slowed down the pace, the demands on the cyclists were high.

Biking during the early 90’s was not for the faint-hearted or the common man; It was tough, uncompromising and injury-inducing. And crazy fun. In other words, it was a perfect sport for Åre, especially at a time when the village was virtually empty in the summer and every visitor meant precious income for struggling village traders.

A Hell of a Drive

If ski lift operators and landowners were sceptical about a large-scale investment in biking, the village’s cyclists saw only opportunities and an enormous potential in this new sport. Within a couple of years, competitions at the highest national level began to be organised under the banner of the Åre Slalom Club and even a biking festival, Åre Bike Hållidey 1992.

But as usual when it comes to Åre, it didn’t stop there, fuelled by enthusiasm, entrepreneurial spirit and (as usual) a dose of hubris. Åre was going to organise a mountain bike world cup. Period.

Lindström picked up a carved wooden cap from Åre Hemslöjd and travelled to the 1993 World Mountain Bike Championships in Métabief, France, tracked down the top brass at the International Cycling Union (UCI), presented said wooden cap as a gift and declared that Åre wanted to organise the World Cup too.

A few months later, a fax arrived saying that the UCI was interested in organising the World Cup in Åre. However, the only dates available were 27th and 28th of May, at a time when the weather conditions in Åre can be whimsical at best. But as everyone in the village was convinced that it would work, the organising staff agreed.

And of course, the winter of 1994/-95 was one of the best in living memory and when it was time for the World Cup, there was so much snow on the mountain that the lifts were still transporting skiers and the downhill track had to be dug out. Just in time for the races, the temperature reached 20 degrees C, creating a mud puddle of epic proportions for the world’s best cyclists to tackle.

In the usual order, the ambitions of Åre cyclists did not stop there and it was soon decided that Åre would organise the World Championships. This was during the first golden age of mountain biking. The sport had just entered the Olympic programme in Atlanta in 1996 and was growing explosively. Major international TV channels were broadcasting the races, the top riders were raking in huge amounts of money and teams like Volvo-Cannondale had gigantic budgets to work with and setups that almost resembled Formula 1 teams in scope (well, ed. note).

Mountain biking was simply a big thing and Åre was chosen to organise the World Championships in the midst of the madness in 1999. The only problem was that no one in the village or the municipality knew about it… The organising staff with Jörgen Lindman, Örjan Hansson and Johan Lindström, had not established the idea of the World Championship before they launched it.

“We were a bunch of people who didn’t ask too many questions, we just got on with it. We applied for the World Championship and we got it, but it took a few months before we dared to say anything to the decision-makers in Åre. ‘Excuse me, but we’ve got the World Mountain Bike Championships 1999, is that okay?”

Åre’s biggest event

When the races started on 15 September 1999, the traffic jams stretched all the way from Björnänge into the village as the 30,000 or so spectators arrived. The area of the current Holiday Club car park was converted into a giant pit stop area for the teams, the village was buzzing and the riders took on what was perhaps the toughest XC course the world had ever seen. And when superstar Shaun Palmer threw away a given podium position by crashing on to the tarmac outside Åre Hemslöjd in Åre square, five metres from the finish of the men’s downhill race, one of the most iconic moments in mountain biking history was made.

To this day, the ‘99 World Championships is the biggest event ever organised in Åre, in competition with three Alpine World Championships. Biking was simply in Åre to stay and it was time for the next step in the development of Åre as a biking resort. New trails would be built and biking would take over the village in the summer and turn into a sustainable, long-term visitor’s product for a wide target group.

Then the curtains came down.

Just weeks after the World Championships, it was announced that the ski lifts had new owners and they were not in the least interested in pushing biking forward. All the momentum that had been built up disappeared overnight and the future of cycling in Åre looked bleak.

Then, as if out of nowhere, the next saviour in need appeared and his name was (and is) Uffe Olofsson. Uffe was also a skier who fell in love with mountain biking at an early age and, together with Lindström and Lindman, was one of the pioneers on two wheels on Åreskutan (commonly known as ”Skutan”).

He had seen how biking on Skutan had grown in the years since the World Championships, but in a somewhat lawless way via wild events such as the notorious Mountain Mayhem. As the problems and controversies grew, he quickly realised that biking could be banned if it wasn’t handled properly. People were getting injured left and right, water was running in the wrong places on the trails, and unauthorised construction was going on all over the mountain – something had to be done.

No sooner said than done, Mr Olofsson strode into the lift operator’s local office and said ‘give me four years and a budget and I promise we’ll make a profit in the summer’. He walked out of there with an OK from the lift operator’s local manager along with an annual budget of 500,000 to build trails. However, the project was still operating under the radar and unbeknownst to the head office in Sälen and it would be a number of years before biking would be fully accepted and blessed at the highest level.

Though the budget was small and the team had to carry out a sleight of hand, it would become the basis of a project called Åre Bike Park. The idea was to bring biking to a wider audience and make it more sustainable, both in terms of visitors and the environment.

The sport that had once come to the village as a pure experience and personal challenge, which then became a pure competitive sport at the very highest level, was now to be taken back to being an experience and a reason to travel, but with a goal of commercial profits. The model to build on was on the other side of the Atlantic, in Whistler, where the bike park was already attracting large numbers of visitors in the summer, with biking that was nothing like the classic downhill experience where crashes and breaks were a natural part, and a focus on the experience. They had also created a new type of cycling, performed on wide, smooth trails with jumps, known as flow trails.

When the people of Åre saw a video of the A-Line, the world’s first flow/jump trail for biking, the goal was to build a similar one in Åre. The result was Flinbanan, Åre’s and Sweden’s first stumbling step into the modern biking era. In all honesty, the first version of the Flinbanan didn’t look anything like the A-Line, something Olofsson and his team realised when they finally made their pilgrimage to the Canadian west coast and saw the reality in front of their own two wheels.

“When we started this, we had to learn as we went along because there was really nowhere to get the knowledge about it. So after we had been over to Whistler and seen what was good and bad here at home, we simply had to rebuild most of it.”

The Åre Bike Park catalyst

Despite battling constant headwinds in the early years, Åre Bike Park would prove to be just the catalyst that outdoor biking in Åre, and the whole of the Nordic region for that matter, so badly needed. At the same time as the Åre Bike Park saw the light of day, another shift took place in the village, with more people moving to Åre for the sake of biking – not for the winter as had traditionally been the case. Dedicated people who were really enthusiastic about their passion. Because just like Åre’s early cycling pioneers, the new wave of cyclists were not going to take no for an answer, nor were they afraid to speak up for themselves.

They persistently proselytised the message of biking and the need for development to the powers that be and decision-makers, both to be able to meed the locals’ desire for more and better biking but also to create prerequisites for year-round life in Åre that would attract visitors in the summer as well. Sometimes, that strive lead to practical results, and just as often it was transformed into persistent nagging concerning the same things over and over.   But as the years went by, a stronger community of cyclists emerged. It was a community shaped by a love of biking in rough terrain but also of Åre’s unique Scandinavian environment and conditions. Inspiration was drawn from British Columbia, Colorado, Scotland, the Italian Riviera and the Alps.

A ‘no’ was always seen as a temporary answer that would soon turn into a ‘yes’, and if you were met with another ‘no’, you just kept on fighting. The local bike club Åre Bergscyklister was reorganised; they started their own cycling festival, organised competitions, started social biking, dug their own dirt track, started activities for children and young people and nagged the village authorities even more.

The powers that be, largely because many of them are cyclists themselves, soon realised the potential and power of biking and how it was transforming Åre from a mere winter resort to a village that is alive and kicking all year round.

Biking for Everyone

When the first trails in the Björnen Trail Centre opened in 2018, it was perhaps the final sign that biking, which once started as a tough underground phenomenon, had become both accepted and a sport for the whole family and for all ages.

Would this have been the case without a local community of enthusiastic cyclists who have never stopped being passionate about their sport since the late 80s? Probably not. Because while skiing has largely relied on well-founded, large-scale economic decisions since its inception, the foundation of biking has always been unwavering grassroots commitment from all parties involved. On the other hand, biking and mountain biking are still young sports in constant development, and what we have seen so far is probably just the beginning.

Johan Lindström, the pioneer who was involved in the early years, was headhunted to the international biking federation UCI after the World Championships -99 and disappeared from the village to, among other things, help take BMX to the Olympic Games.

After 20 years of absence, he decided to move back to Åre with his family and he almost immediately realised that the vision, or dream, that Åre’s early cyclists set out over 30 years ago had become a reality. He was met by a village full of cyclists, where every other car had a bike strapped to the roof or on the towbar, a mountain with a vast variety of trails and a village that lived and breathed biking.

“It was incredible to see. And we agree that biking is here to stay and that there’s still great potential. Åre is the biking mecca of Sweden, there are other players out there but none of them can compete with Åre”.

The Pace of Time

1987 Jörgen Lindman and Marc Archer venture on their first downhill experience via Kabinbanan.

1990 Anders Hansson establishes rental and repair shop Åre MTB Center.

1992 The World Cup Lift is set for biking for the first time. Åre Bike Hållidey premieres with Skutan Runt, Hill Climb and other events.

1993 Åre Slalom Club (Åre SLK) adopts mountainbike as part of their operation and arrange a number of competitions. Åreliftarna opens up more lifts for biking.

1995 The Downhill World Cup is hosted by Åre SLK. Åreliftarna produces the first mountainbke trail map.

1996 Åre Bergcyklister is established. The 1000 meter trails is built and becomes Åre’s first dedicated biking trail.

1999 Åre hosts the Mountain Bike World Championships.

2003 The festival Åre Mountain Mayhem is established.

2005 Åre Bike Park is established and Flinbanan is built.

2006 Easy Rider becomes the first easier trail from the Kabinbanan mountain station.

2007 The first part of the jump trail Shimano is open for business.

2008 Åre Bergcyklister is reshaped with five members and a negative financial result (-5000 SEK).

2010 Åre Bike Festival is established.

2014 Åre hosts Sweden’s first enduro race.

2017 Building start for Björnen’s trail center.

2019 Åre invests 16,6 million SEK on a biking project finansed by local businesses and EU funding.

2022 Åre Bergcyklister’s pump track at the Swedish Alpine National Arena is established.

2023 Åre Bergcyklister have over 700 members and is the second largest sports association in the county.

Åre – a World Class Biking Destination

In the years 2019 to 2022, Åre Destination promoted a project for biking development in Åre. The construction of the trail area in Björnen is the largest part of the project, along with establishing pump tracks, events and marketing communications. Åre – En cykelhistoria, describes Åre’s history of biking up until 2023.

Åre – En cykelhistoria