In Europe We Take Cycling a Bit Too Seriously

Before I visited, I expected cycling in Asia to feel like a version of what we know in Europe. Younger, faster-growing, but essentially the same sport pointed in the same direction. I was wrong.

What I found was something genuinely different. And honestly, something we in Europe could learn from.

“In Europe, cycling is still heavily influenced by performance. Watts, data, competition. In China, that aspect exists, but it’s not dominant. What I see is a much stronger focus on experience. On how people spend their time, how they connect, how they enjoy riding.”

The communities in Southern China are among the most alive cycling scenes I’ve encountered anywhere. And the key word is alive. There is no long tradition to draw on, no established hierarchy of who rides what and how. Everything is fresh. The riders are young, the atmosphere is open, and the energy is genuine.

“The communities are young, full of energy, and driven by a very fresh mindset. That creates a completely different kind of atmosphere. More open, more dynamic, and in many ways more alive.”

In Europe, we’ve built elaborate rituals around performance. The segment time. The watt-per-kilo calculation. The debate about whether your helmet is aerodynamic enough for a Sunday coffee ride. It can be exhausting and somewhere in all that, the actual reason most of us started riding gets a little lost.

“They’ve created their own way of riding. And in some ways, I think we in Europe take cycling a bit too seriously. Sometimes, we forget that cycling is supposed to be enjoyable.”

This is, oddly, one of the reasons Festka resonates so strongly here. A bespoke frame built around one rider’s body, their geometry, their position, their way of moving, is not primarily a performance tool. It is the most personal possible expression of what cycling means to that specific person. That idea connects deeply with a culture where cycling is about experience, not measurement.

The other thing that surprised me was the quality of what’s being built locally. The assumption that Asia means mass production is, as he puts it, only part of the picture.

“They’ve created their own way of riding. And in some ways, I think we in Europe take cycling a bit too seriously. Sometimes, we forget that cycling is supposed to be enjoyable.”“I discovered a number of local companies producing high-end, technologically advanced products and even craftsmanship at a level that is very difficult to match globally. These are not cheap products. In many cases, they are priced at the same level as European brands, sometimes even higher.”

A culture that rides for pleasure, builds with precision, and isn’t constrained by decades of tradition. We came to Asia thinking we had something to offer. We left with something to think about.

The bikes we build in Prague are still wound from the same carbon, by the same hands, for the same reason they always were. But knowing who’s riding them and how makes the work feel different.