Mountain Maneuvers

Zhu Yongbiao – the man mad about mountain biking.	The adventure begins.
	Training on various types of landform.

Zhu Yongbiao is the head of an 11-person team of keen mountain bikers aged between 18 and 29. They meet regularly at early morning to train. Zhu Yongbiao was a track and athlete when he was a teenager and later turned to cycling out of his own interest. Having trained on road and track, he first took his bike to the mountains in 1994.

Zhu Yongbiao and his team of accomplished mountain bikers still get an enormous thrill from riding through mountains and gorges, and enjoy nothing more than a tough challenge. Zhu’s adventurous spirit, however, has cost him dearly as regards physical injuries. At a race he took part in just before the 10th National Games he fractured his 7th, 8th,and 9th thoracic vertebrae and sustained a comminuted fracture of his 4th cervical vertebrae. The doctor that tended his injuries told Zhu that his mountain biking days were over, but two months later he returned to the race court to win the National Games Mounting Biking Championship. Upon being asked about the fall that caused him such agonizing injuries, Zhu explains: “I attempted a 50-degree bend up a steep 60-meter high hill and failed, but have no regrets because Nature is a much-loved adversary.”

When the four-hour training session ends, Zhu Yongbiao spends an hour or so cleaning and maintaining his favorite bike. After each meeting he and his team relax and talk as they happily anticipate their next mountain biking adventure.

Zhu Yongbiao and his team.

Multifarious mountain biking equipment.