The Olympic Cycling Effect

During the 2012 London Olympics, the cycling road race course included nine laps of the famous Box Hill ‘zig-zag’ road.  Ever since, this area of Surrey has continued to be extremely popular with cyclists and if you venture out at the weekend, you will frequently be met with groups of cyclists out for the day. After the 2012 Olympics, the London School of Economics published a paper looking at the ‘Olympic Cycling Effect’ citing the medal winning success of Team GB as prompting ‘a significant uplift in the number of non-cyclists who have been motivated to take up the activity’ with many retailers confirming they had seen an uplift in bike sales. 

Taking a step back from the impact of sporting events, we saw a spike in bike usage during the pandemic, with levels dropping once we returned to normality.  However according to Mintel there has been a 5% increase in current cyclists from 2019 to 2023. Some of this will be a rise in popularity in cycling for leisure, but also a rise in people using their bike as a mode of transport. Don’t get me started on electric bikes – that’s a discussion for another time!

The cost of a bike has a huge range – some costing thousands of pounds.  Whilst many of these bikes can be added to your home insurance, there are also lots of specialist bike insurers out there offering bespoke cover.  The level of cover offered in standard home insurance policies for bikes varies across the industry – some offer a blanket cover, some need bikes specified but the majority will do a hybrid of both.  As a home insurer, bikes are always something that is considered carefully – they are prone to theft and customers are sometimes unaware of what cover they have in place. 

I hope Team GB excel in Paris this summer, and if it inspires lots of people to get on their bikes, I equally hope that they get the right level of insurance in place.  As for the home insurers out there, we’re probably unlikely to see the spike in bike usage that we experienced in 2012, but there is clearly an impact of successful sporting events inspiring people to take up new activities.  Now’s your opportunity to communicate to your customer base and remind them to have the right cover in place.  You never know, you may be covering an Olympian of the future!