Riders face uphill struggle

Richard Barton-Smith and Brian Paterson do not look like criminals, but that is what they have risked becoming thanks to their hobby - mountain biking. It is something they take seriously. Peppering his conversation with words like 'awesome' and 'ace' Mr Paterson, 35, a soft-spoken public relations man, describes his Canondale mountain bike. Complete with full suspension, it is worth tens of thousands of dollars. Mr Barton-Smith, a 32-year-old police inspector, chuckles in complicity as his friend confides that his wife disapproves of the amount of cash he lavishes on the sport. Hong Kong, the two say, has some of the world's best mountain-bike trails snaking through the country parks. Unfortunately the SAR also has some of the world's most draconian restrictions on mountain biking - an Olympic sport since last year's Atlanta Games - making it illegal to ride on most of them. Offenders face a maximum $2,000 fine and three months in prison under the Country Parks Ordinance (1976). 'It's a growing sport [here],' says Mr Paterson, who has lived in Hong Kong since 1967. 'The shop I use is one of the 10 largest dealers of Canondale bicycles in the world. That includes America. So they're selling an awful lot of mountain bikes. 'But unless we get areas where we can all ride, we're not going to have Olympic contenders from Hong Kong.' Last year 122 mountain bikers were prosecuted for illegal riding, according to Lai Ching-wai, senior country parks officer at the Agriculture and Fisheries Department (AFD). Most received fines of between $500 and $1,000. By the end of August this year 42 cyclists had been nabbed. 'Country park trails are designed for hikers,' Mr Lai says. 'We believe that mountain biking might cause safety problems for hikers - we have received complaints from hikers in the past and they have sustained minor injuries - and it damages the surface of hiking routes.' The mountain bike ban - in force on all but 29 kilometres of the 600 kilometres of country park trails in Hong Kong after four remote paths were opened to riders this year - is unfair, according to Mr Barton-Smith and Mr Paterson. They say there is no evidence to show the sport is either dangerous or damaging. 'How many reports,' Mr Paterson asks, 'have there been to AFD that children have been frightened by mountain bikes, or old people have been frightened, or that people have been injured?' 'Not many,' Mr Lai says. 'Maybe one a year. But in the past the number of mountain bikes in the [country] parks was very small, and that is why we received a small number of complaints. It doesn't mean that it is totally safe.' That is not good enough for Mr Paterson. He argues that, despite the fact mountain-bikers regularly go sailing over the handlebars of their machines when they hit big bumps, injuries are rare. No biker has ever needed outside medical help in a country park, he says. Mr Lai looks a little further down the track. Between 20 and 30 hikers each year require assistance, including search-and-rescue operations, he says. 'But we have millions of hikers in the country parks. So there are bound to be accidents. If we had millions of bikers in the country parks can you imagine how many accidents there would be?' As for damaging the trails, Mr Barton-Smith says mountain bikers cause no more path problems than hikers. 'It's common sense that neither hikers nor bikers actually cause erosion,' he says. 'What they do is they compact the trail surface, which then becomes impermeable. If you have a long stretch of trail which doesn't have any measures to divert water off it into a soak-away, it forms a stream. That sheet of water then just tears at the ground. If you don't have minimal erosion you don't have a trail, because that's what a trail is.' No one knows how many people regularly take their mountain bikes off-road. But when the AFD opened the first two trails - one in Sai Kung West Country Park and the other in Lantau South Country Park - on a six-month trial basis earlier this year, and announced that cyclists would need a free permit to ride on them, they received 869 applications. The other two trails, one in Shek O Country Park and another in the Lantau South Country Park, were opened to mountain bikers last month. The ban was also poorly publicised until recently, Mr Barton-Smith and Mr Paterson claimed, and was loosely enforced until four years ago. Many riders who had splashed out thousands of dollars buying bikes were surprised to learn cycling in country parks was illegal. 'If you ask almost anybody who has been riding for more than about a year if they knew it was illegal when they bought their bike, they say 'no',' says Mr Paterson, who has, like Mr Barton-Smith, been riding for four years. 'I was the same, I bought my bike, went out and rode it, and gradually I became aware it was illegal and I couldn't believe it.' Mountain-bikers in court have tried that defence, Mr Lai says, but none has succeeded. 'All the major entrances have signs. Whenever we prosecute someone we have to show the magistrate that the person had a very good chance of passing through our warning signs.' To strengthen their hand, in February Mr Barton-Smith and Mr Paterson revived the Hong Kong Mountain Bike Association, a seven-year-old club which had fizzled out. It now has about 150 members, with Mr Barton-Smith as chairman and Mr Paterson, secretary. 'People were feeling increasingly threatened,' Mr Paterson says. 'We'd bought our mountain bikes, it was a great sport, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to pursue. 'The catalyst was a rumour within the cycling community that the AFD were going to raise the fine to $25,000, putting it on a par with starting a fire in a country park. It wasn't that long after the Pat Sin Leng hill fire where all those children were killed, so we all thought that was an outrageous thing to do.' It is not an unfounded fear. Mr Lai says the AFD is considering introducing an amendment to the Country Parks Ordinance which will raise fines for bikers to that level. The association has a strict code of conduct, which includes a provision requiring riders to stop if they see walkers and wait until they have passed. A portion of the annual $150 membership fee goes to an insurance company, providing each cyclist with $2 million of third party cover, something which does not reassure Mr Lai. 'We don't want to see the use of that insurance,' he said. 'That would mean something had happened already. We have a duty to ensure that accidents are minimised.' Mr Paterson says it is difficult to get people in authority to understand the needs of mountain bikers. Mr Barton-Smith adds: 'When the Singapore Government set up their trail [four years ago] they asked the cycling groups what they needed, and they built it. We're just asking [the Hong Kong Government] to designate them as mountain bike trails as well as hiking trails.' The paths currently available are distant, and none really suitable for the sport, the pair say. To get to the Wan Tsai peninsula, the site in Sai Kung West Country Park, is particularly difficult. Although only a kilometre from the country park boundary, mountain bikers are not allowed to ride on the trail from the park entrance. They are advised by AFD to take a sampan from a nearby pier. 'You're at the mercy of the local sampan mafia,' Mr Paterson says, 'who charge you whatever they think is a fair price on that day.' Mr Lai says the bikers can take their bikes along the path - as long as they dismantle them first. The Lantau South trails are concrete, and flat. 'Not a mountain bike trail by any stretch of the imagination,' Mr Paterson says. 'Mountain biking is dirt on the hillsides. We're mystified how [the AFD] chose them.' The Shek O Country Park path crosses large streams, strewn with boulders, and impassable for cyclists, Mr Barton-Smith says. 'Our ultimate aim is not necessarily to open up every trail in Hong Kong to mountain bikers, but to have a trail accessible to each urban area,' he says. 'With these at the moment, it's grossly unfair to expect a guy in Yuen Long to travel all the way to Shek O or to Lantau to mountain-bike.' That, the pair say, will require at least 10 trails across the SAR to be open to mountain-bikers. 'I don't think we've got any right to claim sole access to any trail,' Mr Barton-Smith says, 'just as we don't think hikers have. They're an asset for the whole population.'