Professional mountain bikers Eliot Jackson and Katie Holden founded the Los-Angeles-based Grow Cycling Foundation in 2020 in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. (Holden is white; Jackson is Black.) The foundation was needed, stated a launch press release, to challenge systemic racism and create “new avenues for inclusive community building.”
Five years later, and true to the launch press release, the nonprofit continues to “tear down the barriers to entry in cycling for marginalized communities.”
And these barriers can be significant: in America and Europe, the cycle industry is overwhelmingly white, as is cycle sport, with Tour de France stage winner Biniam Girmay of Eritrea very much an outlier.
For the health of cycle sport and the growth of cycling in general, the world of two wheels needs to become more inclusive, and for former pros such as Jackson, that means providing broader access for beginners. “Sport, in general, is an amazing way to change the world for the better, both economically as well as for better health and better mental health,” said Jackson. “To get into cycling, you need a safe place to ride a bike, so we raised $1.5 million to build a pump track.”
The priority of Grow Cycling Foundation’s initial five-year plan was to build this pump track in Inglewood, a majority Black and Latino city south of central Los Angeles. Pump tracks are undulating, curvaceous skate-park-like courses capped with smooth, speedy asphalt, and they are kid magnets. Kids—of all ages—propel themselves by “pumping” their arms on bumps and rollers.
“Within the first year, we had 100,000 people at the Inglewood pump track,” said Jackson, now a Red Bull race commentator and podcaster, bike racing data geek, and ambassador—read sponsored advocate—for brands such as Santa Cruz bicycles, Smith Optics sports glasses, and Thule, the Swedish car racks to luggage company.
“SoFi Stadium [due to host the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2028 Summer Olympics] is two miles away [from the pump track]. But a lot of the people in Inglewood won’t step foot in there. But here, with the pump track, is a stadium that is open and free. And that’s really special.”
Show
I was speaking with Jackson the day after he and other Thule ambassadors walked, rode, and drove down a wide catwalk in a former train factory in Malmö, Sweden. This was at Thule Experience, a multimedia extravaganza highlighting the brand’s expansive and expanding product range, and watched by an audience of nearly 1,000 Thule workers, sales teams from around the world, and media from car, outdoor, parenting, and other titles.
“I grew up in Oklahoma, moved to California, discovered my first bike, and it later took me around the world,” said the 35-year-old Jackson. “Opening up those sorts of pathways for others is what we’re trying to do with the Grow Cycling Foundation.”
“I would love to be able to snap my fingers and make cycling more inclusive,” he added.“It’s changing, slowly. There are definitely more people of color now than there were when I first started. I used to go to races, and I would be the only Black person to start at a World Cup downhill race.”
With the pump track acting as a gateway into cycle sport—and being fun for all ages and abilities: “here, everyone belongs, no matter where they’re from,” states the venue’s website—Jackson hopes more Black youngsters will catch the bicycling bug, and there are plans for the Grow Cycling Foundation to support other community-building projects, too.
“Everything we do [at the Grow Cycling Foundation] is project-based,” stressed Jackson. “100% of the money raised for the pump track went into the pump track. The foundation didn’t charge an administration fee. I didn’t take any salary or any other money from it.”
He encouraged his mother, a former investment banker, to return to work part-time to help run the foundation. “One of our tenets has always been to be lean: we didn’t want to have a foundation where you’re fundraising to maintain the foundation.”
Education is now a key part of the foundation’s outreach—it co-organizes Aspire, a conference for the next generation of pro riders at the annual Crankworks mountain biking event in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. “Flipping the script of the typical conference landscape by welcoming young athletes, families, and underrepresented communities to the audience, and current athletic superstars to the stage, [Aspire provides] valuable introductions to the next generation of talent by extending a warm invitation to industry professionals to engage in networking sessions,” stated the conference’s kick-off literature.
“We’ve done Aspire for two years now,” said Jackson. “We work really closely with the indigenous community where the event is held [the Lil’wat and Squamish Nations] and bring different groups of people together to widen opportunities.”
The foundation’s website states that it “tackles the barriers faced by underrepresented communities in cycling” and that, whether this is “technical know-how or understanding the business side of the industry, we invest in sustainable educational programs that create lifelong cyclists and industry professionals.”
The foundation’s solutions, according to the nonprofit, are “designed to be entry points that make cycling accessible and appealing to everyone, fulfilling the sport’s potential as a conduit for physical, mental, and social well-being.”
Community
Jackson has been an ambassador for Thule since 2021, the year after he cofounded the Grow Cycling Foundation. He believes it was his community outreach that put him on Thule’s radar—the brand’s ambassadors aren’t all gold medallists; one is a doctor, another is a musician.
“We all have our passions,” said Jackson. “What we do for our wider communities, that’s a huge part of it. Thule has done a really good job of saying, ‘What are our brand values?’ and then picking ambassadors that embody them. If you’re choosing a world champion, why not choose the world champion that is also doing good?”