Medellín will forever be associated with drug cartels, thanks to a certain Pablo Escobar and a series called Narcos.

Colombia’s second city, as Medellín is often dubbed, isn’t just a one-trick pony, and a sport called ‘gravity biking’ is providing youngsters with an escape from their troubles.

In an area like Vallejuelos, which the Guardian reports is “rife with crime and unemployment”, it’s especially popular with teenagers.

Here’s more on the sport that centres around daring descents:

Enthusiasts strip a typical bike to its frame and build it back up from scratch. To improve descending speed (which can reportedly reach up to 77 mph / 124kmh), riders weld weights to their contraptions. Pedals are superfluous: to climb the hills riders hang on to passing trucks, sometimes using homemade hooks on a line.

Estiven Hurtado is an avid gravity cyclist and has lived in Vallejuelos his whole life. “We live for gravity biking here,” he says, lugging his modified bike behind him, emblazoned with the visage of the drug lord Pablo Escobar, Medellín’s most infamous son. “It’s a way of life for anyone who lives up in the communes.”

Gravity biking can be found across Colombia, but it is most popular in Medellín and surrounding towns owing to the steep Andean mountains. But the nascent sport is as dangerous as it sounds, and last year one nearby town, La Ceja, banned it outright.

From the perspective of the rider, you get a good sense of the speed involved:

As you can well imagine, it’s not the kind of hobby that parents are too fond of:

[Rider Marlon Muñeton’s] mother, Jessica, speaks for much of the community. “They are fools the way they hurtle down the highways,” she says in her ramshackle single-room home overlooking the city. “Just look how many scars they all have.”

The pastime has exposed fault lines in the neighbourhood where crime and unemployment are rampant. Criminal gangs and drug traffickers control much of Medellín’s slums, and Estiven Hurtado’s bike was confiscated by one of their members after his crash.

“These kids often come from broken homes, and often fall into drug abuse,” says Natalia Montoya, a psychologist at the local school. “It’s a self-destructive way of escaping the reality of their lives.”

In the town of Vallejuelos alone, three riders have died this year. Schools in the area know they can’t succeed in stopping riders, and instead focus on promoting safety aspects like helmet use.

Those who engage in the sport say that the dangers involved are part of the thrill, and even those who have been involved in nasty accidents are quick to return to the top of the hill for another hair-raising descent.

Given that it provides some alternative from drugs and crime, for some of the teens at least, perhaps gravity biking is the lesser of the evils.

[source:guardian]