What does that mean? Unless you’re paid to ride a bike, all riding (including amateur racing) is recreational.

That's just referencing the way some people historically think they are not recreational once they have a racing license and compete in some fasion.

"Recreational" = folks who don't race.
"Amateur" = racers with a license, online this group sometimes sees themselves as more serious or better than recreational riders
"Pro" = someone who is actually paid to race

An uptick in recreational would seem self evident with it becoming less popular to race in categories/series that require licenses and/or team membership.

The licensing thing would be iffy at this point since you can be pretty serious in Gravel without a license.

Not really sure I think MTB folks care about any of this either.

To a certain extent I think a higher % of riding being recreational can be a good thing, just go out and have fun.

Or...

"If a thing is worth doing, it's worth overdoing."

Even if you agree with that definition (which I don't, since the majority of licensed racers still race recreationally), a shift from licensed USAC events to non-licensed (i.e. gravel) events doesn't indicate a "revival in recreational bike riding". At least, not in any meaningful sense.

Interesting. I categorize it a bit differently in my mind, though I admit how I categorize it may be wrong if there is some well accepted list of definitions.

Pro- someone paid to race and/or on a team that is working toward being paid to race(development).
Enthusiast- someone who rides a lot and identifies as a cyclist. They can ride road, gravel, or dirt. They might enter licensed races, unlicensed races, participate in aggressive group rides, or none of those and instead ride differently from those listed ways.
Recreational- someone who has a bike and will break it out to ride on the weekend with family on paved paths or with friends to go to a bar/etc.

Perhaps what I meant by recreational could be defined as non- competitive. That would include both casual recreation and more adventurous multi day tours of all sorts.

I also think you can be a non-competitive enthusiast.

Rule number one is that you can't use the word you're defining in the definition of the word ...

It's not whether or not anyone agrees with it, I didn't say whether I did or didn't.

Just in my experience there have been plenty of cyclists I've run into who did think that way. It's a part of the whole "take cycling way too seriously" thing.

And I even mentioned the same thing about gravel.

That's a good description of most of the field in any amateur race in cycling. The vast majority are never competitive.

I mean it's kind a good thing and kind of a bad thing. It makes winning a race more of an accomplishment, but it obviously frustrates lots of people too.

It's the perennial debate with cycling. Winning actually means something since it's hard at basically every level. But it makes lots of people frustrated with the sport since so few activities work that way anymore.

I agree with the recreational/enthusiast definition offered above.

Recreational is someone who owns a bike and rides it occasionally. They probably don't know much more than the brand (maybe). An enthusiast rides every week if not every day. They probably own several bikes (at least) and know most of the details of every one. They probably participate in bicycle-specific discussion groups like this one or belong to a local club. A racer is almost certainly an enthusiast on some level due to the commitment required. An enthusiast doesn't necessarily race, though.

This split is pretty well agreed upon no matter what the subject matter or sport. There are audio enthusiasts and car enthusiasts and mechanical keyboard enthusiasts even though nearly everyone listens to music, drives a car, and uses a keyboard at some point or another.

Showing up to a fast group ride with Tiagra is like showing up with flats or running shorts. It's just not done. (The Rules of Cycling #185, Section B, Subparagraph N).

That's actually not true in this case, if the word Recreation has a definition as a category, such as 'Recreational Cyclist' and as an adjective.

For example: Led Zeppelin is a Classic Rock band, categorically. In that case, the definition of 'classic' is different than in a sentence such as 'Led Zeppelin has some classic rock songs', meaning 'Led Zeppelin has rock songs that are classics.'

And what I mean by all this is, geez, cut the guy some slack. His reply was perfectly reasonable and understandable, and this is a cycling forum and not a linguistic symposium, and rule number one of communication is that if your interlocutor understands what you said, you communicated effectively, even if not grammatically correctly.

Anyway, I'd like to throw the expression 'Recreational Enthusiast' into the arena. That's me. I'm very enthusiastic about bikes. I ride them and geek out about them with passion and enthusiasm and a high degree of frequency. But I'm not competitive (all ass kickings are purely coincidental :p).

My shop used to sell Raleigh. I actually really liked their road bikes circa 2011 - 2015ish (Revenio for endurance, Militis for race), thought they road well and just worked great. But of course, no one wants to ride a Raleigh road bike, everyone wants a Trek or Cannondale or Spesh. My main selling point on the bikes was, "There's nothing more satisfying than dropping the S-works crew while riding a Raleigh."

I imagine the same is true of Claris, Sora, Tiagra.

He defined recreational as something that includes (casual) recreation. That conveys no information.