How Pro Mountain Biker Anita Naidu is Breaking Barriers

Sometimes it’s not enough to be the first global athlete of your ethnicity in a sport. Sometimes you realize there’s a bigger contest ahead of you. When facing systemic opposition that operates in discrimination and exclusion you sometimes have to forge your own path. One thing is for certain: dismantling the status quo so that other people of color can experience and excel in their pursuit of the outdoors doesn’t come easy. For professional mountain biker Anita Naidu, this lesson has been learned firsthand.

Naidu is the first pro mountain biker of East Indian descent, and breaking barriers has been the driving force behind her twenty-five year career in outdoor sports. As a dark-skinned outdoor athlete in predominantly white-centered sports, Naidu has pushed these spaces to move beyond eurocentric lenses and is a staunch advocate for amplifying women and POC voices in the outdoors. Naidu is a highly sought-after mountain biking coach, a diversity consultant for global brands, an award-winning international humanitarian, and an aspiring astronaut. It’s her life mission to make sure everyone has equitable access to the outdoors.

Recently, we connected with her to get her perspective on gravity sports, authenticity when it comes to partnering with brands, and building community through nature.

What are you excited about in your new partnership with Cannondale?

Besides riding great bikes, I’m so grateful and privileged to have a wide-reaching global platform to make a real impact in mountain biking, sports and beyond. I’m also amped on my teammates! What excites me the most about this partnership is the expansion of the anti-racism initiatives in mountain biking.

How are you incorporating anti-racism initiatives into your mountain biking?

I started high performance skills coaching and social justice education camps years ago and they became so popular that they now fill up within an hour.
They are a warm, empathetic, and compassionate invitation in hopes of inspiring others to join our resistance and strive for improvement, all while learning badass bike skills. There is no holding back at these clinics—beginners learn wheelies, intermediates take on gaps and advanced riders learn tricks. Once you’ve spent the day mastering skills and taking your riding to all new heights, the evening is focused on learning about the world’s biggest problems and matching your innate skills to address them—from how to be actively anti-racist, to understanding climate justice, and learning how various systems work in cohesion to produce and reproduce global inequality.

Source: https://www.fieldmag.com/articles/anita-naidu-interview-poc-mountain-biking-social-justice