Cycling is the new golf — when movement changes the conversation

The racing bicycle was the better networking tool last Friday.

Construction Ride brought people from construction, property and infrastructure together at BASWA acoustic in Baldegg. Alar Jost founded the community around a line that has been circulating for years: cycling is the new golf.

The phrase is memorable. The experience behind it matters more.

We rode through the Seetal, around Lake Baldegg and over enough climbing to make the route anything but flat. There was a proper downpour in between. Neither the hills nor the rain damaged the mood. If anything, they made the group more visible to itself.

Why the conversations felt different

On a bicycle, two people often ride alongside one another for long enough to move beyond the opening question. There is no table between them and no presentation waiting to start. The road provides a rhythm, while the shared effort removes some of the awkwardness of conventional networking.

The longer climbs made the conversations more intense, not necessarily longer. Breathing limits the number of words. That can make the words more direct.

During one stretch, Mike Hürlimann, CEO of BASWA acoustic, told me about the company's innovations in seamless acoustic systems, including the opportunities and challenges of competing globally as a Swiss SME. We also discussed where AI might help — not as an abstract transformation programme, but in the practical work of finding, serving and learning from international markets.

That conversation emerged from the ride. It did not need a pitch.

Five conditions that make a ride work

The useful lesson is not that every business should buy road bikes. It is that shared movement creates a different social setting. Five elements seem particularly important:

1. Repeated contact. A recurring club can turn a one-off encounter into familiarity. 2. Shared identity. People enter as riders before titles and company roles. 3. Visible reciprocity. Pacing, waiting and helping make cooperation observable. 4. Conversation without a pitch. The activity supplies a natural opening and reduces the theatre of networking. 5. A third place afterwards. Coffee, an apéro or a meal allows the relationship to continue once the physical effort ends.

Research supports a careful version of this interpretation. A 2026 scoping review of 87 cycling interventions across 19 countries found broadly positive wellbeing effects, including social connection, particularly in outdoor and multi-session settings. That does not prove that one ride creates trust or commercial value. It does suggest that outdoor movement, social opportunity and meaningful routine can create favourable conditions for connection.

The inclusion test

“Cycling is the new golf” only deserves to be a positive idea if it does not reproduce golf's old boundaries.

Equipment, speed, confidence and group etiquette can make cycling clubs intimidating. A good social ride therefore needs an explicit pace, regrouping points, help for newcomers and a culture in which waiting is part of the ride rather than a failure of it.

The same applies to running clubs and other activity-based communities. Shared effort can flatten status, but only when the format is designed to include people with different abilities.

What I will remember

The best part of the day was not a formal networking outcome. It was the combination of nature, effort, rain, conversation and the final walk into the lido at Lake Baldegg.

Thank you to Mike Hürlimann for creating the Baldegg ride and opening BASWA acoustic to us; to Alar Jost for founding Construction Ride; and to everyone who paced, waited, climbed and talked.

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The question I am taking into the week is simple: Where do your best professional conversations happen when nobody is trying to network?