But anyone wanting to see them doing what they do for fun needs to get along to one of Launceston Mountain Bike Club's enduro races.

Sunday's six-hour race at the Kate Reed Reserve was a who's who of Tasmanian cycling.

World tour veterans, grand tour stage winners, Olympians, world cup winners and numerous national champions could be found among the start list.

But the true appeal of the event is that also to be found were the next generation of national representatives - school kids keen to try a new sport, social club riders, hordes of women and children, and even 40-something never-have-been weekenders who are foolish enough to think they can still hack it but then get into work the next day so tired that they can barely "tipe proply".

Thirty-five years after competing at the Moscow Olympic Games, Michael Wilson won the solo male 40-plus event. He rode for six hours 24 minutes, completing 12 laps. That's well over 100 kilometres. Wilson is 55. Gobsmackingly inspirational. It was an honour to have held him up briefly on one of the laps.

At the other end of the experience spectrum, Sam Van Baalen spent six hours 45 minutes and 39 seconds clocking up 12 laps to win the under-19 solo, a category in which he was, not surprisingly, the only contender.

Former world tour riders Will Clarke and Nathan Earle took things easy, opting for a quality over quantity approach as part of a team of four. Fellow elites Richie Porte, Wes Sulzberger and Matt Goss have also graced the trails in previous years, and Wes' brother Bernie is a proud former winner.

Atlanta Olympian Tim O'Shannessy contested the mixed pairs in a team pessimistically called The Muppets; multiple national cross-country champion Rowena Fry was another to clock up another lazy dozen laps by herself; while a host of National Road Series riders such as Tom Robinson, Michael Smith and Fry's fiance Ben Mather chose to enjoy the day in threesomes.

Unsurprisingly, the most laps were amassed by gun Hobart pair Scott Bowden, who rode in green and gold colours as national under-23 champion, and former national junior champion Ben Bradley.

Bowden, who is also the reigning Oceania champ, is a chance to follow in Wilson and O'Shannessy's Olympic wheel tracks in Rio de Janeiro next year, albeit with fatter tyres.

A total of 202 riders shared the picturesque curves of the delightful Kate Reed on Sunday, on the back of LMBC's twilight series beginning to attract weekly fields of well over a hundred riders.

Since the opening of places such as Derby and Hollybank, and the development of areas including Kate Reed, Trevallyn, Ben Lomond, Mount Wellington and many others, the quality of Tasmania's mountain bike trails has been well publicised.

However, what may have gone through to Brad Haddin, sorry Peter Nevill, is the quality of Tasmania's mountain bikers to have emerged since those developments.

While Kevin Morgan (1968), Danny Clark (1972), Michael Grenda (1984), Grant Rice (1992), Mark Jamieson (2008), Amy Cure and Matt Goss (both 2012) have joined Wilson and O'Shannessy in maintaining Tasmania's impressive road and track Olympic cycling pedigree, it is surely only a matter of time before Bowden or one of his ilk follow the lead of Bradley's cousin Sid Taberlay in 2004 as another Tasmanian mountain bike representative.