What would it look like if a speeder bike from Star Wars was taken out on a modern mountain bike trail? Well, it’d look a lot like this.

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Why are we featuring this video (other than a fairly shameless attempt to cash in on some hype around the new Star Wars that opened today)?

Well, we have a theory that the speeder bike sections from 1983’s Return Of The Jedi were arguably one of the inspirations for riders of a certain age to take their BMXs off into the woods for the damn good thrashing.

If you’re in your 40s or 50s then you’ve probably been spending the best part of thirty years or so trying to recapture the thrill of watching the chase scenes in that film.

You can tell from the sheer number of Strava segments and YouTube mountain biking videos with “speeder bike” in their name that Star Wars definitely has a hold of a great number of mountain bikers.

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It’s not unusual at the end of a speedy tight section of woodland singletrack to hear someone say “wow, that was just like that speeder bike bit from Star Wars!”

It’s a shame that the video at the top of this page doesn’t have the soundtrack of this video immediately above.

If someone out there can hack something together that shows a bike trail being ridden by a CGI speeder bike POV and stick some of the original sound effects over the top that would be great, thanks!