I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it’s pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that’d be rather time consuming.
Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can’t ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.
edit: the high number of replies mentioning “swimming” made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.
Here in Switzerland the question you ask is usually, “do you ski or do you snowboard”? It’s just assumed that you can do at least one.
Makes me wonder, is there a higher rate of knee surgeons in Switzerland than in the rest of the world?
i’d assume not. If you Ski and Snowboard regularly, like all season or every weekend, you’d know well what to do and have the supporting muscles to reduce the risk of injury. Most people that go there for winter holidays just Ski or snowboard a week in a year, but then all day long. That is more injury prone as the lack of training meets an extensive physical stress.
Also people that do so in sports clubs will have specific training in the pre and post season times.