One bike and Strava might

…one bike is not going to start a race. Two bikes will.

So much this. Groups of riders, money and racing are essential to the technological advancement and development of the sport. Without Charlie and his mates popularising the sport, there would be no money in making frames, components and so on. Therefore, no modern suspension, modern disc brakes, dropper posts, triple compound tyres etc etc.

Tomorrow, I’ll be going to the bike park. I’ll be riding my fancy bike with a dropper post, tubeless tyres, long travel suspension, disc brakes etc. Without Charlie and the other guys in Marin in the ’70s, this would not be possible. Not only the bike, but also the bike park with chairlifts and built trails. It’s the popularity of the sport that makes these things possible, even if (like the chairlifts and built trails) they would be physically possible without large scale participation – it would make no business sense to do so, and would almost certainly not happen otherwise.

So what was invented in Marin in the ’70s? It wasn’t the mountain bike (in the sense of a purpose built off-road bike), or mountain biking (the act of using such a bike). However, “mountain biking” in the sense of the culture, development of technology, mass participation, organised racing and so on did spring from that time and place IMO.

A good analogy in my mind is the invention of the computer – Babbage, Turing, Zuse etc. It’s fairly meaningless to attribute “invention” of it to one person or group of people. On the other hand, there are clearly significant milestones along the way to what we see now. In fact, I think you can easily see Charlie as Steve Wozniak, and Mike Sinyard as Steve Jobs…

Cheers Charlie, some of us see you (and your friends) as pioneers in the field in which I choose to spend my free time…

Me and a couple of mates used to race raleigh bombers around the local trails in the 80’s. No one ever seems to mention them but they were a British precursor to mountain bikes.

Repack Rider – Member
…Read my book, “Fat Tire Flyer,” out in a few weeks in the US, a little later in the UK.

Are you going to be signing copies?

I’m not buying that mountain biking was invented in Marin,perhaps downhill mountain bike racing was, and maybe the commercialisation of off road cycling (it doesn’t matter what you call it) was.
It’s like saying that running wasn’t invented until people started racing, or cakes until the british bake off.
Mountain biking is a beautiful thing, which does not need to be attributed to a particular time, person or place. It just is.

My dad used to time my run to to the chip shop and my run to mr Patels for 1/2 ounce of old holborn, I can feel the wind on my face just thinking about it and chastising MR P for not pulling his finger out and ruining my chances of a PB and him laughing.
I think my dad invented urban running.

wrecker – Member
I’m not buying that mountain biking was invented in Marin,….

I don’t think anyone is arguing about the activity of riding in mountains, but what we call mainstream mountainbiking now was started in Marin.

Try and find a picture of a mountainbike (other than a custom build) prior to then, or evidence of an event using such bikes.

I have tried a few times to build a bike suitable for mountain riding in the 60s, and again in the 70s, and it wasn’t possible with what was available from UK and European suppliers. There was no room for a fatter tyre on frames then, and you could not even buy lugs for a frame that would give you the clearance needed for a fatter tyre. At that time I was unaware of the USA style cruisers with their 2″ tyres, and even if I had known, I would have avoided them because of their excessive weight, just like I avoided the British upright roadsters for the same reason.

Even now, when I am trying for fun* to build a 1900-1930s themed mountain bike it is very difficult to put together a suitable set of parts. I will end up using the lugs from the rear end of the later Raleigh Bomber frame to get the rear wheel clearance (it looks straight out of 1890 🙂 ).

*Watch out for the appearance of the world famous 1898 Grundleigh-Thwaite Pass Stormer at a single speed event next year. (Obviously a totally fictitious brand 🙂 )

Again from wiki,

Between 1951 and 1956, the French Velo Cross Club Parisien (VCCP), comprising about twenty-one young cyclists from the outskirts of Paris where they were born, developed a sport that was remarkably akin to present-day mountain biking.[2]

I don’t think anyone is arguing about the activity of riding in mountains, but what we call mainstream mountainbiking now was started in Marin.

I refer to the rest of my post.
Not buying it.

chip – Member
Again from wiki,

Between 1951 and 1956, the French Velo Cross Club Parisien (VCCP), comprising about twenty-one young cyclists from the outskirts of Paris where they were born, developed a sport that was remarkably akin to present-day mountain biking.[2]

I’m aware of that, but I can’t think of any French manufacturers making mountainbikes as a result (but I could be wrong), so that is just a false start IMO.

I’m not adding this to fuel the debate but for completeness

Geof Apps was the UK end of the birth of what we do. But he didn’t start production before the US

Reading from the article below he does seem to have been early in the 650b thing.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoff_Apps

If the marin county crew are the fathers of mtb racing, is Geoff Apps the father of just riding? When I got into mtb it was less due racing it was the promise of exploration.

@DT78 – did you rent anything and head out? I have a two week work trip in San Francisco coming up early/mid-October. Any tips on trails (or road routes)/rentals appreciated. Looking at stuff from Blazing Saddles so far.

Hehe – Go Repack Rider!

2retro4u
Marin County, Cali

I rode trails on my balloon tire bike when I was a kid, but so did every other kid, and that wasn’t mountain biking. As an adult in 1973 I took one out on a trail with my friend Gary Fisher, and started a process that six years later led to Gary and me building custom bikes for anyone with money. We were not the only business in Marin County doing that, but we were the best known. There were three other versions of an off road bike being made in Marin by 1979. Sure, other people had come up with the idea of an off-road bike, and built them, but nowhere else IN THE WORLD could you find bikes like these for sale.

When mountain bikes went mainstream around 1983 and every bicycle company started selling a version, it was clear that the Ritchey/MountainBike that Gary and I assembled on Tom Ritchey’s frames was the starting point for every single mountain bike design on the market. That was 30 years ago, and a lot has happened to the bikes since, but they started from that design. It worked, it had created a popular image, and no one else wanted to waste time doing years of R&D when the market was moving so quickly.

The complicated and lengthy process that led to all this can’t be boiled down to a single phrase, “invented the mountain bike.” It took me 280 pages to explain it.

Let me add that I do not care to be lectured to about events I took part in, by someone whose knowledge of these events comes from a wikipedia article.

Lighten up FFS.

I don’t know if Repack Rider is right or not but that’s a peach of a post, good man

Think I might start referring to my hobby as mountain bicycling.
I prefer the cut of Vernons jib.

Hippies!

My grandad said he invented mountainbiking.

That ain’t a mountain bike – it might be the first ever hybrid however (but i do want to get me some of them trousers!)

I am struggling to see how people are picking oger Repack Riders version of events.

Unless you are riding an overbury, or whatever Geoff apps’ bikes are called – and there’s not many of you out there – who rides a mountain bike that has an evolution that goes back to one of the fellers up there ^ rather than to Marin County? The answer is None.

Overbury were just a K based brand riding the 80s wave of bikesbaseon a craze flooding out of America

Cool stuff that looked good. But my forks sheered in the Crown race in a way that wasn’t good for my health. They were clearly incorrecty made

I think the Geoff Apps thing was the Hipath

But Geoff is part of the story and know one says he was first

BUT aa i agree. There were bikes before roads. Some how what happened in California started this hobby and sport

Respect you whipper snappers, Repack is the the man! He is 100% right on this and is not making any claims that cannot be validated.

I am struggling to see how people are picking oger Repack Riders version of events.

Unless you are riding an overbury, or whatever Geoff apps’ bikes are called – and there’s not many of you out there – who rides a mountain bike that has an evolution that goes back to one of the fellers up there ^ rather than to Marin County? The answer is None.

This. He’s not claiming that nobody ever rode a bike off road with their mates, or built one specifically for it, before he did.

If I did something as cool as being a pioneer of sport such as mountain biking back in the day alongside Gary Fisher, I’d like to think that I wouldn’t feel the need to argue about it on STW 40 years later 😯

Seriously wtf!!!!

What a strange thread

Let me add that I do not care to be lectured to about events I took part in, by someone whose knowledge of these events comes from a wikipedia article.

Best put down ever

He does not overstate his claims to be a pioneer in this sport and the bike building he just says it like it is

Is pioneer better than inventor for you folk?

Nobody can take away from what Charlie and co did for mountain biking; their impact was huge. BUT they didn’t invent mountain biking any more than Adi Dazzler invented running.

If someone feels the need to tell people about their accomplishments then it sort of ruins the image of it for me a bit. There’s enough tossers in the world telling you about how ‘teh awsumz’ they are without mtb pioneers doing it on here!

Seriously Wtfs right Just yanking the chain of a man who likes to blow his own trumpet.

He jumped on the op for saying he met one of the pioneers of mounting biking then took a mouthful of mouthpiece.

I am sure repack played a significant part in the modern mountain bikes evolution.
But geez, when did hippies take shit so seriously.
Especially on t’internet,

Relax
I have a nibble a brant sometimes and I think my marley which I love is the son of a brant bike at the very least.
It’s the t’internet. No one died.

If I did something as cool as being a pioneer of sport such as mountain biking back in the day alongside Gary Fisher, I’d like to think that I wouldn’t feel the need to argue about it on STW 40 years later

Seriously wtf!!!!

If you’d “invented mountain biking” but all your other friends had come out of it as millionaires with their own bike companies, you’d probably be on here throwing roses at yourself, promoting your book about how you “invented mountain biking”

I found this from the 1950’s probably closer to the mountainbiking I do now 😉 local too, so I’ve probably even ridden bits of it.

If you invented mountain biking why does your website say the first race was on a road?

A strange bicycling event called “Repack” changed my life, starting in 1976, when the first downhill off-road race took place on a road a few people called “Repack” road, just outside Fairfax, California. I promoted clandestine races there starting in 1976 and ending in 1984, the beginning of what has become a world-wide sport of downhill mountain bike racing.

Only messin 😉

And at 4:35 or so you’ll see a mountain bike.

My Mum and Dad rode through the Lharig Ghru on Mercians in 1951. My Dad built them as he started Mercian Cycles in his garage with Tom Crowther.

Don’t talk to me about mountain bikes; any bike is one. Just up to you to ride it.

I believe that modern off-road cycling for leisure and fun was started by the manufacturers of children’s bikes, who made small fat tyred bicycles that were perfect for messing around off-road. As a result, when these children grew up they wanted to continue the fun they had enjoyed as children. However, no one made suitable adult bikes. As a result, the 1960s & ’70s Britain, teenagers used to make their own ‘Tracker’ bikes by adding cow-horn handlebars and knobbly tyres to their road frames.

Meanwhile the big bicycle manufacturers failed to produce anything that met the needs of young adults who had outgrown their Grifter or BMX. In the United States however, there were the old ‘klunker bikes’ with their fat tyres and 26″ wheels. Just perfect for modification.

In the late 1970s, what Charlie Kelly, Gary Fisher, Joe Breeze and Tom Ritchey did was to design the perfect bicycle for men who did not want to grow up. That is why the idea took of so quickly, right product, right place, right time.

If they had not have done it someone else, somewhere else, would have eventually done the same thing. It was what the teenagers of the world were waiting for.

Deveron53 – Member

…I’m with Mr Kelly and his chums. They invented mountain biking as we know it today (even the name: Mountain Bike) It’s all down to the lineage. You can draw a family tree of mountain biking development with those guys as the roots and all the leaves can be seen in our shops today. For example, Geoff Apps had some good stuff but it didn’t develop into the bikes we ride today.
Unlike the positive reaction of American entrepreneurs to the designs of the US pioneers, Apps’ ideas were rejected by numerous British bicycle manufacturers.

However, it turns out that Apps did eventually influence the development modern mountain bikes as a result of exporting Finnish Hakkapeliitta tyres to Charlie Kelly and Gary Fisher between 1980-84.

A hand-full of Marin’ frame-builders made bikes to fit these tyres. When the 700x47c Hakka tyres ran out, Bruce Gordon had some copies manufactured so that he and others could carry on producing 700c wheeled off-road bikes. And in the 1990s, one such builder called Wes Williams, teamed up with Gary Fisher in developing the first modern 29″ tyre, the WTB Nanoraptor.

2retro4u
Marin County, Cali

My grandad said he invented mountainbiking.

About a million people seem to be making that claim. There are more people making that claim than there are bicyclists. All of them are lying, except the people who aren’t, and there are IMNSHO four in the latter category.

It’s one thing to build a bike for yourself. It’s quite another to decide to MANUFACTURE bicycles of a sort that had never appeared on the market. Please show me someone, ANYONE, who put a bicycle built to Tour de France quality, but with derailleur gears and big tyres for rough ground, on the market before we did. Please show me the results of a downhill race held before I put one on in 1976.

Talk is cheap, but I have the pix.

CeeKay, I’m going to be in Point Reyes at the end of the month, fancy a spin?