[Closed] So I accidentally met a mountain bike founder today

Got any pics of that bike, be interested to see it.

Chap at work has an Overburys from the 80s I think, hand built in Bristol. Lovely looking thing and I think one of the earlier uk efforts.

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[url= http://sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/mtbwelcome.htm ][b]2retro4u[/b][/url]
Marin County, Cali

Get talking the chap who turns out to be Rik Garner, one of the first guys to build mountain bikes back in the late 70s. He even shows me the original bike he built that Mike Sinyard of specialised "borrowed" for the design of the stump jumper, the first ever production mountain bike.

Beg to differ. In 1981 Specialized purchased four bikes from Gary Fisher and me, the basis for the Stumpjumper.

Talk is cheap. Show me the photos from 1976. If he "invented the mountain bike," why doesn't he get any credit for it?

Read my book, "[url= http://fattireflyer.com/2014/09/04/meet-mountain-biking-legend-charlie-kelly-at-interbike/ ]Fat Tire Flyer[/url]," out in a few weeks in the US, a little later in the UK.

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[url= http://sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/mtbwelcome.htm ][b]2retro4u[/b][/url]
Marin County, Cali

Also: this. I don't see Mr. Garner's name here.

http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-hippie-daredevils-who-were-just-crazy-enough-to-invent-mountain-biking/

This pish again? Mountain biking was alive and well before the 1970s.

In the Pyrenees we do a ride, pretty extreme for the exposure along an old waterway cut into the side of the mountain. In the museum at the bottom there are photos from the 20s to the 50s of the workers riding adapted bikes along it to access sections. Would definitely count as mountIn biking, and I don't mean racing down a dirt track either! No offense Repack Rider, love the stories from you guys but invented mountain biking... maybe in the USA.

I rode my Raleigh Chopper on Cannock Chase during the long hot Summer of 1976...
But I don't claim to have 'invented' mountain biking. 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.

I rode my Raleigh Chopper on Cannock Chase during the long hot Summer of 1976...But I don't claim to have 'invented' mountain biking. 

That's because you were riding a bike someone else had invented.

[quote=bikeneil ]

I rode my Raleigh Chopper on Cannock Chase during the long hot Summer of 1976...But I don't claim to have 'invented' mountain biking.

Pushing up a track and racing down, with beers and pot at the end. Sounds suspiciously like Enduro. I will give you that. I reckon that the guys in the Pyrenees invented All Mountain though.

In the late 70's my mates and I all had "tracker" bikes. Knobbly tyres and cow horn handlebars, looked like mountain bikes. And we copied other peoples bikes, so I am pretty sure mountain bikes were invented elsewhere, and maybe just the name was invented in the US.

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[url= http://sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/mtbwelcome.htm ][b]2retro4u[/b][/url]
Marin County, Cali

I never claim to have invented the machinery, which as everyone feels they need to point out to me for the last 30 years, is obvious and has been done many times. I never claimed to be the first to ride on a trail.

We invented a SPORT, not a bike. Form follows function. Once we invented the sport of DOWNHILL RACING AGAINST THE CLOCK, the bikes "invented" themselves. The bikes you ride today can trace their ancestry directly to the bikes we built for our racing

So, please tell me about all your downhill events that took place before October 21st, 1976 and show me the photos and the results with the dates, because I certainly can do so.

Repack Rider - Member
...We invented a SPORT, not a bike. Form follows function. Once we invented the sport of DOWNHILL RACING AGAINST THE CLOCK, the bikes "invented" themselves. The bikes you ride today can trace their ancestry directly to the bikes we built for our racing...

I think that's a fair assessment.

Riding in the mountains aka "pass-storming" was been popular with British riders from the start or at least the 1890s, and men like Vernon Blake were building bikes with 26" tyres of 2" section for riding in the mountains in 1930.

[url= https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5261/5657476497_4600666b63.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5261/5657476497_4600666b63.jp g"/> [/img][/url]

(The chain is supposed to look like that)

In any case if the UK had "invented" mtbing as a sport, we would have been daft enough to do it only uphill, and there would have been some chap in a blazer to disqualify you if you rode downhill. 🙂

Repack is where I thought it all started?

Doods, please !!

Clearly, I started this shit off in about '71. Me and my neighbour (Martin, since equal credit is due) used to race down our hill, over a jump, u-turn and then back up - ENDURO? **** yeah !. Against the clock, baby !!
(Now & then there was a tricycle involved, deal with that in your own ways 8) )

The only obvious difference between this and the current scene is the dearth of German automobiles

If the Americans invented DH, how come we keep beating them at it? 😉

doug, we like to think the English invented footy 😳

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[url= http://sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/mtbwelcome.htm ][b]2retro4u[/b][/url]
Marin County, Cali

Photo from the signing event. The bike is mine, built for me in 1978 by the gentleman second from left, Joe Breeze. This was the first bike built specifically for this new sport, not cobbled together from something else. The two other gentlemen are Tom Ritchey and Gary Fisher.

Since all of you beat me to this idea, please show me the hand-made off-road bikes built for downhill racing before this one was.

[IMG] [/IMG]

So down hill racing was invented a repack , Maybe.
What I do can only be called mountainbiking because I do it on a mountain bike.
I don't think anyone can claim to have invented mountainbiking or the mountainbike as I am sure people have rode bikes on mountains or even modified or built a bike for specific off road environments long before the phrase mountainbike was ever coined.

In the past i also met Jeremy Torr, Clive Powell, and a chap who was a student teacher, who started a bike mag, i think its still going .

Is it fair to say that if it weren't for Charlie and his peers we wouldn't be on this forum right now arguing that some bloke rode his penny farthing on gravel (the original gravel racer)and on dirt so the Americans couldn't have possibly invented mountain biking??

The lineage is quite clear.

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[url= http://sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/mtbwelcome.htm ][b]2retro4u[/b][/url]
Marin County, Cali

So down hill racing was invented a repack , Maybe.
What I do can only be called mountainbiking because I do it on a mountain bike.

Of course. And the name of your bike comes from the name of the company that Gary Fisher and I started in a rented garage in 1979. We called the company "[url= http://sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/mtbikes_company.htm ]MountainBikes[/url]," and I challenge you to find a prior reference to any bicycle that uses that term.

I don't think anyone can claim to have invented mountainbiking or the mountainbike as I am sure people have rode bikes on mountains or even modified or built a bike for specific off road environments long before the phrase mountainbike was even coined.

You may be "sure of" something you didn't see, but that doesn't make it real. I took part in the activities I talk about, which is a huge difference from what you conjecture.

Talk is cheap. Pix or it didn't happen.

Charlie Kelly's bike is to modern downhill bikes what vernon blakes is to his.

Just another step in the evolution of the bicycle.

Ah so you invented the term mountainbike.

That I can believe.

Ah so you invented the term mountainbike.

I think thats clear

We invented a SPORT, not a bike. Form follows function. Once we invented the sport of DOWNHILL RACING AGAINST THE CLOCK, the bikes "invented" themselves. The bikes you ride today can trace their ancestry directly to the bikes we built for our racing

From wiki
The Rough Stuff Fellowship was established in 1955 by off-road cyclists in the United Kingdom.[3] In Oregon, one Chemeketan club member, D. Gwynn, built a rough terrain trail bicycle in 1966. He named it a "mountain bicycle" for its intended place of use. This may be the first use of that name.[4]

oops 😀

Mountain Bicycle, see. Not Mountain Bike. We don't call it Mountain Bicycling so poor Mr Gwynn gets no credit.

We don't call it Mountain Bicycling

I might start calling it that. It sounds like that may have been the first usage and I like the idea that the British invented it, not some stoner hippies in the states.

I once met a walker when I was out riding in the Lakes. He gave me a pamphlet about some club that existed since the early 1900s IIRC where they tried to ride bikes over mountain passes. There were some black-and-white photos of people (in blazers!) riding old clunky bikes over rocks, I think in nepal. Wish I still had the information.

My Grandfather was part of some GB army unit in WW2 that used bikes to cover ground, both on and off road.

Perhaps the Americans can lay claim to developing the first specifically-designed 'mountain' [s]bikes[/s] [i]bicycles[/i].

Anyone whose ever played with crossing a modern 26" wheel mtb with an old USA beach cruiser bike will immediately have experienced the connections. Charlie Kelly and his peers have never claimed to have been the first to ride bikes off road, but the basics of the modern mtb sport/leisure pursuit and the bikes origins clearly come from that base point of converting beach cruiser bikes for racing downhills. They raced them downhills against the clock, local people started playing with the basic beach cruiser bike design and it took off. CX biking was around and still is, but the CX bike design hasn't much lineage with mtb (more with road biking) apart from maybe some cross over in recent years parts development. That's my take on it anyway, other views may differ.

I think, wherever else you stand on it, you probably agree that modern mountain biking what we do started in Marin- it's hard to come up with any history of modern mountain biking that doesn't go "First there was the Breezer, then there was the Stumpy, and we saw that it was good". Maybe it would have started somewhere else instead given time, but it didn't. I don't know if who raced first or who did what first matters at all, it's hard to believe that early unnamed offroaders never competed.

How about, Joe, Charlie et al invented the mountain bike industry.

I think the actual mountain bike wasn't invented til some time in the 90s though, before that we were fannying around on hybrids.

Rik garner,

Y osemite Bicycle Shop opened in January 2001 by Rick Garner in Oakhurst, CA, just south of Yosemite National Park. I have been coming to Bass Lake and the Sierra Nevada Foothills and mountains for most of my life, enjoying the hiking, cycling, swimming, fishing, horseback riding and other activities available here. I finally decided it was time to make my home here.

I have been in the bicycle business since 1972, when my brother Mike and I opened Garner's Pro Bike Shop in Redwood City, Ca. (San Francisco Bay Area). In 1973, I started building bicycle frames and in 1978, I started building all terrain bikes (later to be called mountain bikes). We started the Sequoia Cycling Club a year later and promoted many bike races. In 1974, My brother and I were among the very first Specialized bicycle dealers in the world and were involved in the founding of Specialized Bicycle Components Co. and helped Mike Sinyard develop the first production mountain bike in the world (the Stumpjumper). In 1975-1976, I was the district representative for the U.S. Cycling Federation. In 1975, when I promoted the California State Championships that I went to Caltrans for a moving road closure permit for the road race championships. It was a surprise to them because they had never issued one to a bike race before even though bike races had been held in the state long before I started promoting them. The time trial course that I chose that year near Sierraville, Ca. is still being used today for the state championships.

In the spring of 1976, I was approached by the San Francisco Columbus Day Celebration Committee who were interested in holding an international caliber bicycle race to take place in September as part of the Columbus Day festivities. I agreed to hold the event, which I named the Giro Di San Francisco. It was at this event that a prominent racer, Bob Lemond brought his 15 year old son Greg to the sign in table and asked if I could issue him a racing license so he could race. It was there that I issued Greg Lemond his first racing license . Greg finished third that day and was awarded a trophy that stood as tall as he did by Mayor Mosconi In 1977, I moved the race to the North Beach area of San Francisco with the first ever climb up Lombard Street ! It was during this race, that Greg Lemond passed the lead motorcycle up that hill and went on to win the event. It was Dianne Feinstein that awarded him his trophy that year.

Upon arriving here in the gateway to beautiful Yosemite National Park, I met the local road and mountain bike riders including John Fisher, the owner of the previous bicycle shop in Oakhurst. He was instrumental in showing me the local trails and introducing me to the professional riders in the area. Since most of the trails up here are poorly marked, it was nice learning where all the best routes are and how to ride them. His skill level was remarkable which led him to many local and national mountain bike races. I know that I am a much better rider because of what John has taught me and thank him immensely for his efforts. John had a skiing accident in 2006 which has left him paralyzed and unable to ride a bicycle. We all miss him out there on the trails but our thoughts are always with him.

In 2002, my brother Mike died of a heart attack. I returned to Redwood City to run the store until I could find a buyer for Garner’s Pro Bicycle Shop. During this time my store in Oakhurst was being run my manager, Mike Morris. I was able to find a buyer for the my brother’s store. Bob Weger, an experienced bike shop manager took over the shop and changed the name to Goride Bicycles. He has carried on the superior service tradition of three decades of Garner’s Pro Bikes and is now one of the top Specialized dealerships in the country. www.goridebicycles.com

Longwinded, but in support of Repack:

Mountainbiking is a dropped ball of the British cycle sport. It's not that it didn't have plenty opportunities to develop it. Sport in the UK was too rule bound and authoritarian to be innovative. (Look at the history of road racing.)

The British manufacturers were no better - they showed no interest in developing anything like a mountainbike before becoming copycats of the USA mtb.

This was despite repeated efforts by lone visionaries to interest the trade, and the mountain activities of UK cyclists (some incredible feats). Yet they built specially sturdy bikes for colonial use that could have served the purpose with small modification.

Right from the start there has been plenty mountain riding, plus the odd race. If you look at the really early stuff, their ordinary riding surfaces were stuff we would call mtb territory these days, and any ride through the Highlands or Wales was definitely mountain biking by modern standards. 🙂

The RSF (of which I am a member) could have started the ball rolling, but it actively discouraged discussion of technical innovation, taking the attitude that it was about the cycling not the bike.

It's silly not to credit Repack and his friends with the term mountainbike and the invention of the sport because I do not recall hearing it before that period, and there is no mention I have found of it in print. We owe the pleasure we get out of our sport to what they started.

I have about 10 years worth of bound copies of the RSF journals from 1955, so if anyone knows of a mention of technical improvements and can suggest an approximate date I can check it out and post it up.

I also have a pretty comprehensive library of bound bicycle magazines starting from 1879, plus books from the same period, so I can check that too. (I don't claim to remember everything in them 🙂 ).

The closest I have found is the picture of Vernon Blake's bike in 1930. Maybe if he hadn't died just after building that, things would have been different. BTW the first time a modern fatbike was proposed was around that time too.

Oops - I think I may have just outed myself as a bike geek 🙂

again 😀

You look at vernon blakes bike and the 81 stumpy based on Kelly/fisher bikes they are uncannily similar in appearance considering they are 50 years apart.

[img] [/img]
[img] [/img]

chip - Member
You look at vernon blakes bike and the 81 stumpy based on Kelly/fisher bikes they are uncannily similar in appearance considering they are 50 years apart.

Blake's bike got a lot of publicity in the press at the time, so there was plenty of opportunity to capitalise on it. But nothing happened, no production of it, no sport based around its function.

Yet 2" tyres had been in reasonably common production barely 20 years earlier, and many old timers were complaining about the lack of them. There was a 2" tyre available but it was for yet another version of the 26" rim used on delivery bikes (571mm?). So the opportunity was there for UK manufacturers to at least try it.

Oo didn't mean to kick anything off. Rik said he was one of several frame builders in the area at that time he never claimed to be the "one" who invented mountain bike. He said the hand built bike he showed me was basically copied into the first production bike, the stumpy. I must say it did look remarkably similar even down to the colour. He also had an original mark 1 stumpy which was lovely. I asked him if he had any kick back for the design and he said he had.

He couldn't speak more highly of specialised bikes and the level of engineering in their bikes. Still not sure they are worth the premium over other brands though. he would say good things as a dealer!

I should have time tomorrow to pop in and ask for a few photos. If I'm over here for work again they do guide tours and uplifts which look pretty awesome.

Btw really nice to see another founder on here!

Sadly I'm heading back on Thursday but would have loved to have popped by. I'll be buying the book.

Flash read your link, don't see any mention of specialised and the stumpy which I thought was credited as the first mass produced mtb?

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[url= http://sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/mtbwelcome.htm ][b]2retro4u[/b][/url]
Marin County, Cali

The Rough Stuff Fellowship was established in 1955 by off-road cyclists in the United Kingdom.

Gary Fisher and I were RSF members. The RSF was not interested in competition, mad downhills or technical innovation. They did nothing to advance the sport.

In Oregon, one Chemeketan club member, D. Gwynn, built a rough terrain trail bicycle in 1966. He named it a "mountain bicycle" for its intended place of use. This may be the first use of that name.

Allow me to point out that building a bicycle for oneself does not put other people on them. Apparently he stopped with one. We didn't.

My late friend John Finley Scott (PhD) built what would have passed for a mountain bike, and he did it in 1953. He called it a "Woodsie Bike." He was an initial investor in Gary Fisher and myself, and even though he beat us to the idea by 20 years, once again, there was only one bike, and he did not claim to have invented the sport.

Racing is what moved our sport forward, and one bike is not going to start a race. Two bikes will.

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.

[img] [/img]

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.

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!

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[url= http://sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/mtbwelcome.htm ][b]2retro4u[/b][/url]
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.
[img] [/img]

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

[img] [/img]

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.

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, [b]when the first downhill off-road race took place on a road a few people called "Repack" road[/b], 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 😉

[quote=jonba ]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.
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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, [b]Geoff Apps had some good stuff but it didn't develop into the bikes we ride today.[/b]

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.

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[url= http://sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/mtbwelcome.htm ][b]2retro4u[/b][/url]
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?