Gary Fisher got a lot right early on…

Whilst searching for some geometry for my old Gary Fisher Paragon Genesis Paola Pezzo frame i stumbled across this:

http://www.vintage-trek.com/Trek-Fisher-Klein-Lemond/2001specmanualFisher.pdf

Its common knowledge that Gary Fisher was pushing for the 29er wheel size from way back, and that his Genesis geometry was likely the first step towards the long low slack approach that we have now.

I thought i’d share the find dated 2001:

Gary rides. A lot.

Gary Fisher does a lot of bike riding. He has for years. He holds the RePack record, and won the National Championship for Masters in 1997. Basically what we’re saying is this; Gary has skills.

Inspiration doesn’t always come easy So one day this skilled rider is out for an epic ride on his fave bike. He’s cruising down a hill, not terribly tricky or anything, when he gets one of those free flying lessons and as he’s laying on the ground he’s wondering “What happened?”. So he picks himself up off the ground only to find that he’s broken his wrist. Not a big deal, but nothing he really wanted. During the next few weeks of recovery Gary has time to think about his little accident and the bike. And that’s how Genesis was born.

Whu’ happened?

Gary analyzed the accident. He had simply been too far forward and pitched over the front wheel. The pivot point of his flip was the front axle. If the axle were further forward, he might have stayed upright. Gary has worked on geometry for years. He even had a fully adjustable bike. It had adjustable dropouts so you could change the wheelbase, chain stays, or fork rake. It had an adjustable head tube to change the head angle. Basically, you could try any geometry you wanted as long as the top tube stayed the same length. Using that bike, Gary developed what we now call “classic NORBA geometry” with a 71 degree head angle and 73 degree seat angle. From all that experimentation Gary knew that changing the fork offset or head angle to move the front axle would make the bike handle poorly. The only way to get the front axle forward was to length en the top tube. But he didn’t want to move the bars forward and change his position. He’d have to use a little short stem.

Gary defies convention Common knowledge said that a short stem would handle weird. In a typical unconventional Gary Fisher way, he ignored common knowledge and built a prototype with a really long top tube. Instead of a 135mm stem, Gary had to use a 75mm stem. This setup added 60mm of top tube, moving the front axle 60mm forward, almost 2 1/2 inches. And it worked!

This first prototype was a revelation. But Gary knows the bike to be an organism, where every thing affects everything else. He had developed enough frame designs to know that he had just scratched the surface and that every dimension on the bike, from chain stays to seat angle, could ben efit from the increased front center. But instead of telling you that long story of test riding and proto types, let’s just skip to the finished Genesis frame and what defines it today.

Genesis features and what they do for you

The primary benefit of the long front/center (distance from the bottom bracket to the front axle) is stability. This certainly helps in conditions like those that caused Gary to crash. But the long front/center makes the bike more stable all the time.

Short stems and their effect on steering

The shorter stem used with Genesis geometry puts your hands closer to the steering axis. Steering can be done with your arms instead of a sweeping sideways movement of your shoulders. Your hands can move faster than your shoulders, so technical steering is precise at high speed. pushed further ahead of you. Anytime you find your self moving back on your bike, its in response to your body wanting to flip over the front axle. This happens on steep downhills, and also any time the bike is mov ing at high speed in rough terrain. With the front axle moved forward, there is added resistance to over-the bars flight. You’re more relaxed at speed, and since you’re more in the saddle than behind it, you’re in & Centered between the wheels On a bike with a long front-center the front wheel is better pedaling position to keep the power on.

How does it climb?

Common sense tells us that a longer front center places less weight on the front wheel. Intuition tells us that with less weight on the front wheel, the bike might not climb well. But geometry charts only tell part of the story, and Genesis bikes actually climb very well. Here’s two reasons why: with a shorter stem, your shoulders stay more over the centerline of the bike, even when turning. When your center of gravity stays over the frame centerline, the bike stays in better ball ance. With Genesis geometry, its even easier to hold your line on steep, slow speed climbs. Secondly, when climbing hard in first gear any bike will respond to the the pressure of pedaling. Imagine if the headset were placed in the middle of the bike, right below the sad dle. The bike would hinge in the middle, between con tact patches of the tires. With every pedal stroke the rear wheel would turn away from the pedaling force. As a result, the front wheel would turn toward the pedal side, and the bike would swim like a salmon heading upstream. But the further ahead you move the pivot (headset), and the closer to your hands, the straighter the bike will climb. With the shorter stem, you stay over the bike, and the bike tracks straighter, making it einb very well indeed.

Short chain stays

Genesis bikes use ultra-short chainstays. This positions the rear wheel more directly under your butt. With more weight on the rear wheel, you get better traction uphill, and the tire bites better when you apply the rear brake. Short chainstays also moves the pivot point for doing wheelies. With a Genesis bike, you can easily lift the front wheel when its time to bunny hop a water bar or climb over a small log

Steep seat tube

Genesis bikes, like most Fisher models, have a steep seat tube angle. The duty, and the effect, of the seat angle is to place the saddle where the rider needs it for support when seated pedaling. The seat angle also interacts with the top tube length to describe the posi tion of the head tube relative to the bottom bracket. For every degree of seat angle, the top tube is com pensated about 10mm. In other words, for every degree the seat tube is steepened, the top tube becomes about 10mm shorter. When comparing geom etry charts, a bike with a steep seat tube may look like it has a shorter top tube than it actually does.

The function of the steep seat tube is to place the rear wheel more underneath the rider. This is useful when the rider transfers from a seated to a standing position. As the rider moves from a seated to a stand ing position (or the opposite), they do not have to move as muoh to maintain traction. It becomes easier to ‘attack’ a limb.

Who’s it for?

The features of Genesis geometry were dreamed up by Gary Fisher, for his own riding. As we point out in “Gary Fisher: A History” on pages 24 and 25, Gary has done a lot of racing. But the same benefits that get a racer around a course faster will also add pleasure to a leisurely ride on the weekend.

Genesis bikes are more stable, especially in more technical terrain or on steep downhills. Genesis bikes allow quick, precise steering. Genesis bikes climb really well, especially for those who like to stand out of the saddle.

With these features, Genesis bikes offer a superior ride to anyone looking for performance off the pavement.

The link also has some kind words to say about Reynolds 853, has a section on tubeless, women’s fit, oversize headsets (remember the Fisher Evolution 1.25″!), frame materials.

Certainly had foresight & his finger on the pulse of our sport.

It’d be interesting to hear him & Chris Porter compare notes.

I wonder why he didn’t push geometry even further, his was always revolutionary for it’s day but looking back it was pretty conservative, only a couple of degrees and a few cm off the other designs at the time.

I wonder why he didn’t push geometry even further, his was always revolutionary for it’s day but looking back it was pretty conservative, only a couple of degrees and a few cm off the other designs at the time.

He was too far ahead of his time, he wanted a 29er wheel at the onset of the USA ATB boom but had to settle for balloon tyres, look how long it took for 29ers to arrive. I don’t think the mainstream was ready for him. Plus he got sucked / sold out into the Trek corporate world (along with Bontrager / Klein / Lemond), things might of happened quicker if he was at his own helm. Maybe.

I guess if it was too radical, it would look like pink bikes grim donut and not sell. Simply for being too far outside the normal.

Chris porter has a small nice of people who want to be outside the normal. He doesn’t need to sell a ton of mid range hardtails in bike shops in every city.

Well, I’m no expert rider (more of a bimbler, to be honest) but I do know that my Trek Marlin 29er, which uses the G2 geometry, is great fun to ride and just keeps on going – even though it’s getting on for 10 years.

Thanks for the fun, Gary!

Always liked the look of Gary Fisher bikes, but never had one.

Wonder how much he is involved in the bike industry now?

I had a Fisher Cake with G2 geometry in 2005.

It was pretty bad, tbh. I mean, it was ok for munching miles on but it had like a 70.5 degree head angle and a 130mm fork, so it would dive like an international footballer – fast and with the slightest provocation. I went over the bars on that thing more than any other bike. It also had a very flexible rear triangle and the main pivot bearings were absolutely tiny and lasted about three months. They were easy to change though.

My Trek from a decade later though is great, and really seems to benefit from the G2 approach, but then it is a 29er.

GF X-Cal 1999
Early Hayes
My first proper mtb was from Gary way back in 1999.
Long TT, long fork travel, short stem, assymetric rims, disk brakes!
The bike is small compared to anything modern, but sizing up would probably make it feel reasonably up to date. He was innovating within his time frame I think.

I think it’s no coincidence that Trek led the way with the first really good long travel 29er tbh. (though, years later, Yeti and Santa Cruz were still getting fawning articles about their attempts to catch up…)

My first proper mountain bike was also a Gary Fisher, a Marlin HT.

Reading back he seems to have all the right ideas but despite the marketing my Genesis geometry Marlin had pretty similar geo to a lot of bikes at the time. I don’t think it was much different to say a Spesh Rockhopper of similar vintage

I had a Fisher hoo koo e koo in 1987. It had a really slack head angle and short stem (67.5 deg I think) when everyone else was as 71 or 72 degrees. It was an amazing ride for the time. He was ahead of the curve.

1987 HooKoo E Koo was my first MTB. Rode it from Cambridge to Barcelona and back. Got nicked obviously because Cambridge

My first 29er was a purple GF Rig in 2006 – great bike but pretty steep angles if I recall…….long gone now

happy days

The Rig was about 2 deg slacker in HA than other brands. Steep today, but slack for a hardtail 15 yrs ago.

I bought one of those alu front w/carbon stays jobs some years back from fleabay. It was lush and loong for it’s time. Had to return it because of unadvertised brake problems that I couldn’t then afford to sort. What an idiot, should have waited, fixed it up and got on with it. I remember it had ‘genesis’ something or other written on the stays. Didn’t Fisher hardtails of the time suffer from cracking seat-tubes though? They just poked up above the sloping top tube with those looooong seatposts sticking out of them. Looked cool though.

Big Sur, it was. 2005 in Deep purple. Yum.

A 1995 GF Marlin was my first proper mtb, bought in Milwaukee when I was working over there. Had one of the Rigs as an intro to 29ers and singlespeeds. I remember suffering a sense of humour failure when the Rig’s ebb kept slipping at Drumlanrig – as if the lack of fitness and ice-like roots weren’t enough! 🤣 Great bikes long gone.

He always comes across as a great guy who doesn’t take himself too seriously, but really knows his stuff.

Little-known fact. Toby Howes, the product manager I started out working with at Madison who came up with the Genesis name there and as far as I remember arranged that it was OK for Gary Fisher to use it, as the TM was taken by Madison at least for EU or UK. Gary and Toby knew each other from ages back in the bike industry, early MTB days. Gary seemed like a good bloke.

Also, the first 29er I rode was a rigid SS using Genesis Geometry, a custom build. I loved it. I hadn’t appreciated the design went back so far though. Toby made the Ridgeback Genesis bikes in 2001 also.

The first time I ever saw a 29er was when Gary Fisher riding his prototype Gary Fisher passed me during the red Bull 24hr. I thought I was hallucinating.

My first proper MTB was also a ’96 Gary Fisher had a pretty steep head angle.

Wasn’t there a whole load of hard tails around the early noughties that were a pre cursor to LLS, like Cotic.

Long toptubes, short chain stays, short head tube, short stems, wide bars, long travel forks. Just not as extreme as what you see now but made the off the peg mountian bikes from the big brands look like hybrids.

Gary Fishers custom fork offsets was quite niche though but seem to be getting more popular now.

Would be good to know the truth in all the (conflicting) above!

GF a good bike designer no doubt but also a self promoter

The first time I ever saw a 29er was when Gary Fisher riding his prototype Gary Fisher passed me during the red Bull 24hr. I thought I was hallucinating.

The first time I ever saw a 29er was when I tried to overtake Gary Fisher who was riding his prototype bike through the singletrack during the Red Bull 24hr. Either he was hallucinating (entirely possible), or the bike was shit cos he was bouncing off every sodding tree in the woods and getting right in the way.

I was rather astonished to find myself and Gary predicting the next big thing, in a recent issue of Singletrack, and we are thinking exactly the same thing!

“Road plus”… “800c”…. or whatever they call it… the gravel bikes will be getting bigger wheels.

The first time I ever saw a 29er was when I tried to overtake Gary Fisher who was riding his prototype bike through the singletrack during the Red Bull 24hr. Either he was hallucinating (entirely possible), or the bike was shit cos he was bouncing off every sodding tree in the woods and getting right in the way.

He passed me on the flat gravel section going around the lake 🙂

“early on” seems like yesterday to me 😀

“Road plus”… “800c”…. or whatever they call it… the gravel bikes will be getting bigger wheels.

I was thinking exactly this today… while pinging around on a track during a quick lunch spin. “Roadplus” has gone as a name though, thanks to WTB pushing it for tall 650b tyres. Think of a better name and make it happen… “Big’uns”?

Wasn’t there a whole load of hard tails around the early noughties that were a pre cursor to LLS, like Cotic.

Increased reach and shorter stem was done by GF first, I’m pretty sure. Making that work properly with longer forks was what Cotic did back then.

I’d imagine a lot of people’s first experience of 29ers was from a Fisher Rig or maybe a Salsa Mamsita.

My first fisher was a 1998 Ziggurat, genesis v1 geometry 26er. nearly bought a pink fisher back in 1991, but the cannondale SM600 won that one.

The fisher rode very well. long top tube suited my weird body shape and set in motion a dislike of all bikes with a ETT under 24″. In the background, the likes of cannondale were paying attention and by ’99 the fisher was replaced by a CAAD4, with an equally long ETT and similarly short stays. cannondale could do something else to improve the handling too. As they designed their own forks, they made them with a touch more offset, quickening the steering, but aso relatively stable by pushing the front axle out a little further. lightning fast in the twisty singletrack too.

My first fisher 29er was a 2004 x-caliber, again genesis v1 geometry, with a few mm tyre clearance between the seat tube and the rear tyre. With 100mm Rebas I loved it so much that my cannondale prophet didn’t get much use after that. It was quick up and down.
A few years ago I bought an old 2006 fisher Kaitai (katey in black country). badged as a hybrid, it was the same platinum alu genesis v1 frame as my old x-caliber. still rode very wel compared to more modern bikes. Gave that to a mate last year and he’s loving it. 🙂

GF a good bike designer no doubt but also a self promoter

‘Better that you’re good at presenting ideas than simply good at ideas’

didnthurt
Full Member

Gary Fishers custom fork offsets was quite niche though but seem to be getting more popular now.

One of my forks was a Fisher offset thing. I was curious about any difference I might notice, then I discovered that in the 2 years or so since it was made the entire fork industry had changed to the same offsets for 29ers because they’d finally admitted they were doing it wrong.

Yep, there’s a lot to thank Gary for in this hobby/ sport. Well ahead of his time.

About fork offsets and G2, I think Jeff Jones deserves recognition there, he was using larger offsets to rework 29er geo before G2 came along. I wonder how much Jeff’s early designs influenced GF. The first GF G2 fork offsets were closer to what we think of as normal now, 45mm or so vs the 39-40mm of the time on 26″? Then they went to 51mm. Jones bikes were at 55mm. But anyway.. that general idea itself is older than MTBs and it was as much about toe overlap as it was about handling. Some choice there from sus fork manufacturers was the right way to go.

Same as molgrips had a Fisher cake, bought mainly on the recommendation of a STW review and was a replacement for a stolen bike so limited option….. horrible thing, horrid descender horrendous climber.
Sold it for a Maverick ml7.5 off a review by Mike Ferrentino and it was ace if fugly.

Hated Fisher bikes but Gary had some interesting ideas

Yeah the jury’s out on the fork offset stuff.

I have three 51mm offset 29er forks which are damn near obsolete and unrideable now that the cool kids are all on 42mm or 44mm offset.

If GF had a hand in the first Trek Stache then I doff my cap to him, that was a great bike and really opened my eyes to the advantages of big wheels.

My first 29er was a Stache, I was and still am amazed at the way it climbs, descends and corners.

I remain convinced of 51mm offset forks on 29ERS

I had the first Fisher 29er. Handled like a lorry [hence Gary then settling on 51]. We were doing promo for the Trans Cambrian and I left the magazine riders for dead on a boggy section. Bought a Inbred 29er that’s a keeper, makes a nice gravel bike now…… I heard Gary got dropped by Trek for passing comment on their star Tour rider being a massive drug taking cheat. I won’t buy a Trek.

Didn’t Fisher hardtails of the time suffer from cracking seat-tubes though? They just poked up above the sloping top tube with those looooong seatposts sticking out of them. Looked cool though

I had the 2005 Hoo Koo E Koo (same year as the Purple Big Sur with carbon seat-stays). It had that problem;

That was replaced under warranty by a 2008 Big Sur (no carbon stays *pout*) which had the same problem 🙁 Caught it before it sheered off this time though.

By the time that happened (2013 I think), Trek had binned GF and I was offered a Trek frame under warranty, I paid a wedge of cash to get a better one than was initially offered and I still ride that to this day.

I had a mate with a Rig that also snapped there.

Started on 29ers with. Purple SS rig they were flogging off for £400, managed to get the frame warranty exchanged due to tyre rub and badly aligned chainstays

The best though was the fisher supercailbre 29er, light, fast, confidence inspiring, died when I got too fat for it