It was 40 years ago last month

October 21, 1976. If there was a day when mountain biking started, that was the day. (Gary Fisher wasn’t there. I was though.)

My mates and I had been riding the hills on our 40-year old bikes, upgraded with derailleur gearing and an attempt at better brakes. My roommate Gary Fisher had been the first in our crew, I followed in short order, and by now a year and a half later, there were a couple of dozen of these monstrous bicycles roaming the hills of Marin County.

Every ride started by going UP. The towns are at the bottoms of the hills and the dirt roads go to the tops. No matter which way you go, eventually you reach the top of something, where you spend a bit of time, refresh, enjoy the view, toss the Frisbee. But sooner or later one would make a break for his bike, and it was on. Le Mans.

Problem was, the rides had grown to a dozen or more, and while four or five riders can dice, bigger groups on narrow roads are insane. Riders in the middle of the group can’t even see the road, and sheer aggression and size were more important than skill. After talking the subject to death for a month or so, a half dozen or so assembled on that date to hold a downhill time trial on a road that plummets 1300 feet in a little less than two miles, 14% average grade but much steeper in places. We figured it would be the world downhill championships, and declare a champion for life.

It didn’t work out that way. It turned out that first, everyone who didn’t win, wanted another shot at the title. And second, wow, racing downhill against the clock is about the most thrilling thing it’s possible to do. Losing isn’t that much worse than winning. Even if you can’t beat Gary or Joe, you can try to improve your own time.

Speaking of Gary and Joe, Gary showed up for the fifth race, and he holds the course record. Joe Breeze showed up at the third race, and he’s second all time. This race took over my life and the lives of Gary Fisher and Joe Breeze and a few others and led us to start building our own bikes, which led to a lot of other stuff.

The 40 year old records, set on bikes made in the ’30s, still stand, in spite of the best efforts of modern FS downhillers. The first 150 years are uphill, and a DH bike can’t start that way. Also, you have to ride the course over and over to really dial it in.

Encouraged by Joe Breeze, I have Photoshopped the original images of the Repack race posters from 1978 and 1979. The original posters were cheap photocopies, but the enhanced images are stunning. So I will post them here.

I did not print these posters for advertising. Two years after the first race, it had become a “thing.” I decided to create documentary evidence of my involvement in case anyone made a competing claim about putting on the first DH races. The artist was my roommate, Pete Barrett, a cartoonist who also did the graphics for the MountainBikes business cards and stationery.

Here’s the first race advertising for these new bikes.

This one was the “Evening Magazine” race, filmed by a KPIX crew and shown nationally. Some of the footage turned up in Klunkerz. (Hi Bill)

Awesome.

Excellent stuff.

October 21, 1976

Beaten by me and my mates, July 27 1975 up the woods.

Oh to be young again

love reading about this stuff, and those posters are great!
thanks for posting this Charlie!

Great stuff. Thanks for posting!

The first mountain bike race maybe.

Great post.
8)

Great stuff.
Had a good chat with Joe at the MB Hall of Fame after a quick spin around Tamarancho, a very nice guy.

Brilliant.

Photos or it didn’t happen.

Great artwork.

When I lived in SF I used to ride all round there.

Chapeau to you chaps for riding Repack at the speed you did….!

So, what tyres for the first ever DH race ??? 😆

Proud to be in the presence of a legend.

Awesome posters but people have been riding bikes on mountains since a long time before 1976.

Cool and thanks for posting!

EDIT: Oh and before the bickering starts (please cut and paste from all previous threads 🙄 ), this may not have been the first informal “riding a bike on a mountain” but it deserves recognition and a unique place in our sport!

That’s brightened up an otherwise Shitty day..
Thankyou.

STRAVA or it didn’t happen…

ctk – Member

Awesome posters but people have been riding bikes on mountains since a long time before 1976.

of course, but this was the seed that grew to what we have now.

The Rough Stuff Fellowship have been around for a while… but it seems they made/make a point of using bikes that were/are as un-offroad-adapted as possible. The Marin County lot started improving their bikes…

at least that’s how i see it.

😀

As always, great to read and see this stuff. 😀

I’d have been 9 riding my Raleigh Chipper around the local woods – a very small and flat place last time I went there, but having great fun. Mountain biking has opened up a great deal of adventure and happiness in my life, don’t know what I’d have done if it didn’t happen.

The Rough Stuff Fellowship have been around for a while… but it seems they made/make a point of using bikes that were/are as un-offroad-adapted as possible. The Marin County lot started improving their bikes…

at least that’s how i see it.

My dad has a picture somewhere of him and my uncle riding their old bikes modified with motorbike handlebars they used to ride down the steep sides of the local dene, well before the advent of ‘mountain biking’. That’s when they weren’t damming the stream and blowing it up with homemade explosives they kept in their mams cold box obviously, H&S wasn’t the same back then apparently. The difference being most people who did that (and it was a lot) progressed to motorbikes or cars, Repack and his gang didn’t, they stuck with bicycles and that’s how it developed into a thing.

Hope you don’t mind Charlie

Amazing that the course records still stand.

Andy – Member
Cool and thanks for posting!

EDIT: Oh and before the bickering starts (please cut and paste from all previous threads ), this may not have been the first informal “riding a bike on a mountain” but it deserves recognition and a unique place in our sport!

Well said.

There’s been plenty racing down mountains and there’s been plenty bikes built for dirt before this, but we would not have the modern mountainbike without it.

Thanks Charlie!

Lovely posters Charlie – thanks for sharing 🙂

Thanks for posting!

Brilliant post! Thanks for sharing this.

Thanks to you and your mates, I have made some brilliant friends and have had many great experiences over the years. You should be justifiably proud of the positive impact you have had on so many people’s lives. 😀

Cheers

Sanny

Happy and simple days.

Interest in rough stuff was not just restricted to the CTC. A number of racing clubs would feature a time trial in their programme taking in off road riding. Nationally known was the Balham CC Rough Riders 25, an early season event held in February or March centred on Westerham and Biggin Hill (Kent/Surrey border). During the interwar years it attached many top riders. Time was slow typically the winner doing around 1:44, understandable in view of the terrain.

Off-road riding and racing long before that
Really cool and all that but don’t be giving me the day it all started bollox

Love it!

I can’t put it better than Sanny has.

If someone had told a 7 year old me that in 40 years time, riding my bike and doing jumps in the woods with my mates would still be my favourite thing, I wouldn’t have believed them!

Cheers Charlie and friends.

sanny +1

just had to google it as i thought the date would be around there, it was the day before the damned released new rose.

so….. punk and mtb started at the same time 😆

Cheers Ratpack. Iconic times for certain.

The 40 year old records, set on bikes made in the ’30s, still stand, in spite of the best efforts of modern FS downhillers. The first 150 years are uphill, and a DH bike can’t start that way. Also, you have to ride the course over and over to really dial it in.

Anyone asked Tracey Moseley or Richie Rude? I suspect they would rip that record to pieces.

Off-road riding and racing long before that
Really cool and all that but don’t be giving me the day it all started bollox

I have only been hearing about all these people for 35 years. I am well aware that every bicyclist on the planet took an old bike out in the woods before my mates and I did.

What all those people who rode on dirt before it took over my life and my friends’ lives, failed to do, was sit down and design, then build, then offer on the market, bikes made for that purpose. If they had, we would not have bothered to build our own, we would have just bought bikes from a bicycle dealer like everyone else on this forum has done, and we would not have given a thought to how they were designed and arrived on the market.

That race 40 years ago started my friends and me in that direction, although it would be a couple of years before we got to the point of building and selling the bikes.

Anyone asked Tracey Moseley or Richie Rude? I suspect they would rip that record to pieces.

Retired pro racer Marla Streb lowered the women’s record. Myles Rockwell, who was world DH champ in 2000 and who grew up in the town where the races took place, gave it a few tries on modern equipment. The records still stand.

What I love best about Repack Rider is his modesty.

What I love best about Repack Rider is his modesty.

You have the wrong guy. You’re thinking of Gary F.

What repack and his buddies did was invent Downhill MTB racing and making mountainbikes a saleable commodity. Not mountainbiking as such.

Mountainbiking in the UK does not revolve around downhill racing. Many folk were building and modifying bikes for offroad in the UK well before this and things move in different ways in different places.

My dad rode a modified road bike over black sail pass in the 50s. I modified a bike to ride offroad in the early 70s but the sort of riding people like us were doing was ” wandering around the scenery” not racing downhill.

Mountainbiking has many different strands and yes without the input of the repack guys then development would have been slower and different.

so to claim they invented mountainbiking is not how I would see it, they invented downhill racing perhaps but we do owe them a debt of gratitude for making offroad riding into an industry that allowed us to buy the components we needed to improve our offroad riding.