The sport is now 40 years old

Nice, intersting article but crap title.

Plenty of us we riding three speed raleighs and five speed racers through bomb holes, over jumps and down steep slopes before 76. Had a mate who did jumps on a chopper!!

What Sturmey Archer for wet woodland XC runs???

they didn’t invent off-road cycling.

Do they claim to have done?

This forum really does have it’s fair share of bitter, full weight weapons.

Cheers Charlie, see you back over in the calm waters of retrobike.

Here’s one for the bikepackers in 1938. 🙂

Bicycling News 22 Sep 1938 – Rigby

We made suitable bikes but…

I have to say this every time I show up here. Everyone rode off-road when they were kids. Millions of people had the opportunity to “invent the mountain bike” and didn’t do so.

What everyone ELSE didn’t do was organize a regular series of competitions with rules and prizes. Then use what they had learned from the competition, sorting out the machinery to design a bicycle specifically for that purpose, rather than use a modified version of something made to do something else.

And then finally to have the minerals to open a business whose only purpose was to build and sell these new bikes. How many of my critics did that? The name of the sport comes from the name Gary and I thought up for our business, MountainBikes.

A lot of people slag me here, and not one of my critics can point to something he has done that was worthy of hundreds of magazine articles and several books. None can identify anything remotely approaching my contributions to the sport. If you think I have a big ego, you have not met my former colleague.

I was a rock band roadie for 42 years. I have been insulted by professional insulters who used insult-enhancing drugs. My critics here have a long way to go before they bother me.

Boom! Nice response Charlie, you the man. And happy birthday to you and the Repack crew. Big love.

Not being slagged off – IMO the thread title let the of story down and didn’t do you justice

Great work Charlie, keep riding, thanks to the California gang who made it what it is, not what it was, or might have been. All the best.

Repack Rider – Member
I have to say this every time I show up here. Everyone rode off-road when they were kids. Millions of people had the opportunity to “invent the mountain bike” and didn’t do so.

What everyone ELSE didn’t do was organize a regular series of competitions with rules and prizes. Then use what they had learned from the competition, sorting out the machinery to design a bicycle specifically for that purpose, rather than use a modified version of something made to do something else.

And then finally to have the minerals to open a business whose only purpose was to build and sell these new bikes. How many of my critics did that? The name of the sport comes from the name Gary and I thought up for our business, MountainBikes.

A lot of people slag me here, and not one of my critics can point to something he has done that was worthy of hundreds of magazine articles and several books. None can identify anything remotely approaching my contributions to the sport. If you think I have a big ego, you have not met my former colleague.

I was a rock band roadie for 42 years. I have been insulted by professional insulters who used insult-enhancing drugs. My critics here have a long way to go before they bother me.

Amen. This place is full of gobshites who are experts on everything. When I became aware of mountain bikes in the 80’s people were talking about the repack, nothing else.

Charlie and co may have invented formalised downhill racing and helped create the market for what became mountainbikes but to claim they invented the sport is fatuous

Scotroutes – that old (8mm?) footage looks like masochism – the monstrous unsuitable gear ratios they are running seem to be causing some kind of lactic bulge in the thigh areas 😐

Forgive my ignorance but I was unaware we had a hall-of-famer posting here. (I assume Repack Rider = Charlie Kelly).

Whether he, along with GF, TR JB and others, invented mountain biking is beside the point. They gave a niche activity some structure and then grew successful businesses from it.

Many of those businesses were instrumental in taking mountain biking to where it is today and for that they deserve, at the very least, our respect

If you think I have a big ego, you have not met my former colleague.

I had a genuine ‘LOL’ then 😀

Charlie – the issue is one of communication I think. Blowing one’s own trumpet is frowned upon somewhat by Brits. You have to work a lot more humility into your language than you think you need!

We all rode our bikes off road when we were kids, but thanks to Charlie and his buddies I’m still doing it as an adult.

It’s marketing that invented mountain biking. Someone was the first to attempt to market mtb and that effort stuck. Some French guys tried in the 1950’s to organise regular off road riding and racing. It didn’t “stick” around as long and as well as the American 1970’s attempt.

Someone was the first to attempt to market mtb and that effort stuck

Well not quite – there was a fair bit of actual bike development wasn’t there?

As for off-road racing – cyclocross predates MTB racing I think. But it is true that this particular ‘scene’ can be traced back 40 years.

I remember MTBs (cheap ones) being a ‘thing’ when I was a kid. These bikes with fat tyres and loads of gears suddenly appeared all over the streets in a way that cyclocross bikes or delivery bikes never did.

Did they not race on Klunkers and Beach Cruisers. Advertised the racing which started to become popular. Then started to adapt said Klunkers and Cruisers. They changed and developed bikes and components as the sport grew. It’s racing… to get the edge in any racing sport people develop and progress equipment to get the edge. I am not belittling the achievements of the Repack guys at all. As said before we all ride today with evolved equipment purely down to their efforts.

I agree that it’s rather grandiose to claim the concept of MTBing was invented at that point. Much of the riding I do now is exactly the same as a Rough Stuff rider would have done 60 years ago. But not all of it – some is hooning around trail centers on a FS, which certainly would not have been possible had MTBs not been developed.

😆 Same thread every time this is!! Think molgrips has it best with the ‘trumpet blowing’ comment…..if you have to constantly tell everyone how you and your mates ‘changed the world’ expect piss taking to follow.

Wow, some apologies are in order, I am very sorry that I had never heard of you Sir – my bad, I think is the expression – and that I was totally ignorant that no one else had made anything remotely like the contributions that you have made to the sport that I and so many others enjoy.

I will be thinking about you, in gratitude, when I ride later this morning.

Perhaps for folk like me who are ignorant of your story, you could tell us more. All ears, it sounds a great and under appreciated one…The article was an interesting start, thanks for positing BTW.

By way of context, watching guys ride races round fields and jumping gates and walls on Grandstand/WoSport in the early 70s was my first inspiration. But that sort of things probably doesn’t exist these days unless someone has invented a fancy new abbreviation for it that I also missed.

Molgrips and Teamhurtmore sum it up pretty well 🙂

Mr Repack – Do you still ride?

Repack – why do you continue to come back here? You don’t contribute in any way other than to blow your own trumpet.

We have to thank these true innovators of the sport who through modifications and forward thinking have probably shaped the sport for US !!

shifter – Member

Repack – why do you continue to come back here? You don’t contribute in any way other than to blow your own trumpet.

Since we’re in a questioning frame of mind, why did you come into this thread just to have a poke at Charlie?

lobby_dosser – Member

We all rode our bikes off road when we were kids, but thanks to Charlie and his buddies I’m still doing it as an adult.

Nicely put.

Charlie – I often raise a glass to you and your buddies at the end of a great ride! Thank you Sir.

THM – The film “Klunkers” is worth watching, if you’re interested.

Because he started the same thread three months ago. Because all his threads are very similar.

He invented mtb-ing in the same way wiggo invented road biking in 2012.

Love it.

Not sure why people get so angry.

I think it’s great, MTBing that is. I love the sheer childish ridiculousness of booling down a hill because it’s fun. I love mud and dust and rocks and laughing to (and at) myself when I get to the bottom. I love the anticipation of the push or ride back up to do it all over again and the ‘did you see that bit’ or the ‘whoa, I nearly came off there’. I love skids and wheelies and bunny hops and manuals and not having to think about day to day shit when I’m out on my bike 😀

I had a poster, possibly this one-

from a mag BITD (90s)

edit- and this

What everyone ELSE didn’t do was organize a regular series of competitions with rules and prizes. Then use what they had learned from the competition, sorting out the machinery to design a bicycle specifically for that purpose, rather than use a modified version of something made to do something else.

So, yes, thanks for getting it going 😀

Yep, it’s great what you did 40 years ago. Maybe, to British tastes, arguably less great that you keep coming here and telling us how great a contribution you made, but fair play, it’s all true and you’re entitled to be proud of it.

Just a thought – rather than reminding us about what you did way back when, how about an update – you can’t have just been resting on your laurels since selling your slice to Gary in the early ’80s? Any more recent activities or contributions worth talking about?

shifter – Member

Because he started the same thread three months ago. Because all his threads are very similar.

Should make it very easy to avoid then.

Should make it very easy to avoid then.

…I’ll set a phone reminder for 5 and 10 years from now.

Northwind – Member
shifter – Member
Because he started the same thread three months ago. Because all his threads are very similar.

Should make it very easy to avoid then.

Not with the new forum layout, can’t see who’s started threads.

This thread encapsulates the differences between us (UK) and our American cousins…

US: Woo hoo! Look at us! We’re great and we’re gonna be even greatererer.

UK: Piss off.

And back in the 70’s UK blokes were waaaaay to busy striking and burning pallets in oil drums to be messing about on push-bikes. 😀

Push bikes were for riding to work the picket-line, not for doing skids.

This thread encapsulates the differences between us (UK) and our American cousins…

Let’s just get something clear. That stereotype applies to a minority of Americans, they just monopolise the airwaves. The down-to-earth self-effacing reasonable kind don’t make as much of a fuss so we don’t hear abou them.