The sport is now 40 years old

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

Not the 70s I remember.
But I didn’t ride a bike much because my flares got caught in the chainrings.

However in the 60s, as in Scotroutes’ film clip, off-road cycling was a thing even if it didn’t have a name. Labels make a difference.

What everyone ELSE didn’t do was organize a regular series of competitions with rules and prizes.

And they didn’t have great flyers like this

They created a scene that grew. Like-minded people doing something new that creates a buzz, what we’d call viral growth now. Back then it was mates races, flyers and land lines.

That Dirt Rag feature is a great read. Cheers to the 40th Charlie.

I’ve been riding offroad ever since I could balance on 2 wheels, so that’s 60+ years.

I was modifying and butchering bikes to fit the purpose – the cognoscenti and fashionistas used to sneer at them, but it wasn’t a real problem because I was up in the hills on tracks and rarely saw that type. Just the genuine RSF type riders.

And then, sometime in the 80s I saw my first mountainbike. I can still remember the “At last!” feeling.

So thanks Charlie and mates.

And sadly the cognoscenti and fashionistas are as pathetic now as they were back then.

my 76 year old dad said “ah you mean tracking in the woods?” when i said i had a mountain bike for riding down “narrow twisty paths in the woods”
he probably did that on a bike with rod brakes that was already ancient in post WWII rural England (i remember the bike in my grandfathers shed), he didn’t invent mountainbiking, doubt anyone did but thanks to those who set a start time and made flyers.

can I please ask all the **** on this thread taking the piss………………who do you think invented mountain biking?

Seriously? The answer probably depends on what you mean by “invented mountain biking”

Perhaps it would be more apposite to say that the Californian crew invented the mountain bike industry?

And, to be fair, they also coined the term itself (although that’s only a factor in English speaking countries).

ton +1

No one invented it. It grew out of a number of different things including these guys. Geoff Apps was another, rough stuff fellowship was another root, cyclocross was another.

What repack and his mates did was invent downhill racing ( perhaps) and commercialise it

They might have “invented” timing themselves riding down fire roads in California. Congrats for that Repack! <high 5>

Or, what the Marin guys did was make dirt bikes exciting and gave it the energy to develop wider. Names, attitude, etc, all part of it. Inventive stuff imo.

Geoff Apps is an innovator and very original guy, his bikes are amazing to ride but his ideas didn’t excite many at all. The influence of US MTBs created better all-round bikes. Same for rough stuff, I do it, love it but it’s never been more than a niche and was always very different in attitude to the guys on klunkers. Carrying tourers up passes and easing your way down vs drifting corners on moto-x bars, brakes smoking?
Most of what we ride off-road now traces back to that boom in the mid-late 80s, they are responsible for much/most of it. Call that ‘inventing mountain biking’ if they will. I’d go with it. Credit where it’s due. If they invented the term and the industry that’s directly linked to creating the ID of the sport.

True to say the ‘sport’ is 40 years old in that respect, no matter what the French were doing on 650B bikes decades before that, CX or roughstuff. There are few truly new ideas out there in any area of invention. It’s mostly evolution and my 2p is some people give it a shot in the arm along the way, fair to call them inventors, pioneers or whatever.

Unless he has a book to sell.

Unless he has another book to sell.

😆

The respect/adulation/forelock-tugging vs piss-take/dismissal thing is actually quite interesting. I was wondering if there was some common factor or factors that set folk on one side of that or the other. I don’t think it’s age, maybe something to do with our preferred type of riding, how much we “compete”, the length of time we’ve been enthusiasts etc. As someone who came pretty late to cycling I don’t really have any historic view of it, but then I also don’t recognise most of the names that are bandied about today either (I can just about manage Steve Peat, the Athertons and Danny McMadskill). I was thinking about this when watching that STW-sponsored “history of British mountainbiking” film too. For me, it focussed far too much on the sporting/racing side of things.

I came into offroad cycling from roughstuff and to get to the mountains to climb them. I was riding modified road bikes offroad long before repack and his crew codified downhill racing

To me its not a sport – its a pastime. A sport requires competition

Yes they commercialised it and thus had a large influence on the bikes and parts we can get and I took advantage of that the main advantage of course for me being the very low gears. Other than the triple front ring with the granny gear they had / have absolutely zero influence on what I do and I would be riding much of the same stuff anyway.

its not a sport – its a pastime.

Agreed there, for me; for others it’s a sport. I’m not a fan of racing as an influence on bikes but the repack thing seemed about attitude more than formal/traditional racing. Look at what happened when the roadies got involved, stalled MTB design for 10 years..
I think you and I do similar things on a bike and I don’t call much of what I do ‘mountain biking’. We didn’t as kids riding all sorts of bikes on tracks either. Many would see my current bikes as mountain bikes though. Perhaps the approach and term are the things here rather than the act of riding off road.

The respect/adulation/forelock-tugging vs piss-take/dismissal thing is actually quite interesting. I was wondering if there was some common factor or factors that set folk on one side of that or the other.

Agreed. It’s partly a romanticised thing related to the era and ‘Americana’ for me, and my age when it came over here. Also now it’s about hindsight and interest in brands, how things develop etc. It’s all part of bike evolution. The only true inventors are those with patents to their names. Pioneers might be more accurate and cause less reaction. Though on here, probably not : )

I don’t really have any historic view of it, but then I also don’t recognise most of the names that are bandied about today either (I can just about manage Steve Peat, the Athertons and Danny McMadskill).

Funnily enough, Scottie, I was thinking exactly the same thing while out riding today (a boring climb bit!)

I was in the CP in Peaslake about a year ago and someone was talking to a bloke called Brendon/Bren Dog next to me. I had no idea I was in the presence of MTB royalty 😉

Some folks still do the same (non) mountain biking that they have always done. What the OP and co done has had no impact on them, without them they would still be doing the same type of (non) mountain biking.

Others can see that the OP and co, through their competitions and scene, drove the innovation and commercial availability of mountain bikes to the point that a whole new type and style of riding opened up to all. This innovation and development has continued today where we have exceptionally capable mountain bikes which let us do all sorts of things up, along and down hills which could only have been imagined back then. I’d say they have a good claim to inventing the sport.

It’s not necessarily his claims that Piss me off, they clearly had quite a large influence on part of off road cycling/racing.

It’s RR’s ‘look at me attitude’ that although he denies it, is evident in his continual posting of the same thread, even though he knows what is going to happen every time he posts it.

Personally I think that mountain biking surfed into existence on the bmx wave, we shouldn’t ignore the contribution made by repack and his friends (and I am jealous that I will never be part of something that is a subset of history and groundbreaking in its own way), but it would have happened anyway.

jameso – Member
Or, what the Marin guys did was make dirt bikes exciting and gave it the energy to develop wider. Names, attitude, etc, all part of it. Inventive stuff imo…

Most of what we ride off-road now traces back to that boom in the mid-late 80s, they are responsible for much/most of it. Call that ‘inventing mountain biking’ if they will. I’d go with it. Credit where it’s due…
That’s it.

The UK had the world’s best bike manufacturers for over 100 years. People were riding offroad, we wanted bikes that were suitable for that. Did the manufacturers listen or pay any attention? No.
(There’s no evidence of it other than bikes built specially for the colonies, but not available here.)

The RSF was formed as a club for people who rode offroad, often on very difficult terrain. Did they take any part in developing suitable bikes? No. They actively discouraged technical discussion.

The UK was as usual too full of naysayers. Geoff Apps got the same negative treatment as Alex Moulton, but didn’t have the resources to go it alone.

All the parts of the equation were lying around, but no one was putting it together.

Until 40 years ago.

nail on the head epicyclo.

nail on the head epicyclo.+1

Its like evolution innit, how many millions of times did life start before it finally took hold in a little pond somewhere.

Though I made a bastard raleigh racer + Puch Maxi hybrid back in the 70s. Sigh

Spot on Brian.

Me and my mate Rob invented mountain biking on Cannock chase in 1975. FACT!

My dad rode a singlespeed 29r over black sail pass in the early 50s

We used to time each other AND see how fast we went using one of these speedos…

…my mate Andy was best, but he was a nutter.

#somepeoplearetakingthistthreadfartooseriously

Actually come to think of it I invented downhill mountainbiking around 1955.

I went to a boarding school in the middle of the bush in Africa (Kongwa – 2 days journey from home) so a bike got used until it was dead. Useless encumbrances like brakes were one of the first things to go. We stopped by wedging a foot between the seattube and back tyre. The bike was a standard upright roadster.

There was a nearby small mountain with a narrow path going up/down it and we spent our days doing heroics on the descent.

My come-uppance came when I decided to up the ante and offered to show the lads how to do a “broadie” (sideways stuff) on a corner. It was where the path met a dirt road and was suitably corrugated and pot holed. My mates gathered at the corner on the edge of a field of maize waiting to be awed and bedazzled.

Down the hill I hurtled at 130 billion mph determined to do the best broadie ever and splatter the lads with dirt.

Unfortunately just as I was ready to brake I hit a bump/corrugation/pothole and instead of my foot going into the right spot, it went into the spokes and got sucked in. All the way up to my knee. As a method of retardation it is very effective.

One moment I was a human centaur blinding down the hill in harmony with gyroscopic forces and defying gravity, the next I was a participant in a cyclonic maelstrom of dirt, blood, skin chunks, bicycle and shredded clothing. Said maelstrom proceeded to bowl over the slower spectators and flatten the maize for about 10 feet in.

The world ceased to be for a moment, and all I could hear was the gentle singing of the angels. When the world returned and the dust cloud settled, the singing was replaced by cries of woe from the stricken.

One lad had a broken arm and was making a fuss about it with snot running down his muddy face, another had somehow joined me but in the front wheel and was wriggling madly. There was much calling upon the services of the Saviour, or it could have been blasphemy – I wasn’t in a position to know.

As I lay there gently relaxing, comfortably contorted in union with my bike, there was discussion. “Is he dead?”

The lads obviously thought so because the disentanglement of front wheel boy was done with no concern for my comfort, the bike was shoogled, and twisted, and pulled violently to get him out.

As a Lazarus technique it was successful, because I managed to make an utterance of some sort, and suddenly I was being shoogled, twisted, and pulled violently to separate me from the bike. The big concern wasn’t for me, but so we could scarper because someone had spotted a teacher coming. (Any malfeasance was usually sorted with canings all round).

At this point the African shamba keeper arrived and in voluble Swahili was berating us for the damage to his crop. From my comfortable position on the ground all this seemed very remote, but it got even better when he started up on the teacher who in his white colonialist superiority wasn’t used to being spoken to like that. The able bodied of my friends were melting away leaving the wreckage and wailing broken arm boy behind.

Next thing I remember was being carted into the sick bay and laid on the ground because I was too bloody to be put on a bed.

It was at this point my pet snake made its bid for freedom – we used to keep our snakes inside our shirts (they’d happily lie there hidden all day) because we were not permitted to have pets at school, another caning offence. It stuck its head out just as the matron and first aid attendant were wiping me down. It didn’t make it as far as the door before it got beaten to death by the shrieking matron. Poor thing, it was looking a bit sluggish anyway so it probably had more damage than me.

By the time I was cleaned up I looked like purple spotted boy from all the iodine on my wounds. I was a bit stiff, every part of my body hurt but nothing was broken. Instead of being left to rest in sick bay, in best boarding school tradition, I was brought before the house master for interrogation. He had already caned 2 of the lads after getting confessions out of them.

He decided that I had acquired sufficient damage from the incident to not need the further enlightenment that a caning would provide, but I was to get one for having a poisonous snake*. This beating to be delayed until I had healed. I managed to avoid that one, thanks to the intercession of a member of the royal family, but that’s another story.

Fortunately I have grown up a bit now and don’t do silly stuff anymore.

*We called them manyara snakes because they lurked in manyara hedges, but apparently they are green mambas. Anyhow, they’re nice and docile if you’re kind to them and feed them locusts and lizards, and they love snuggling up in your shirt on a cold day.

Epicyclo – excellent story!

Epicyclo – best thing I’ve read all week!

But, that’s nothing. When I were a lad I got up to 46mph down Weston By Welland hill on me Raleigh Maverick (15 speed)(!). My snake pegged it way before that happened though.

Epicyclo – best thing I’ve read all week!

+1 great wee story, you should start a thread for the others!

you should start a thread for the others!

Agreed.

Just don’t call it “New thread, as advised by…”

That won’t go well, on past experience 😆

Luck was on the side of the Americans back in 1977.

At that time they had the “only usable” 26″ knobbly fat tyre in the world the Uniroyal Knobby and a plentiful supply of ‘Clunker’ post boy frames to fit them onto. California had the mountains,the weather and a reputation for originating commercially exploitable activities like skateboarding and windsurfing. The 1970s saw the biggest cycling boom that America had ever seen with sales rising from 3.7m in 1960 to 6.9m in 1970 and peaking at 15.2m in 1973 and remaining at around 8m for the remainder of the decade. This led to an interest in high quality European bikes and allowed Californian frame-builders to thrive. The eyes of the cycling world and industries were also looking towards California because of the success of BMX and growing interest in cycle racing that culminated with the success of Greg LeMond in the 1980s.

I have also read that in California they had a ban on riding motorbikes on the trails that may have encouraged riders to ride ‘Clunkers’ instead.

The downhill ‘Repack’ was one of a large number of Californian activities in which ‘Clunkers’ were used. Even though relitively few people were involved, it provided the perfect photo/video opportunity for promoting the new ‘Mountain Bikes’

In recession hit Britain the popular British ‘Tracker’ scene was a much less glamorous affair. The emphasis was on making your own off-road bike by fitting cow-horn handlebars and knobbly though relatively narrow cycle-speedway tyres to any frame you could get hold of. It wasn’t worth spending money on a frame you expected to break. There were well attended race events usually tagged onto motorbike scrambling meets the ethos was one of low cost fun. Attempts by bicycle manufacturers like Phillips and Vindec to introduce cheap off the shelf bikes were not very successful. The most popular production ‘Tracker’ style bike being the 1981 Raleigh Bomber that first went on sale two years before the first ‘Mountain Bikes’ arrived in the UK shops in 1983.

There were high quality light-weight ‘rough-stuff’ bikes on offer from some UK frame-builders usually fitted with 650b balloon tyres, alpine gearing, and cantilever brakes. But these were costly and rare.

The attitude of the British Cycling industry towards off-road cycling was coloured by the decades of cheap ‘Tracker’ bikes and niche rough-stuff cycling. They simply did not believe that people would pay more than £100 for an off-road bike. As a result, Raleigh decided not to make ‘mountain bikes’ for the UK market believing that they would only be a ‘short lived fad’. It was 1985 before they changed their mind, and by this time they had lost the market to the likes of Muddy Fox, Ridgeback and Saracen who were then selling thousands of £300 plus ‘Mountain bikes’. These unexpected sales of high quality ‘mountain bikes’ would eventually lead to a collapse in the sale of road bikes and proved to be another nail in the coffin of Raleigh who at that time were the worlds largest manufacturer of bicycles.

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?

No problem. My longtime friend and collaborator on the book, Joe Breeze, is the curator of the Marin Museum of Bicycling/Mountain Bike Hall of Fame. I volunteer as a docent there on weekends. One of the items on display is my own bike, built for me in 1978 by Joe Breeze. How much fun is it to guide people through a museum of bicycles, in which my friends and I are well represented!

I am working on a project to digitize my archive, which is the most complete collection of mountain bike history on the planet. I could not have written my book without my collection, but now I need to open my personal library to the world. The plan is to make it available online to people like the STW readers. We will have a Kickstarter page for the project, and contributors will have access to terabytes of information on the rise of our sport. One small contribution will open the library door forever.

It’s not just my stuff in the archive. Gary Fisher dumped his personal archive on me, although I have no use for a dozen weird trophies and his own paintings that even he didn’t want to keep. After that I will start on Joe Breeze’s collection. The total pile of paper is over a ton, and I have EVERYTHING, magazines, race results, press releases, and club newsletters, spec sheets. Picking any document at random from the collection starts you on a journey that always leads to…other documents.

I sell stuff related to the Repack races, posters and t-shirts.

When I am not doing that, I ride one of my bikes. All my bikes have one of my friends’ names on the downtube. Those names are Fisher, Ritchey and Breeze, and I do not pay for my bikes.

The downhill ‘Repack’ was one of a large number of Californian activities in which ‘Clunkers’ were used. Even though relitively few people were involved, it provided the perfect photo/video opportunity for promoting the new ‘Mountain Bikes’

In the ’70s most people who owned a balloon-tire “klunker” bike did not also own an Italian racing bicycle. My friends and I owned both, and it inspired the question, “What if that bike (the klunker) was built as beautifully as this bike (my Colnago)?

As soon as somebody did exactly that, the sport of mountain biki9ng was born.

mudrider – Member
Luck was on the side of the Americans back in 1977…

You always need luck for a new venture, but you also need balls and foresight, something sadly lacking in the mainstream British cycle industry at the time. Maybe they thought they were too big to fail.

They became like the buggy whip manufacturers at the start of the motor industry – making mighty fine buggy whips, but….

March turned out to be a pretty good month. MBA gave me five pages to play with.