He was honoured again - Gary Fisher, the self-proclaimed "Godfather of Mountainbikes". At this year's Eurobike, he donned his glitter suit again and the Gary Fisher show began. However, very few people know who actually designed the first mountain bike - Joe Breeze.
Born in California, he belonged to a group of hippie bikers who lived around Mt Tamalpais in Marin County, alongside biking legends such as Gary Fisher, Charles Kelly and Tom Ritchey. At the beginning of the seventies, they plunged down the mountain on old, converted Schwinn cruisers. But the old frames broke, so Breeze began to construct a more stable one. Inspired by the old cruiser bikes, he carried out a series of tests and measured every centimetre of the old models. The famous Repack race served as a test track. "At the Repack, everyone showed off their new stuff, be it new equipment or new riding skills. With its almost 400 metres of elevation gain over 3.2 kilometres and 30 bends, it was the toughest material test we knew of," recalls Breeze.
The Breezer No. 1 was presented in 1977
In September 1977, he presented his bike mates with the Breezer No. 1, the first modern mountain bike. Instead of the curved struts of the old cruiser frames, there were now two tubes running from the head tube to the rear axle. The new bike had passed its first repack test - Joe Breeze won the race by ten seconds. The phone never stopped ringing, everyone wanted a Breezer. Breeze worked on a piecework basis and by the spring of 1978, Breezer No. 10 was already available, but he was already thinking ahead: "I then made the down tube thicker instead of the twin tubes. I saved almost half a kilo and ten weld seams while maintaining the same rigidity."
Business boomed, the market became bigger and more competitive. Joe's fiercest Repack rival Gary Fisher also became an opponent off the racetrack. Fisher founded the company MountainBikes together with Tom Ritchey and Charles Kelly in 1979. "From then on, the competition started. We all wanted to bring the best product to the market." The demand for mountain bikes soared. The small backyard forges turned into large factories, hippies became millionaires. Until the 1990s, Breeze produced and sold his Breezers in North America, Europe and Japan. In 1998, he suddenly stopped building mountain bikes. "It was time to take the next step. People should use their bikes more often, even in everyday life." So he turned his attention to his original passion: city bikes. To this day, Joe Breeze builds his Breezers, bicycles suitable for everyday use, real alternatives to cars. The rising petrol prices are working in his favour: "2008 was our best year." Breeze has always managed his company himself, leaving little time for new ideas. He has now sold Breezer Bikes and can concentrate fully on what he loves doing best: developing bicycles. He recently announced that he will be designing new mountain bikes again in 2009 - he is still an old repack racer.
Self-promotion in the style of Gary Fisher was never for Joe Breeze. He has a vision. A vision of a better world full of bikes. Even if Gary Fisher will be glittering again at the next bike show, the connoisseurs of the scene will be paying homage to someone else - Joe Breeze.
