Mountain bikers heard it for the first time in 1988. At the Eurobike trade fair in Cologne: a rattling crash like the sound of a machine gun. In search of the cause of the strange noise, we ended up at the Trisport stand. There, the Grip Shift twist shifter was celebrating its loud debut on the European market.
Back then, SRAM was still a small, unknown company from Chicago. The idea for the shifting revolution was the brainpower of bike buddies Stan R. Day, Sam Patterson, Mike Mercuri, Jeff Shupe, Scotty Dog King and F.K. Day. Day. As active triathletes, they were fed up with the endless fumbling for the gear levers on the top tube. Shifting gears without taking your hands off the handlebars - the dream became reality in 1987. SRAM launched the first grip shifters for triathlon bikes on the market. This was followed in 1988 in Cologne by a foray into the European market. With success: the first of the 300 pairs of grips were sold directly on site: the importer Trisport charged DM 189 for the naked twist shifters. The matching rear derailleur had to be purchased from the competitor Shimano.
Cannondale fitted Grip Shift to a production bike for the first time in 1989. Other major manufacturers followed suit in the early 90s. The highlight of the grips was their simple and intuitive operation: to change gears, you simply turned the ring in the desired shifting direction. The machine gun sound was included. This soon resounded on trails all over the world. Founded as a six-man company, SRAM expanded to Mexico, Taiwan and Europe. In four years, 24 million pairs of grips were spit onto the market. At the height of twist-mania, SRAM swallowed up the German Sachs bicycle components in 1997 and catapulted itself to second place in the parts manufacturer Olympus.
In the still young mountain bike scene, grip shift became a question of faith: to turn or to shift, was the question asked at the end of the 1980s. Some felt cool like easy riders when they rattled over the sprockets with a casual twist of the wrist. The fact that you had to reach in once to shift through the gears completely was irrelevant. Others hated the 47 millimetre thick rubber bead. When playing around on the trail, it provoked unwanted gear changes and offered as much grip in the rain as a blonde mud wrestling. Love it or hate it - for most bikers there was nothing in between. In professional sport, the love was burning hot. In the mid-90s, everyone who was anyone in the racing scene rode to victory with Grip Shift. Whether DH world champion Greg Herbold, bike icon John Tomac or cross-country ace Thomas Frischknecht. They all got the hang of it. The crowning glory in Atlanta in 1996: Olympic gold for Bart Brentjens - and SRAM.
But the rush of victory was followed by a hangover. Without its own rear derailleurs, there was nothing to be gained against Shimano's arsenal of complete groupsets. With the turn of the millennium came a new beginning: merging instead of lamenting was the order of the day. One after the other, fork and shock specialist Rock Shox, brake specialist Avid and parts manufacturer Truvativ landed in the belly of the US whale. Complete groupsets made by SRAM. The small rubber grips have grown into a large corporation that has remained true to its roots to this day. Perhaps because Grip-Shift co-founders Stan, Mike, Jeff and F.K. still have a say today and ensure that the legendary rifle salvos continue to echo across the trails in the future.
