The sport of mountain biking is in a constant process of cell division. New categories, branches and subspecies are constantly developing. Meanwhile, at such a monkey speed that even those familiar with the scene are beginning to lose track. Freeride, cross country, dirt, marathon, all mountain, and, and, and. The range of technology is even more blatant. Fullys with lots of suspension travel, fullys with little suspension travel, hardtails in various materials and wheel sizes, 3 x 9 gears, 1 x 11, 2 x 10, enduro bikes, e-bikes, e-fat bikes - just to name the ones with e.
Home visit with Greg Herbold
All the more exciting to look back at the beginnings of mountain biking. BIKE reporter Henri Lesewitz had a unique opportunity to do just that when he visited Greg Herbold. The American, better known by his scene abbreviation HB (pronounced: Ätsch Bieh), won the first official downhill world championship in Durango in 1990 and went down in the history books as the first UCI champion in mountain bike history. Today, Herbold tests forks, brakes and gears on behalf of industry giant Sram, which also owns Rock Shox. His property is a veritable treasure trove of technology from years gone by. When Lesewitz visited, he could hardly believe his luck: In the workshop was the original 1990 World Championship bike, which otherwise hangs as a relic in Ed Zink's "Mountain Bike Specialists" shop in Durango, the birthplace of the legendary World Championships. Everything about the bike is just as it was at the moment when Herbold raised his cheering fist to the sky behind the finish line.
No shuttle - "all the bikers were like animals"
"Back then, the sport was not yet divided into different categories. As a rider, you rode everything. Downhill, cross country and sometimes even tough long-distance races, which I honestly didn't like that much. Back then, I would have liked to just ride downhill. But that was unthinkable. Nobody was shuttling. All the bikers were like animals," Herbold remembers the early years, when mountain biking was neither a UCI discipline nor an Olympic sport. In 1988, he got his first professional contract - 800 dollars a month plus equipment. Because he regularly faxed well-founded test reports to his sponsor, the Japanese bike manufacturer Miyata, he was soon involved in the development of the bikes. For the World Championships in Durango, the Japanese wanted to put together a sophisticated special bike for Herbold. But Herbold turned them down. He opted for the tried and tested technology of the "Ridge Runner Team" - a steel bike with lugged tubes that promised some comfort thanks to its filigree design.
"It was very easy to lose control with the bikes from back then. The courses were incredibly fast. A crash would have been a disaster, and not just because of the failed placings. Because hey, we were riding without protectors!" Herbold chats. To maximise traction, Herbold opted for a Tension Disc from Tioga. A disc wheel with self-supporting, minimally impact-absorbing flanks made of Kevlar threads, which does without the classic spokes. Aerodynamic and comfortable. Perfect for the course in Durango, which was so long that Herbold even had a frame air pump with him during the race. HB had the Shimano cranks milled out for a touch of flex. The then ultra-futuristic suspension fork from Rock Shox (oil/air), which had only been presented to the completely shocked public a year earlier, was "bored out" from five to a brutal six centimetres of suspension travel. A large chainring, normally only used by racing cyclists, provided speed. Even back then, the white Onza Porcupine tyres (2.1 inches) were not considered to have particularly good grip, but had to be fitted to the bike because of the sponsorship contract. Herbold normally always rode bar ends, only removing them for the world championship race. Normally, they were expensive advertising spaces, as the sponsors' stickers on them were always clearly visible from the front. Long, flat stem, light handlebars.
1990 World Championships: Lycra instead of protectors
The bike was so nappy that Herbold seriously refers to it as a "fully". It almost makes your blood run cold when you imagine racing down a downhill track at full throttle on a bike like this. Without protectors. In lightly padded, short Lycra trousers. A devil's ride on a knife-edge, so to speak. Herbold needed six and a half minutes in the final and won by 3.8 seconds. Epoch hero John Tomac gambled a little with his choice of equipment - he rode with racing bike handlebars. The Swiss Philippe Perakis, who always started in spectacularly scary outfits, was smashed against the bark of a tree. On that Friday in Durango, Herbold had little idea of the historic dimension his victory would have. Shortly afterwards, professional sport was divided into two camps: downhill and cross-country. The bikes became correspondingly specialised. And so it went on and on and on and on. One curiosity of this development is gathering dust in a Herbold shed. A downhill World Cup bike with an attached combustion engine. One of the first hybrid bikes in mountain bike history. Herbold had built it because he could hardly get up the mountain with the increasingly massive suspension bikes. However, not even Herbold could have imagined in his wildest dreams that today's bikers would be whizzing up the mountains on electric power.
