Anniversaries are always a welcome reason for journalists to reminisce a little with the person celebrating. In Tom Ritchey's case, there was a double opportunity: 40 years of mountain biking and Ritchey's 60th birthday. But to our author's surprise, the MTB pioneer was not in a particularly celebratory mood. At least as far as the birth of the sport of biking was concerned. Ritchey talks in a low, calm voice. But something seems to be fermenting inside him. And indeed, when it comes to the question of who invented mountain biking, it bursts out of him. More open and unfiltered than ever, Ritchey talks about the beginnings of the sport and what he sees as the unjustified iconisation of his former business partner Gary Fisher, who likes to present himself as the inventor of mountain biking. Ritchey shows photos and old documents. It is important to him to prove that his story is not just hollow chatter.
On 21 October, the MTB Hall of Fame in Fairfax celebrated 40 years of mountain biking. Charlie Kelly, Joe Breeze and many of the old clunkers were there. You weren't. Why not?
To be honest, I had other plans - and the date has no great significance for me. The decision to set the Repack race of 21 October 1976 as the birth of mountain biking was more or less an internal matter for the Bicycle Museum, where the Hall of Fame is located. I didn't know anything about it and they didn't ask me about it. The museum is closely associated with Marin County and the group that organised the Repack race back then. Gary Fisher, Joe Breeze, Charlie Kelly. All the names that today are associated with the invention of mountain biking. In my opinion, it is difficult to say whether it is right to set a date for its creation. It's just their story, and for them it probably feels right. For me, the Repack race is not the birth of biking.
Excuse me? That would mean that the history of biking would have to be rewritten.
The repacker scene was a very, very close-knit community. I probably had the longest journey of all when I visited them, even though I only lived 50 miles away. Everyone travelled up the mountain in a pickup truck and then bombed downhill. With timekeeping. That was it. The Ballooners, Mongrels, Clunkers - or whatever they called their lead-heavy bikes - were pure downhillers, initially still single-speed. I rode with them once. I didn't have a bike and borrowed one from a photographer. The handlebars warped as soon as I hit them. These bikes were totally uninteresting to me. I wanted to ride everywhere, cross country. Up and down. Charlie Kelly, who helped organise the Repack races, was a journalist and loved to tell stories. He recorded the races and wrote articles about them. Wild boys in jeans flying down Mount Tamalpais. That made the Repack story sexy. But the Cupertino Riders dirt club had organised something similar years before. Only without timekeeping and without spreading stories about it. Personally, I had no interest in what the Cupertino Riders were doing, nor in what the guys in Marin were doing. I was more interested in adventure tours through the wilderness.
If not the Repack race, what do you think marked the birth of mountain biking? Contemporary witnesses report that you were actively involved in the development of the sport.
From my point of view, there was no hour of birth that could be labelled with a date. It was much more a development from different circles. Above all, it is important for me to emphasise that there was an off-road culture even before the Repack races. There were a lot of people involved with the Ballooners back then. But there was nobody with my knowledge and experience who could actually create a special new bike. Okay, except Joe (Breeze/ed.). But his bike went in the downhill direction. I, on the other hand, wanted a lightweight high-performance bike. I had already been involved in frame construction in the early 70s, even with fillet brazing. But I realised that this time it wasn't just about a frame, but about an all-round package. So I also developed the stem, fork, seat post and bottom bracket. All of this went far beyond frame construction. All the many details in which my bike differed from what had existed before - and which made it much, much lighter. It was a completely different category. Yet it didn't have a name for years, even though it was already being sold. Some said Ritchey Ballooner, others Ritchey Clunker. One day someone came into a shop - so I was told - pointed to my bike in the sales room and said: "Hey, that's a mountain bike." And yes, that fitted well with what it represented. From then on it was called "Ritchey Mountainbike". The term was part of my brand name. Too bad I didn't have it protected back then.
According to the history books, Gary Fisher bought one of your first mountain bikes and then, together with Charlie Kelly, traded in bikes that they commissioned from you. The name Mountainbike was their company name, which is why Fisher is now considered the forefather of mountain biking, even according to Wikipedia. Wrongly so?
Gary never really commissioned me to build bikes. He called me after Joe had ordered a tandem from me for a tour of the USA. He said: "Hey, if you're building a bike for yourself, could you do another one for me?" I said, "Okay!" I didn't even let him know as soon as it was finished. At some point he came round and picked it up. I told him that I had built a third one and whether he knew anyone who wanted to buy it. He found a buyer straight away. And because he was so enthusiastic about his bike, which wasn't called a "mountain bike" back then, he said that he could certainly sell more. So I built ten more. At the time, Gary and Charlie were thinking about starting a business, which they did. I built the frames for the bikes, but waited for payment. The reason for our separation in a nutshell: I was a young father building a house. I needed the money. So I invested all my time and energy in developing the mountain bike. I wasn't a good businessman, but Gary and Charlie couldn't run a business either. I finally decided not to put all my eggs in their basket, to put it that way. In short, I no longer wanted to be their partner. It was a short co-operation of about three years.
So is Gary Fisher the inventor of the mountain bike, or not?
No, because there was no inventor. Looking back, we were all pioneers - including Joe Breeze and many others. But nobody can claim to be the inventor. I just told the story where a guy in a shop pointed at my bike and called it a "mountain bike". Gary and Charlie realised that straight away. They suggested that I name the bike Ritchey Mountainbike. It was a real cross-country bike, developed from the ground up. And before that - this is my opinion, my perspective - there were only downhill bikes. Too heavy, not robust enough - and therefore far too limited in their range of use.
This story is hardly known. How important is your place in the history books to you?
Not really important. I've been hearing the Gary Fisher inventor story for 20 years and have never intervened. But when it comes to the birth date of the mountain bike, it's time to set some facts straight. First and foremost, I want to run a successful business and be there for my family. Gary and Charlie, Grateful Dead and all that - it had nothing to do with me. I wasn't part of the rock 'n' roll or hippie movement. I liked listening to music, but back then music was always connected to drugs. And I was totally against drugs. My drug was cycling. I didn't want my body to be controlled by any substance. I wanted to control it myself and experience the cycling high. Everyone has their own story. Charlie, Joe, Gary. And me too, of course.
The main issue seems to be how to define the term mountain biking in retrospect.
For me, this is a very individual story. Marin County is not densely populated. My backyard was absolute wilderness. If you got lost here, you could die. My challenges were different as a result. I rode my cross bike on ten-hour adventure tours through nowhere. That was the starting point when I began to design a bike. For me, the basic idea of mountain biking is closely linked to backpacking, to the idea of adventure. In 1977, I wanted to hike the John Muir Trail in five days. Nobody had ever done it in under seven days before. The idea of developing a bike that could complete this tour took root in my head. Very few people know the story: the origin of the first mountain bike was the idea of conquering the Muir Trail in two days. I set off on the longest day of 1980, 21 June, and it really meant a lot to me at the time. I couldn't estimate my chances. That part of the Sierras is wild. It was really dangerous - the highest mountains in the USA, and no two roads crossed. Compared to Marin County, the points I had in mind for my bike were really serious. It had to be functional, reliable, light and stable.
And how many days did you need?
After 30 miles I met a backcountry ranger on a horse. He arrested me first. Well, more or less. There were no bike rules back then, but he was terribly upset that I was travelling on a mechanical vehicle. He put it in the same category as cars and motorbikes. So I ended up in court in Yosemite Valley for violating the Wilderness Act. This trial eventually led to a reformulation of the rules. There have been national park rules on the use of bikes since 1980. However, the story makes it clear that I was primarily interested in experiencing nature. About adventure. About cross country. I built bikes for myself, followed by bikes for friends who paid for them. So I became a businessman rather by accident (laughs). At some point, I realised that I could not only build hundreds of frames, but also develop as a component manufacturer.
The precision with which Ritchey remembers events from decades ago is astounding. Because every detail is important to him, he later sends five sound files in which he talks in detail about his beginnings as a frame builder. His place of residence at the time, Palo Alto, his bicycle-mad father and the spirit of optimism of the 1970s play a central role in his remarks. The area around Palo Alto was full of people who had no inhibitions about experimenting, enthuses Ritchey. He was born into this creative world.
How did you learn to build frames?
My father was an engineer who was always drawn to the outdoors. He introduced me to the outdoor world as well as the engineering world. My earliest childhood memories are of my father getting on his bike and then coming back beaming with joy and totally muddy, raving about the trails away from the paved, tarmac roads. When I was twelve, I decided to build a go-kart. And because my father wouldn't allow a petrol-powered go-kart, I suggested an electric version. My father taught me how to solder and helped me with the electrical details, but the mechanics were all mine. It was also my father who introduced me to Jobst Brandt - a mate of his who worked as an engineer at Hewlett Packard and had been everywhere with the bike. When I met Jobst, my life changed abruptly. I was living in my own little bubble and Jobst was scrutinising the bikes I was building at the age of 15 or 16. He was very critical and pointed out engineering errors to me. That had a huge impact on me.
What kind of bikes did you build?
Racing bikes with the thickest tubular tyres ever. A kind of cross bike. Bikes that were just made for the legendary, overflowing "Jobst Rides" that Jobst regularly organised. I also got to know John Finley Scott at that time. A guy who thought ahead like Jobst. He was a professor at UC Davis, a famous college in California. A little guy with no racing background, but with the goal of riding every dirt road in California. And he wanted me to build him a bike for it - a 650b that he called the Woodsy bike. At the time, nobody could have guessed what an important role this bike would one day play in bike development, precisely because of the tyre size, which is now known as 27.5 inches. There are pictures of it at the Supertour, a 1000-mile adventure race over ten days. Incidentally, it was this John who lent Gary and Charlie money so that they could set up their business.
What was the engine that drove bike development forward so quickly?
The racing aspect was extremely important and accelerated development enormously. I was one of the pioneers with my own team. In 1983 we already had national championships. The cross-country formats, whether classic lap or stage races, developed quickly - and yes, downhill was sometimes part of a stage. In Crested Butte there was a 3-day race with a downhill stage, which I won. Against Gary and Charlie, by the way, who were also racing. I really knew how to ride downhill. Downhill was part of cross country. Some people don't put this puzzle together. But for me it's an important part of the development of mountain biking.
When you look back now: How much does the biking of today have to do with what was celebrated 40 years ago in California?
I'm fascinated by how many categories and directions the sport has developed into. People call it mountain biking, but it's so much more. Basically, the past 40 years have always been characterised by a certain form of experimentation. Don't follow rules, but think things in new ways. This spirit drove us even back then. Everything is always on the move - but today things are moving so fast. The industry seems to be tripping over its own feet. Over self-imposed product cycles and all that. The customer should actually dictate how the industry should function. Perhaps that is the most important point: I see myself as a consumer. If I want something, I do it. But I don't want to be dictated to by the industry. My company has been around for over 40 years now. I think Ritchey is the oldest American bike company still owned by its founder. And I'm still responsible for every product design. The mountain bike was a major milestone for me. It brought so many things together and took it to a whole new level.
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