History of Specialized Mountain Bikes
It all started in the mid- 1970’s when a biker by the name of Mike Sinyard and his friends cyclist started talking about expending the limit of their mountain bike driving. Their goal was pedaling on dirt trails and riding down rocky hills.
Modifying their 1930s and 1940s B.F. Goodrich, Schwinn and Hawthorne bikes, they crashed and physically injured their bodies. But that wasn’t enough for them as they yearned for more thrill on the mountain roads and went back again. As the initiator of this type of thrill, Sinyard was probably the better one in not falling down too often as his friends did.
He thought that soon enough others might want to join in on the fun and with the assistance of a friend from Santa Cruze, mountain biking was taken to a whole different level giving the birth of The Specialized Stumpjumper.
The slogan “It’s Not Just A New Bicycle, It’s A Whole New Sport,” was the start of The Stumjumper’s crusade with composite steel, 26×2.25-inch tires, 29-pounds and 15-speeds all painted in blue. Its first unit counted 250 bikes followed by additional 250 after the first unit was sold out.
There were others, however, that had custom made mountain bikes to satisfy their daredevil ideas. People like Gary Fisher, Keith Bontrager, Tom Ritchey and Joe Breeze all had their own personal setups for mountain biking. Fat Tire Flyer by Charlie Kelly was a publication of a mountain bike a year before The Sumpjumper.
In spite of all that, it was the Stumjumper is considered as the pioneer in the industry that started rising in the 1980’s.
Crested Butte, Colo in 1988 opened the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame. Two years later, Ned Overend won the first World Mountain Bike Championships held in Duringo, Colo. The Sea Otter Classic now presents the largest Mountain biking gathering with four days of professional and amateur competitions. Mountain biking made its ultimate goal by becoming a part of the Summer Olympics in Atlanta 1996.
The professionalism of the sport attracted many sponsorships and bike manufacturers. Recreational Mountain biking started dominating the market in the US and, as statistics shows, of all the 18.3 million bicycles sold in 2004, almost 45 % of them were mountain bikes.
“Stumpjumper: 25 Years of Mountain biking” is a detailed book about the life of the sport and the bike that started all. Veteran cyclist Mark Riedy in 128 pages presents the history of the mountain bike and all its growth, competition interviews, photos and best mountain rides.
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