The first magazine review of purpose-built mountain bikes appeared 25 years ago this month.
I've just discovered that this month marks an interesting anniversary, which really ought to have received a bit more attention. It is exactly - and only! - 25 years since the appearance of what was probably the first-ever magazine review of purpose-built mountain bikes.
The magazine was The Bicycle Paper and its July, 1982 offered a comparison of the Ritchey Mountain Bike and the Specialized Stumpjumper. These were the only commercially available mountain bikes at the time.
It’s fascinating to think how far mountain biking, and the mountain bike itself, have come in that time. Both those early bikes still show their ancestry in the ‘cruisers’ of the 1930s and 50s and few of today’s mountain bikers would relish throwing them down a steep dirt track. While the huge technological advances that have taken place are generally welcome, it does make you wonder if we aren’t a little bit pampered today. There was certainly a raffish kind of romance in the story of the first downhill races, which directly prompted the development of the Ritchey and Specialized machines, not to mention the rest of today’s global industry.
Read more about the birth of the mountain bike.
