Among this crazy band of friends we found Charlie Kelly, Joe Breeze, Tom Ritchey, Otis Guy, Fred Wolf and Gary Fisher, the latter suspended a few years earlier from competitive racing due to a rule that provided for a maximum length for the hair. Fortunately this rule was abolished in 1972 and his career could continue. These guys then found themselves, more or less, involved in the design and construction of the first bikes that could be defined as mountain bikes. Someone made it a job while for others it remained a fun.
The name of the competition came from the verb “to repack”, or “repackage / re-pack”. More specifically, it indicated the operation with which the hubs were lubricated: there was in fact the need to perform this operation many times because the bicycles used in this first race were very "experimental", if we want to say so, and were equipped with brakes. backpedal, i.e. they are activated by pedaling in reverse.
In short, the continuous braking of ignorance with the coaster pedal produced heat and literally vaporized the fat in the hub and at each descent it was necessary to re-grease everything. The race took place on a track of 1800m in length and about 400m in altitude. Alan Bonds was the winner of the first edition while Gary Fisher, who later became one of the leading experts in the sector, kept the track record for years, covered at an average speed of almost 40km / h.
In the first edition, Schwinn Excelsior were mainly used: indestructible bikes used by postmen who delivered newspapers to their homes in the 30s. The inventor was always an American, the entrepreneur Ignaz Schwinn.
It was understood, already after the first edition, that there was a need to create a more specific bike to make similar paths: it was thanks to these crazy guys that our sport was born, it all started with pure and healthy fun, now left in the Mountain bike DNA.
The first bike adapted for off-roading is the work of Gary Fischer: it was said that as early as 1973 he was riding an adapted 30s Schwinn Excelsior X: it was gearless and weighed about 22kg. For the 1st edition of the Repack (1976), he showed up with a renewed vehicle, adapting drum brakes (levers and cables taken from motorcycles) and a triple crankset. The idea of the gearbox came to Fischer's mind from the need, otherwise, to always push the bicycle by hand to the top of the hills before the descent.

Credits: SFO Museum
Another character among the first to concretely strive to improve the Schwinn Excelsior was Joe Breeze. Joe worked as a frame builder at a bicycle shop, and when he got off work, he enjoyed jumping down the trails of Marin County. Breeze is credited with having created the first specific off-road chassis at the request of Charlie Kelly: thus the Breezer brand was born in 1977. In the Breezer, the frame underwent a restyling with the addition of two transverse tubes to give it greater rigidity and stability. The handlebar was "stolen" from the BMX world while the gearbox was "stolen" from the world of racing bikes. Joe, thanks to these changes, won 10 Repacks of the 24 disputed.

Credits SFO Museum
The other companions understood that this was the right path so much so that they began to ask Breeze to build other "Klunkers", the term by which those bicycles were called that presented themselves as crossroads between racing bikes, bmx and who knows what. The ending was not really the best since it can be translated into "catorci".
For the same reason, Joe Breeze tried to lighten it by working on the geometries. In 1977 he created a model that weighed less than 10kg, with a view to the piping with light and resistant steel alloys.
Precisely in this period, full of news and changes that changed history, the term mountain bike was also born, attributed to Charles Kelly, who is said to have heard it pronounced by a mechanic (if it is true, poor mechanic who never received a mention for it).
Fischer, Kelly and Ritchey join together to build this type of bicycle, with the desire to make their passion work, while Joe Breeze continued on his own way. Kelly and Fisher founded MountainBikes, the first company to specialize in making this type of bicycle. The frames were built by Tom Ritchey. The first model cost $ 1300 and 160 were sold in the first year.

It was 1978, just 2 years after the first edition of Repack, and what was born as a race between drifters and freaks down a mountain, has become a way of life, a lifestyle that marks a clear detachment from the more "noble world. ”Of the road bike.
The reputation of a bike that allowed you to whiz on dirt roads began to turn in the environment, so much so that organized companies began to arrive. You know: when there is a smell of money, entrepreneurs arrive. In 1981, Specialized (with the Stumpjumper) created the first industrially produced mountain bike model.

This is perhaps the date that marks the beginning of a less pioneering but more professional era. In the United States the phenomenon of mountain biking spread like wildfire and also arrived in Italy, in 1985, with the term of "Rampichino", built by Cinelli. Gary Fisher was the first distributor in the USA of the Italian bike's mtb.

In Italy, before the 80s, we found the Saltafoss, which promptly left the scene with the advent of mountain bikes. But what was a Saltafoss? It was a bike that looked like a motorcycle: suspension, sprocket tires, gearbox, big mudguards, race number and fake tank. Two could travel due to the large seat. The name Saltafoss? It derived from the intrinsic style of the bike in jumping over ditches, being at the time the only bike with characteristics suitable for allowing small jumps.
From which dozens of imitations were born even if the founder was Giulio Ceriani in the distant 50s. He took an old bike and modified it in his workshop: those were other times, where you followed your passions and, in the face of inventiveness and manual skills, you could be successful. Ceriani, whom I personally define as the true pioneer of MTB, in the 80s sold the brand to fans of the sector to return to work in the dealership with his children.

Returning to Mountain Bike, we remember that Mike Sinyard (owner of Specialized), began his career by importing spare parts for bikes from Europe and in particular from Italy (collaborating with Cinelli and Campagnolo). Sinyard admired the work of Italian spare parts dealers and frame builders, highly precise and specialized work: hence the name “Specialized”, chosen to found the Morgan Hill house.
Specialized gave a fundamental impetus to the movement by being the only company able to economically support the project on a large scale. As early as 1982 (just a year after the Stumpjumper was announced), it was estimated that around 15.000 mountain bikes were on the road in the United States alone.
In 1983 there was the bankruptcy of the 'MountainBikes' company and the 3 partners broke up and all created their own reality. Fischer founded a new brand: “Fisher Mountain Bikes”. This was later bought by Trek in 1993. Fisher continued to manage design and marketing, as well as being a discoverer and mentor of new talent. The most famous was the winner of the women's mountain bike gold medal at the 1996 and 2000 Olympics: Paola Pezzo.

Ritchey sold his remaining frames to a new British Columbia company called Rocky Mountain Bicycles and, in this turbulent time, Ritchey built his own sales and marketing company, hired a retired professional racer, Mike Neel, as his seller and created Ritchey Design that we still know today.
Kelly, on the other hand, remained in the mountain bike world but no longer as a bicycle manufacturer / trader.
In the 80s there is a continuous improvement of the product until, in the 90s, to produce real MTBs, without thinking about products adapted to the road.
The suspension systems were still in their infancy and, frankly, a little embarrassing when considering current products. But at the time there was that: think of the first suspension systems mounted on the stem. Only in the early 90s did the first suspension forks begin to appear on the market, with stem travel of a few centimeters and performance that dropped dramatically during the year due to elastomers.
From the year 2000 we began to have definable modern products: disc brakes arrived, carbon began to become a no longer exclusive choice on frames and HONDA broke into the world Downhill (link) with its RN01, which brought innovations never seen for the time. There was excitement in the air and the mountain bike took off for good. History is now present.
