There have been a couple of magazine supplements in our newspaper called The Red Bulletin, sponsored by Red Bull. I’ve just been speed reading an edition and come across an article about the legendary mountain biking pioneer Gary Fisher. Fisher is widely regarded as the daddy of mountain biking, pioneering the use of off-road bikes back in the 70′s in California.
Fisher and his biking pals salvaged old single speed Schwinn paper boy bikes for a small fistful of dollars and rode these klunkers downhill. The old bikes were really heavy, some weighing in at over 40lbs so the boys raced them downhill on gravel fire roads in the Cascade Canyon. It was a decent descent, dropping some 420 odd metres in just 3km …pretty precarious on a bike that only has a pedal-back brake. Fisher, who was an able tweaker of bikes was the first rider to add derailleur gears to his ride, along with drum brakes to make stopping a bit easier.
After a period of downhill racing, tinkering and experimenting Fisher hooked up with Tom Ritchey (another well known biking brand) and that meeting set Fisher off with a business idea. His new company was formed in 1979 – it was simply called MountainBikes (all one word). Talk about branding!
The first bike cost $1320 which I guess back in 1979 was a lot for bike. There were sales of 160 in the first year of trading. In year two, MoutainBikes sold nearly 1,000 bikes. After a few bumps, over steers and a pretty good fall the original company buckled in 1983 and was replaced by Gary Fisher Bicycles. By then, Specialized were producing the iconic StumpJumper on a large scale. Fisher Bikes was sold in 1991 to a Taiwan company called Anlen and Gary Fisher was an unhappy company president. But Trek came to his rescue in 1993, buying the company and giving Fisher free reign to innovate and design mountain bikes to his heart’s content.
So the hippy cyclist, hitting 60 years old and still riding strong and fast and still firmly believing in the pure biketastic-ness of the bicycle.
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