[Words by Steve Thomas // Photography by Tom Ritchey]

Long before the mountain bike was even conceived, on the dusty mountain trails of 1970s Santa Cruz, in Northern California, a young teenage Tom Ritchey was already taking on epic long-distance off-road rides on his road bike and was already building bike frames and parts. 

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Fast forward a few years and his rough riding learnings soon translated into the creation of an all-new kind of bicycle, which was set to become the first dedicated production mountain bike in existence.

Ever since then, Tom and his company, Ritchey Logic, have been producing innovative and “logical” bikes and parts. Tom is well known as a person who follows his beliefs and stands strong on them, it’s an ethos which has been reflected all through the historical range of Ritchey products.

We caught up with Tom to hear his thoughts and grab his insights into the evolution of our beloved machines.

ORCC: What was the most important early innovation in creating the first dedicated mountain bike?

Tom Ritchey: The handlebar was the biggest. I was already making stems and was successful at that, and if you can take the cockpit of a bike and change it then you have a different bike. The BMX was just in its infancy back then, and the cruiser was in a similar infancy – and found mostly in Southern California but they were mostly extremely heavy bikes. 

The problem with the combination bar and stem they use, and in then using it for a mountain bike or off-road bike was that there was nothing in there to be able to assess their strength for off-road riding. Those other bikes used then were essentially cruisers, which were different to bombers, klunkers or for MTB use.

The first Repack I did was in 1978, which was also when I was starting to play around with the first mountain bike. I was invited to ride it and I borrowed a bike. On the first corner, my bars rotated, so I had to stop, sort them out, and then cut my speed. It was obvious that there was no strength-appropriate bar-stem strength combination out there at the time.

As I was building stems for really strong riders already, the idea of building a specific combination (for off-road use) that was strong made sense, and people liked that.

For a couple of years that first “bullmoose” design of handlebar was pretty much the identifying point of the MTB.

ORCC: What do you think about the general evolution of mountain bikes – from you’re classic 1990’s hardtails through to the current enduro trend?

TR: There is an ongoing transition of what I consider to be a very positive evolution of materials. With the use of carbon fibre, and in the development of suspension in particular, has made it possible to approach the weight of a good (hardtail) steel bike and to have full suspension, too, and thus to have something that gives you much more control.

I ride a full-suspension bike and I raced full-suspension because I can get within pounds of a lightweight steel bike. The value is not that it’s a full suspension bike, it’s that I can turn off the suspension when I want and race a bike that’s on/off with suspension when needed. 

It’s a cockpit of seven switches or rather levers of control. There is a tremendous value to switching between modes, but it comes at a cost – a very high cost, and at a complexity cost, too.

As we go into electronics, with electronics replacing cables and even giving power assist; we’re transitioning into a bike that you have to be beyond the basic mechanic to ride and to ride it where you want to ride it.

To me, a good ride is being able to leave and not worry about things – not to think “If this breaks I’m going to be stuck, or if this doesn’t work, I’m not going to be able to fix it.”     

Your standard 10-12 or so attachments in your bike tool are not going to fix a lot of things that go wrong with this complex stuff. 

I don’t ever take a cell phone with me on the bike – and even if I had one with me it wouldn’t work where I want to ride. Because of these (reliability and repair) concerns, I am going to choose not to ride in these places, or not to do these rides alone (which is a big deal to me), and that’s a bad thing.

If I have to worry about going where I want to ride and experiencing that ride and maybe not getting back because of technology, that’s a very negative thing about the sport. I think very few people think in the way I do about this, or calculate it in. But, in little ways, it is irrefutable to the thinking person.

As we’ve evolved further into this, with the mechanic and the salesperson being part of the whole experience now, and with (the industry) telling and selling you something (without factoring the reliability in) – that you’ll be able to do this and that on, well, it's marketing, basically it’s the world that we live in. 

ORCC: What do you think about the growing trend towards wider rims, tyres and bigger travel?

TR: It’s a combination of usage scenarios. As the enduro bike gets more and more to be considered as the cross-country bike you end up emulating the practical things of motorsport and motorcycling.  

I think that when you’re going downhill anything can be what it has to be. As soon as you start turning uphill without power assistance you start appreciating other things.

If you’re going downhill go for it; why not make it a motorbike without a motor? If you’re going uphill, count your costs and choose carefully.

ORCC: What are your thoughts on the evolution of suspension?

TR: When full suspension bikes first came into use, I was riding in Moab (in the 90s), when things were really beginning to change (in bike design and fractioning of the sport). 

The amazing thing was that the local riders were kick-ass and were fully rigid riders. They were the kind that came out (some on single speed) and put their own map together in their heads. and they had decided that they didn’t want the downside of all that (new) mechanical experience. They wanted the true experience and were willing to develop the physical skills to attain it.

Nowadays, take Nino Schurter as an example, he could ride a rigid bike faster than anybody around, and so he can also ride a full suspension bike faster than anybody, too. 

But, the true rider, who is looking at all the plusses and minuses now ends up tending to go in the direction full-suspension. If I were a younger rider, I would probably lean more towards developing my skills on a rigid bike/hardtail, and then put them to use on a full-suspension bike. 

At my age, I don’t look that way at things anymore. I’m good enough to stay with most groups – and the new technology helps me to do that (because of my earlier learning on rigid bikes).

ORCC: Is the early evolution of the mountain bike reflected in the current-day gravel scene?

TR: Those early mountain biking days were a very educational time, and if you look back and then look at the current situation with gravel bikes coming into their own – it’s what I call the 40-year cycle. 

We’re basically back to square one with gravel, and unfortunately, they’re bringing in support and things like that, so who knows what will happen in the next 40-year cycle. During the last 40-year cycle, you had every imaginable category, discipline, bike design, and racing categories and types, and it just about covered every which way you could go in the sport.

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