History
The 1st downhill time-trial race took place in Fairfax, California on October 22, 1976 on a fireroad now referred to as Repack Road, due to the need to repack the single rear hub brake after a descent. The bikes used were based on beach cruisers that had a single rear brake that worked by pedalling backwards. A mechanism came into operation causing a conical metal (bronze?) brake shoe to be wound on a thread into a conical metal hub. To prevent a metal to metal brake from snatching it was always filled with grease. Heavy use of the brake during the descent would cause the brake to over heat, melting the grease till it drained from the hub and required repacking. Ten riders descended 1300 feet of Repack in about 5 minutes. The first bikes used for descending were known as "klunkers" or "paperboy bikes": coaster brake cruisers using balloon tires first imported to America by Ignatz Schwinn. By 1979, two organizers and competitors of the Repack downhill, Charlie Kelly and Gary Fisher founded the company which named the sport, MountainBikes. As mountain biking grew enormously during the 80s, downhill riders continued to use either rigid or limited suspension travel (under 2 inches) bicycles, and purpose made downhill bikes were not made until the 90s. Some of these innovations included dual crown suspension forks and disc brakes, as well as very elaborate frame suspension designs.
Later, riders from all disciplines of cycling began focusing on downhill. Particularly, many BMX racers made the crossover, including champions such as John Tomac (Team Tomac Bikes), and Brian Lopes. Their influence is seen in the increased difficulty of many courses, especially the big jumps and drops aspect of downhill. The coming of age for downhill biking was its inclusion at the first UCI Mountain Bike Championship, held in 1990 in Durango, Colorado.
Read more about this topic: Downhill Mountain Biking
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“There is no history of how bad became better.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
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