Are These The Most Important Mountain Bikes In History?

I'm here today at the Marin Museum of Bicycling in California, and I want to show you the most influential, most exciting mountain bikes in this building. Come with me. This is Myles Rockwell's Giant ATX. It's not just iconic because it won the 2000 UCI Downhill World Championships, and it's not just iconic because it's literally turn of the century tech here with early hope brakes and those cool little lightning bolts on the disc rotors, but because Myles Rockwell won after so much adversity. In 1997, he actually broke both his legs on a motocross accident. Saw him have 11 hours of surgery. He was in a wheelchair for six weeks. The man wasn't sure if he was going to walk again, let alone race. He also had a staph infection in 99, the year before he won this race. So much adversity, everything was against him, but he kept his eyes on the prize, and he eventually won it. This cool purple bike here is Gary Fisher's RS1, and it was his first full suspension bike. As you can see, it was actually the first four-bar linkage system we had as well. This came out in 1991, and it looks quite familiar. It looks quite modern, and it was. It was way ahead of its time. It even has disc brakes because the way that the rear suspension moved meant that you couldn't necessarily have V-brakes because they wouldn't align perfectly every time the suspension moved for its travel. They actually borrowed some disc brakes, which weren't available to mountain bikes. They borrowed them from scooter technology, put them on the bike, but they were pretty terrible, and most people couldn't get over the idea of a linkage fork. Most people thought it was quite ugly, and it was very different to what people were used to. Sadly, as no one wanted to buy it, Gary Fisher, the company, started to go under, and Trek bought them out. It did actually push a lot of tech forward in the industry, and we've got him to thank for that four-bar linkage system. Gary Fisher was one of the original repack crew, those crazy Californians that were racing beach cruisers down a hill just down the road. Mert Lawill was one of those racers as well, but he was an engineer, and so Gary worked with Mert Lawill to design this suspension. The motocross world started to hear about the popularity of mountain biking, and a lot of them wanted a piece of the action. Robert Resinger was one of them, and he started up this mountain cycle brand. This San Andreas would sport a lot of technology that you would see on motocross bikes at the time. This is circa 1992, and you're seeing inverted forks, a whopping two-and-a-half inches of rear travel with this single pivot swing arm here, which was doubled up to add rigidity. Then you've got early disc brakes here as well, and aluminum frames as well. It's not a far cry from what we're seeing at the moment. Maybe not such skinny flat bars, but yes, it looks pretty good. Now, I know this looks like a gravel bike because of the drop bars, but it's actually one of the first, if not the first 29er mountain bike. Now, this is a Moots YBB, but actually, the idea came from Wes Williams, who was a former frame builder at Ibis, and he decided that bigger wheels was definitely better. He went about trying to find a knobbly tire for these bigger wheels, but the only thing that was on the market was this Hakkapolita, a knobbly road tire for snow in Finland, which was made by Nokia, who made phones, but also car tires at the time. This tire was only 1.75 inches. It was too skinny. He leaned on WTB, the tire brand in the area, to try and get something made specifically for mountain biking. Gary Fisher leaned on them too and promised that he would sell them on his bikes. This and Gary Fisher's bike would come out in around about 1999, but sadly, no one cared. No one really liked it, and it didn't really take off till way over probably 10 years later. We've got Nino Schurter's XC bike here, which is 27.5 inches, and that's 2013. It was way ahead of its time, but we do have them to thank for trying. Again, this has got drop bars. It may look like a gravel bike, but it is a mountain bike. This is a race machine, hence why it's got drop bars, but also it's one of the first alloy bikes to ever be made. Charlie Cunningham built this for Jackie Fellon, who was a female racer in the 80s. It gave her a real distinct advantage because it was lighter, it was stiffer. It was also more comfortable because of the flex in the thin walls of the frame. She also sported a double chainring instead of a triple chainring just to save weight, which was nuts back in the day. At the time, bikes were costing about $1,300. This would cost $3,300. It was three times as expensive. People thought it was crazy to have alloy instead of steel. No one was sure whether this would live up to the rigors of mountain biking, let alone racing, but Jackie won pretty much everything that there was to be won at the time and proved that this was viable and it soon took off. Wow, what a cool place. I mean, I'm surrounded by icons and exciting bikes. I mean, Jimmy Deaton's Yeti Arc. We've got Hans Rey's GT trial bike up there. You've got the very first specialized Stumpjumper as well, as well as some of the old beach cruisers that were raced on the Repack Hill. Too many to choose from, but hey, I made my choice on the five most exciting bikes here. What would you say was the most iconic exciting bike? Let me know down in the comments below. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel.