Charlie Kelly Talks About the Birth of Mountain Biking and MTB Culture
Singletracks Mountain Bike Podcast
Singletracks.com
4.7 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2018
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Charlie Kelly is a man who can rightfully claim many firsts in the sport of mountain biking: promoting the first mountain bike race, co-founding the first company to sell complete mountain bikes, and starting the first mountain bike magazine, Fat Tire Flyer. He’s known as one of the founding fathers of mountain biking, and is a member of the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame.
I talk with Charlie about the early days of mountain biking, and how he and others helped shape the mountain bike culture of today. Check out Charlie’s website for more about MTB history, including photos.
There is also a Go Fund Me campaign to digitize Charlie’s massive collection of mountain bike media collected from the 1970s through 1992. Watch the video below to get more info and donate here.
Thanks to Stio for sponsoring this episode. Go to stio.com/singletracks to check out their entire Pedal Collection of shorts and jerseys, and take up to 70% off through June 25, 2018.
--Keep up with the latest in mountain biking at Singletracks.com and on Instagram @singletracks
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Something unexpected has arrived in Happy Meal. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Hello Kitty and friends are teaming up for the ultimate collab. |
| 0:08.3 | Joining your little ones on a fun-fueled adventure. Some fun, some food, it's all inside this happy meal. |
| 0:16.2 | Until the 2nd of February from 11am includes one pre-selected book or toy whilst it's last. |
| 0:20.3 | This episode of the single tracks podcast is sponsored by Stio. |
| 0:24.3 | Stio makes functional mountain lifestyle apparel for both the epic and everyday moments in life. |
| 0:30.7 | Hey, everybody, welcome to the single tracks podcast. |
| 0:34.0 | My name is Jeff, and today I'm talking with Charlie Kelly, who's a man who can claim many firsts in the sport of mountain biking. |
| 0:41.8 | He was the first to promote a mountain bike race. |
| 0:45.1 | He co-founded the first company that sold complete mountain bikes and even started the first |
| 0:50.5 | mountain bike magazine, Fat Tire Flyer. |
| 0:53.7 | He's known as one of the founding fathers of |
| 0:56.2 | mountain biking, and he's a member of the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame. Thanks so much for |
| 1:00.6 | joining me, Charlie. Well, thanks for the call. The first thing I want to ask you is just, |
| 1:05.1 | when you were starting out, did you ever imagine mountain biking would become such a phenomenon? |
| 1:10.2 | Well, it would be pretty hard to imagine that |
| 1:13.0 | from, you know, it depends on what stage you're talking about, but at the stage when there were maybe |
| 1:18.2 | seven or eight people with modified bikes that you practically had to make out of Flint, |
| 1:23.6 | you know, it would be pretty hard to project that. I remember one conversation, one of my friends |
| 1:32.1 | got pretty excited and said, ah, this will be in the Olympics someday. And I was kind of dismissive. |
| 1:37.4 | I said, that's about as likely as an American winning the Tour de France. So, you know, you can tell |
| 1:43.1 | what era that was from. Right. Right. So, but you guys were |
| 1:47.0 | pretty passionate about it. I mean, did you, was it the kind of thing where you did it and it was |
... |
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