Otis Guy: 70s Repack Racer, Frame Builder, and MTB Coach
Singletracks Mountain Bike Podcast
Singletracks.com
4.7 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 6 June 2022
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Otis Guy started racing mountain bikes at Repack in the late 1970s and competed at the first mountain bike World Championships in 1990. He’s also been a frame builder since the 1980s and currently works as a youth cycling coach in Northern California.
In this interview we ask Otis:
- How did you get introduced to mountain bikes and mountain biking?
- What appealed to you about riding off road?
- How do the early trails on Mt. Tam compare to the purpose-built mountain bike trails being created today?
- Are you still building bike frames today? What do you think about the current trend toward slacker MTB head tube angles?
- What were the mountain bike race courses like in the 1990s? Did your pro team, racing full suspension bikes, have a big advantage over other teams at the time?
- Did you and Joe Breeze ever complete the tandem bike ride from San Francisco to New York?
- How did you learn mountain bike skills? Did you have a coach?What is the focus of your youth MTB camps? What do you hope kids will get out of mountain biking?
- What’s one thing you want today’s mountain bikers to know about the history of our sport?
To learn more about his frame building business and coaching visit otisguycycles.com.
✏️ A written transcript of this conversation is available to Singletracks Pro supporters: singletracks.com/support
--Keep up with the latest in mountain biking at Singletracks.com and on Instagram @singletracks
Transcript
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| 0:47.8 | Hey everybody, welcome to the single tracks podcast. |
| 0:51.1 | My name is Jeff and today my guest is Otis Guy. Otis started racing mountain bikes at |
| 0:57.4 | Repack in the late 1970s and competed at the first mountain bike world championships in 1990. |
| 1:05.2 | He's also been a frame builder since the 1980s and currently works as a youth cycling coach |
| 1:10.6 | in Northern California. |
| 1:12.4 | Thanks for joining us, Otis. |
| 1:14.5 | Good. Thanks for having me, Jeff. |
| 1:16.0 | Well, so you started out racing road bikes, I believe, and helped start the VeloCult. |
| 1:22.2 | Sorry. |
| 1:22.9 | Fellow Club, Tidal Pies. |
| 1:24.0 | Yeah, for me, cycling was always a passport to freedom. |
| 1:29.9 | So I got my first bicycle when I was five years old and I had my parents take the training wheels off it right away. My uncle |
| 1:35.1 | had a grocery store in downtown San Rafael. My father used to come home from Hamilton Air Force Base |
| 1:41.0 | and he would follow me to the elementary school over this little |
... |
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