What does the future hold?
Remember front derailleurs? It wasn’t all that long ago the general consensus was multiple chainrings on the front was the way to go, and we needed these weird-looking cages to wrangle the chain up and down them. Then in 2012, SRAM debuted their XX1 drivetrain, and now everything bar a select few entry-level mountain bikes have a single narrow-wide chainring, clutched rear derailleur and wide range cassette. The same can be said for hub spacing, metric shocks, handlebar diametre, the list goes on.
Considering the very first Specialized Stumpjumper rolled off the factory floor in 1981, in the scheme of things mountain bikes haven’t been around for all that long, and have evolved at a lightning pace. The frames and everything that is bolted onto them are totally unrecognisable when compared to their ancestors, and they are better in every way.
Glen Jacobs, Founder of World Trail, and Australia’s only Mountain Bike Hall of Fame inductee, spent his younger years racing on some of these early mountain bikes and has experienced first hand their evolution.
“We were racing hardtails with no suspension, and if you made one little mistake that was it, you were on the ground. Now, the bikes are so much more capable, and as you get older you can still learn and improve,” he says.
“We’ve got a track here (in Cairns) called Kuranda, we built it in 1989 and held a race on it in 1990. I’ve still got the book with times from that race; now I’m 60-years old and have shaved 20-per cent off a race run I put down in the prime of my life, and it’s because of the bike.”
Taking a step back, it’s crazy to think just how far everything has come. What was considered the pinnacle of technology a decade ago would seem almost unrideable by
