The RITCHEY legacy
‘Pretty sure the year was ’74… Monterey Butterfly Criterium, with Olympians Smilin’ George Mount and Ron Skarin in the rear view mirror… he nipped me at the line for the win… said I was the only rider that year that beat him at the Tour of the Central Coast.’
We’re looking at a black and white image of a chasing pack, bikes being flung side to side in pursuit of a rider charging up the kind of steep, pylon-lined street the Californian Bay Area is famous for. The rider in question, broad shouldered, tanned, wearing a leather hairnet, is Tom Ritchey – in the early 1970s a talented junior with professional road race aspirations; in 2022 a man who has revolutionised the bike industry.
Mountain bikes, lightweight components and 650b wheels are among the many things cycling historians chalk up to Ritchey’s inventiveness. But of course life isn’t this neat – you don’t just sketch a gravel bike on the back of a beer mat and off you go. So here to unpick the tangled threads of bike evolution and his part in it, is the man himself: Tom Ritchey. We hope you’re sitting comfortably…
The arrival
‘I was five at the time we
