50 Fun Facts About Mountain Biking

Downhill world champion Missy Giove raced with which dead pet, named Gonzo, hanging around her neck?

A piranha, dried out after it died, became her trademark and later the centre of a Cannondale marketing campaign.

Which name did 1970s Marin County riders give a downhill race that left coaster-brake hubs needing fresh grease?

Repack was named for the chore after each run: riders braked so hard down the fire road near Fairfax, California, that the grease in their hubs smoked away.

Which retail giant is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, a town now famous for mountain bike trails?

Walmart's founding family bankrolled the boom: the Walton Family Foundation had given $85 million to trail development in Arkansas by 2019.

Which California company launched the Stumpjumper in 1981, the first mass-production mountain bike?

Specialized had the bike built in Japan, basing it on a custom design sold by Tom Ritchey, Gary Fisher and Charlie Kelly; the model is still in production.

Mountain biking made its Olympic debut, with Paola Pezzo winning the first women's gold, at which city's Games?

Atlanta staged the first Olympic mountain bike races in 1996, not on a mountain but at a horse park in Conyers, Georgia.

Which British rider won Olympic mountain bike gold in Tokyo and Paris and a Tour de France stage on Alpe d'Huez?

Tom Pidcock has also been a cyclo-cross world champion and won the road classic Strade Bianche, so he has reached the top on three kinds of bike.

Which desert town is the base for the Slickrock Trail, laid out in 1969 for Honda trail motorcycles?

Moab's famous loop crosses sandstone that grips tyres like sandpaper; settlers called it slickrock because their horses' metal shoes slid on it.

Which Canadian ski resort hosts the biggest stop of the Crankworx mountain bike festival each summer?

Whistler has held Crankworx since 2004; it became the resort's largest annual festival and grew into a world tour with festivals in New Zealand, Australia and Austria.

Which trials rider from the Isle of Skye became famous through a 2009 street-riding video shot by his flatmate?

Danny MacAskill posted the five-minute clip to YouTube in April 2009; two years later a signature trials frame was named after his home island.

Which rider won the Mountain Bike World Cup in 1998 and 1999 before winning the 2011 Tour de France?

Cadel Evans raced mountain bikes at two Olympics before switching to the road, where he twice finished second in the Tour before finally winning it.

Which Marin County peak just north of San Francisco is regarded as the birthplace of mountain biking?

Mount Tamalpais drew riders in the 1970s who freewheeled old balloon-tyre cruisers down its fire roads, long before anyone sold a bike made for the job.

Which Californian frame builder made the first purpose-built mountain bike in 1977, a machine now in the Smithsonian?

Joe Breeze was also one of the fastest of the early downhill racers, and riders simply called his ten hand-built machines Breezers.

Which Wisconsin bicycle company, begun in a red barn, bought pioneer Gary Fisher's mountain bike brand in the 1990s?

Trek kept selling bikes under his name for years, then folded them into its own range in 2010 as the Gary Fisher Collection.

Which American brand's heavy 1930s and '40s cruiser bicycles were stripped and rebuilt into the first klunkers?

Schwinn cruisers were tough enough to survive the descents, so riders fitted them with better brakes, gears and motocross-style handlebars.

Which race format, sharing its name with a motorcycle sport, times riders only on the descents between untimed climbs?

Enduro transfers are untimed but usually carry a time limit, so a one-day race of three to five timed stages rewards fitness as well as nerve.

Which suspension brand did former motorcycle racer Paul Turner found in 1989 to build forks for mountain bikes?

RockShox brought motorcycle thinking to bicycles, and the first suspension forks of the early 1990s offered two inches of travel at most.

Which nickname is given to a mountain bike with front suspension only, a cheaper design that pedals more efficiently?

Hardtail bikes became popular almost overnight once suspension forks appeared, though improving full-suspension designs have been eating into their share since.

Which Swiss racer won ten elite cross-country world titles and the Olympic mountain bike gold medal in Rio?

Nino Schurter collected a full set of Olympic medals, taking bronze in 2008 and silver in 2012 before finally winning gold in 2016.

Which downhill racer, sister of fellow professionals Gee and Dan, won every round of the 2016 World Cup season?

Rachel Atherton swept the series only months after becoming the first woman to win ten World Cup rounds in a row.

French downhill great Anne-Caroline Chausson won the first women's Olympic gold in which other branch of cycling?

BMX joined the Olympics in Beijing in 2008, and she won its first women's race after five straight World Cup series titles on a mountain bike.

Which invitation-only freeride competition, first held in 2001, takes place near Zion National Park in Utah?

Red Bull Rampage offered $8,000 in prize money at its first edition and has since been called the Super Bowl of freeride.

Which style of bicycle, pioneered by Alaskan frame builders in the late 1980s, was developed to ride on snow and sand?

Fatbike tyres are typically 3.8 inches or wider, which spreads the load so the wheels float over bogs and mud as well.

A mountain bike world champion may race in a jersey of which design until the following year's World Championships?

Rainbow bands have marked cycling's world champions since 1927, and a winner may wear them only in the discipline where the title was won.

Giant, the world's largest bicycle maker and a familiar name on mountain bikes, was founded in 1972 in which place?

Taiwan's best-known bike brand started in Dajia, Taichung, and by 2014 it was turning out 6.6 million bicycles a year.

The 7stanes, seven mountain bike centres that each feature a stone sculpture, lie across the south of which country?

Scotland's seven forest centres take their name from the Scots word for stone, and artist Gordon Young made one for each site.

Which Colorado town, the highest incorporated city in the United States, hosts a famous 100-mile mountain bike race?

Leadville sits above 10,000 feet, and its bike race, first run in 1994, grew out of a 100-mile footrace over the same high country.

The Cape Epic, an eight-day mountain bike stage race for teams of two, is held in which country?

South Africa has staged it in the Western Cape since 2004, and cycling's governing body rates the race hors catégorie, beyond categorisation.

Which mass-start race sends hundreds of riders at once down a glacier above the French resort of Alpe d'Huez?

Megavalanche drops more than 2,600 vertical metres over 20 km, and racers may get down by any reasonable means, so many cut corners or walk their bikes.

Which Colorado town hosted the very first UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in 1990?

Durango's championships featured only cross-country and downhill races, and resident Ned Overend won the first men's cross-country world title.

Which road cycling star, once a junior mountain bike world champion, rode the mountain bike race at the Rio Olympics?

Peter Sagan chose it over the Rio road race, returning to the sport in which he had won his junior world title in 2008.

Which component maker, which also sells fishing tackle, makes the XT groupset fitted to many mountain bikes?

Shimano in the 1980s introduced new ideas only on its best parts, Dura-Ace for the road and XT for mountain bikes, then passed them down to cheaper groupsets once proven.

Which component maker launched XX1 in 2012, a single-chainring drivetrain with no front derailleur at all?

SRAM's eleven-speed XX1 saved weight and complexity, and a twelve-speed successor called Eagle followed in 2016.

Which component lets a rider quickly lower the saddle for descents, then raise it again for efficient pedalling?

Dropper post designs solve a real conflict: a high saddle is best for pedalling but becomes a hazard when the riding turns aggressive.

Which braking system, fitted to most modern mountain bikes, builds up heat in a rotor rather than in the tyres?

Disc brakes come in cable-pulled mechanical and sealed hydraulic versions, and on a long descent the rotor can become extremely hot.

Which circuit of rollers and banked turns, now also used by skateboarders, is ridden without pedalling at all?

Pump track riders gain speed by shifting the body up and down over each roller, so bikes with no suspension to soak up the effort work best.

Which downhill racer won the 2015 World Cup round in Leogang without pedalling after his chain broke at the start?

Aaron Gwin held his speed all the way to the line, a year after a tyre came off its rim as he left the start gate on the same track.

Which Sheffield downhill racer finally won the World Championships in 2009 after finishing second four times?

Steve Peat took the title in Canberra by just 0.05 seconds, and his home city later added him to its walk of fame.

Ten-time downhill world champion Nicolas Vouilloz of France took up which motorsport from 2000?

Rallying took him from local events to a World Rally Championship debut at Monte Carlo in 2001, yet he still returned to win a last downhill title in 2002.

Which snowboarding star took up mountain biking in 1995 and was second in downhill at the 1996 World Championships?

Shaun Palmer missed the world title by just 0.15 seconds, barely a year after taking up the sport, and later won an ESPY as action sports athlete of the year.

Which Colorado ski town housed the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame before it moved to Fairfax, California, in 2014?

Crested Butte had an early off-road scene of its own, but the hall now sits inside the Marin Museum of Bicycling, in the county where the sport took shape.

Which Highland town close to Ben Nevis is the base for the Nevis Range downhill track, long a World Cup venue?

Fort William riders reach the start by gondola, and the resort has also staged the World Championships twice, in 2007 and 2023.

Mountain bike trials began as a way to practise motorcycle trials without an engine in which country?

Spain's Catalonia is where Pere Pi is said to have invented it so that his son Ot could learn on an ordinary bicycle; the original name, trialsín, means trials without a motor.

Which self-supported race, its clock never stopping, follows the Rocky Mountains from Banff to the Mexican border?

Tour Divide riders usually need more than two weeks, and because it is not a stage race every hour spent asleep counts against them.

Which rider was the first to hold the road, cyclo-cross and mountain bike world titles all at the same time?

Pauline Ferrand-Prévot managed it in 2015 aged just 23, then added Olympic mountain bike gold in 2024 and the Tour de France Femmes in 2025.

Which advocacy group, formed in 1988 by five California clubs, publishes the Rules of the Trail for mountain bikers?

IMBA grew from those five clubs into an umbrella body for hundreds of affiliated groups, working to create and protect places to ride.

Which mountain bike brand was founded in 1985 by John Parker, a welder who built Hollywood movie sets?

Yeti began in California, but Parker moved the factory to Colorado in 1991 to be closer to the heart of the racing scene.

Which mountain bike brand was co-founded in 1993 by professional skateboarder Rob Roskopp?

Santa Cruz grew out of a skateboarding friendship: partner Rich Novak's skateboard company had already sold a signature Roskopp deck.

Which tyre design gained favour with mountain bikers in the 2000s because it resists pinch flats?

Tubeless tyres have no inner tube to be pinched against the rim, and a little liquid sealant is often enough to plug a small puncture.

Which cycling festival, first held in 1991, takes over the Laguna Seca motor racing circuit in Monterey each spring?

The Sea Otter Classic runs for four days and has drawn nearly 10,000 professional and amateur athletes, earning a reputation as the world's largest cycling festival.

Which trick is a wheelie held without pedalling, by shifting body weight back and pulling on the handlebars?

Manual riders put no drive through the back wheel at all, balancing purely by moving the body, unlike a pedalled wheelie.