Suspension for a mountain bike is a stupid idea. All the suspension a mountain biker needs is right here: you got ten inches in your arms and ten inches in your legs.
--Richard Cunningham, addressing the Orange County Wheelmen cycling club about the new sport of mountain biking in 1983.
Anyone who is right 100-percent of the time, at least when it comes to predicting the future, is just plain lucky, or owns a time machine. In the early days of the sport, I gave slide shows and lectures at club meetings and bike dealers to promote the sport. Marinites often claim that the sport was flourishing in the late 70?s, but that was an exaggerated myth, cultivated within the San Francisco Bay Area?s island mentality. There were isolated pockets of mountain bikers in the early 80's, but the truth is, there was no sport, no big fad, and mainstream bike dealers, if they sold mountain bikes at all, had no clue as to their potential use.
I delivered a lecture a month back then. If you were in the mountain bike biz, like I was, it wasn't enough to be a frame builder--you had to be a promoter as well. We had to sell the entire concept of riding off road to non-believers, primarily roadies, who?s skinny tires only touched raw earth when they flatted and had to walk their imported skinny-tired racer to the roadside. There were, however, a smattering of ex-BMX racers and a couple of motorcyclists in every crowd. Invariably, when the lights came back on, and the question-and-answer period followed, one of these smart guys would ask: "Why don't you put a suspension fork and a shock on your bikes? Wouldn't that make it easier to ride off road?."
Disgusted, I would mock the offending query, telling the assembled crowd that a mountain bike had to be light weight and efficient in order to climb steep slopes, and that the addition of suspension add too much weight and sap the rider's energy. Then, I would hop onto one of my hand-made bikes, rise out of the saddle and articulate my arms and legs in a huge, exaggerated fashion, saying: "The only suspension a mountain biker needs is right here, ten inches in his arms and ten inches in his legs."
I was the mountain bike builder. I was the authority on the subject. I was so full of myself and later, I would discover that I was also totally wrong. So, if you attended any of my slide shows in the early days of mountain bike history, and you brought up the suspension thing, Consider this an apology.
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