30 Years Ago In MBA
We had an interview with Canada’s Cindy Devine, who had recently won the women’s title in Downhill at the 1990 UCI World Championships in Durango, riding a Klein hardtail bike with Rock Shox forks. Devine had previously won the Mammoth Mountain Kamikaze Downhill as well as winning the Canadian National Downhill title and placing third in Canada’s XC ranks.
In keeping with the times, she raced the same bike in the downhill category at the Worlds as she did in the cross-country event. We included a spread shot of her race bike in the issue, along with spread photos of the bikes that Americans Ned Overend and Juli Furtado rode to their XC wins in Durango, as well as the one that Greg Herbold rode to the Men’s Downhill title.
25 YEARS AGO
Elsewhere in the issue we took a look at the 1996 Olympic mountain bike race and a test run of the course, with many of the riders expected to be battling in the race that summer in Atlanta, Georgia. Bart Brentjens, the reigning world champion, shared his predictions in MBA of who he thought were the top contenders among the men. He picked Miguel Martinez first, followed by Christophe Dupouey, Thomas Frischknecht, Rune Hoydahl, Ian Ostergarrd, Henrik Djernis, David Baker, Alessandro Fontana and then himself, in that order. As it turned out, Brentjens would win the gold in that first Olympics, with Italy’s Paolo Pezzo taking the women’s title.
10 YEARS AGO
Our March 2011 issue featured a shootout of two identically priced bikes from Cannondale, one with 26-inch wheels and one with 29s. While we found the 26-inch bike to be more playful, our riders found that the many advantages of the bigger wheels made them the better choice for all-around riding. The 27.5-inch wheel size would replace the 26-inch wheels in the next few years. Today, both 29- and 27.5-inch bikes rule the mountain bike market.
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Mountain Bike Action is a monthly magazine devoted to all things mountain biking (yes, that’s 12 times a year because we never take a month off of mountain biking). It has been around since 1986 and we’re still having fun.