Friday Flashback: Mountain Bike Action, 38 Years Ago

Here’s the cover of our April 1987 issue of MBA:

That’s John Tomac, who was Mountain Bike Action‘s top test rider in those days, before he had to move on in order to become one of the greatest mountain bike racers in history.

Did you notice the top cover line about 24-inch mountain bikes? The use of 24-inch mountain bikes was a brief new trend back then.

Bike makers have been experimenting with different wheel sizes on mountain bikes since the beginning of the sport.

In the late 1980s,  some companies, including Cannondale, even went so far as to offer their bikes with mixed-wheel setups, such as the 26″/24″ wheel combination used on Cannondale’s first production mountain bikes. Of course, now in 2025, mountain bikers usually choose a bike with a pair of 29-inch wheels, or a pair of 27.5-inch wheels, or a 29/27.5-inch combination. The 26-inch-wheeled bikes are still around, too, but that wheel size is mostly used by younger riders who haven’t reached their full height yet.