LEGENDS
Fifty years
ago, the world was a harsher, more primitive place—at least in
terms of adventure sports. Think for a moment about
a little route on El Capitan in Yosemite called
The Nose. Its slick granite face was difficult
for a team of climbers to ascend after weeks of
dangerous toil, let alone all-free and in a day.
Meanwhile, bicycles of the time didn’t boast
suspension forks or disc brakes and surfers couldn’t
stay in Northern California waters for longer than
a half hour without turning blue. Skiing was still
a ballet-like sport best done in stretchy woolens
and leather boots, and no one even considered running
a marathon, swimming 2.4 miles, and biking 112
miles consecutively while wearing a Speedo.
In
the early 1990s, a young female climber who had
recently recovered from a 75-foot fall managed
to free-climb The Nose in a day. It was a feat
that astounded and inspired the climbing world.
Now there are numerous all-free routes on El
Cap, but no one else has managed to free the Nose in
a day.
Bicycles before
the 1980s were not meant for riding in the dirt. They
were often long on style but short on ease of use.
But following in the footsteps of the Mt. Tam posse
of riders like Gary Fisher and Joe Breeze, Keith Bontrager
managed to help stage a revolution in the world of mountain
biking with component and frame design. Let’s
just say that this year’s Tour de France
winner had a little help, at least in the bike
department, from Bontrager.
Just as Bontrager
helped to define mountain biking with his innovative
designs, Jack O’Neill changed the
lineup in the water. It is hard to imagine life
before the wetsuit, but apparently it was tolerable-—for
about 30 minutes. Experimenting with all sorts
of materials, O’Neill finally struck
black gold when he started stitching together
panels of neoprene, thus creating the wetsuit
and fostering the surfer way of life.
Warren
Miller, one of the original ski bums, brought
his lifestyle to the big screen. During his
55 years as the reigning king of the ski flick,
Miller, with his signature witticisms and enthusiasm,
caught the evolution of extreme on tape. When
he first started filming, skiers could catch
just a few feet of air on their wooden sticks.
Now they can out-ski avalanches.
And for those
who find enlightenment within suffering, Mark Allen
led the pack during six Ironman victories. Known for
being the toughest one day event in the world, the Ironman
exacts 140 miles of non-stop anguish from its participants.
In 1995, he became the oldest victor at 37
years old, setting the stage for many “older” athletes
to prevail in endurance sports for years to
come.
What these athletes all have in common is that
they have become living legends. In part due
to their accomplishments, the world of outdoor
sports has changed completely. In this issue,
we discover what led them to their legendary
status and why their accomplishments will never
be forgotten.
—Christa
Fraser
[Back to Top of Page]
FREE
CLIMBER: Lynn Hill
It is probably an exaggeration to call Lynn Hill the
greatest living climber, but just barely. Certainly Lynn
changed the sport of rock climbing forever, and arguably
left a larger impression on the sport than any climber,
man or woman, since or before the decade that she dominated
the sport. Lynn often made her climbing accomplishments
look easy, but as she reveals in her autobiography Climbing
Free, her path to greatness was a perilous one.
“Where were you the day Lynn fell?” May
9, 1989 is a day that all longtime climbers remember
vividly—the
day that Lynn forgot to tie her knot and fell 75 feet
to the ground from a cliff in France. At the time,
Lynn was just about ready to make a powerful statement—that
she, not Catherine Destievelle or any other European
woman—was the strongest female climber in the
world. The first international sport climbing competition
was just a few weeks away in Leeds, England, and Lynn,
the first woman to ascend the mythic grade of 5.14a,
was all set to take the crown.
Instead, Lynn leaned
back at the edge of the cliff, and the untied knot
slipped through her harness. Wind-milling her arms
in a vain attempt to keep from falling backwards
off the cliff, the horror of what was about to happen
became apparent. In her book, Lynn describes the survival
process that unfolded as she purposely aimed her
fall towards a small tree at the base of the cliff. The
blood-curdling scream that left her lungs as she
fell froze every climber at the cliffs that day, and
dozens of horror-stricken people caught sight of a human
figure hurtling through the sky. Falling the distance
of a seven-story building, Lynn describes the event in
her book:
“It is not true that in a fall one sees one’s
life flash through one’s eyes. There is not enough
time for even a single formed thought. But survival instincts
are wired on a faster pathway than any other mental process,
and when I saw the approaching tree I knew instinctively
that my best chance to live was to land in it. Speeding
toward it, I tucked my body into a ball, blasted through
its branches, and then my left buttock slammed into a
lattice of tree roots and everything went black.”
Later, Lynn
awoke in a French hospital, broken but alive. Looking
in the mirror was difficult—her face was
black and blue and completely swollen. She describes
those first few days in the hospital:
“Disappointment overwhelmed me. I staggered away
from the mirror and its ugly reflection. Limping back
to bed, I lay down. How well things had been going until
this blunder. I felt I had a good shot at winning the
competition in Leeds and I was climbing harder than any
woman ever had. Now my elbow may never heal well enough
to climb at that level again. My life as a competition
climber could be over. I am not the type given to crying,
but my eyes grew wet as I realized what I had always
known—that nothing in life is guaranteed.”
Lynn Hill did bounce back from her climbing accident,
and she came through the experience tougher and with
more resolve. She went on to dominate competition climbing
in Europe and America for a decade, often competing against
the strongest men in the world. The fact that she is
just over five feet tall is truly remarkable in a sport
that often favors height.
When Lynn decided to retire from competition climbing
in the early nineties, she was already the most famous
rock climber in the world. However, her climbing career
was not over.
In 1993, Lynn returned to her roots in Yosemite to free
climb the Nose route on El Capitan. Unlike many of the
European climbers she had competed against for so many
years, Lynn had served a traditional apprenticeship.
She had learned to climb in the ‘70s and was skilled
in bold, runout lead-climbing. In traditional climbing,
the free climber must set his or her own running anchors
during upward progress, requiring judgment and experience
that bolt-clipping sport climbers don’t need. Aided
by her background, Lynn would make a statement in a type
of climbing far removed from plastic holds and indoor
sport climbing competitions. Traditional adventure climbing
was a world with very few female voices. By attempting
to free climb the Nose, Lynn would be taking on a challenge
that many of the top men in the sport had dreamed about
for years.
When Warren Harding, Wayne Merry, and George Whitmore
first climbed the Nose in 1958, success came after many
months of effort, and vast stretches of aid climbing—essentially
pounding in spikes to support rickety ladders that made
the ascent possible. As revolutionary as it was at the
time, Harding’s ascent was more of an engineering
feat than anything else. What Lynn proposed to do was
a gymnastic challenge that was almost shockingly ambitious:
to use her fingers and toes to physically climb every
inch of the route, using her ropes and gear as a safety
net only. Anyone who has been to Yosemite and seen El
Capitan has some understanding of Lynn’s ambitious
project. Most tourists and climbers who see the Nose
for the first time are dumbstruck. The Nose is so huge
(over 3000 feet tall) it’s almost frightening to
look at.
Lynn spent weeks rehearsing various sections of the Nose
that had thwarted all previous free climbing aspirants.
Finally she linked all the sections and was ready to
return for a single free-climbing push from the ground.
When Lynn freed the Nose in less than 24 hours, her achievement
stunned the climbing community. When the climbing press
carried the story in early 1994 she was no longer just
the best female climber, but possibly the world’s
best climber, period. A decade later, no one else has
completely freed the Nose in a day. ASJ recently spoke
to Lynn about her accomplishments. When asked why she
thought her free of the Nose in a day has never been
repeated, she said:
“I can’t tell you exactly why. The most
important thing is to have the vision and ability to
link long stretches of highly tenuous climbing over 2000
feet off the ground. Tommy Caldwell is one name that
comes to mind in terms of someone who has the right background
to pull it off. Some have said that I was able to free
climb the Nose because of my small body size and small
fingers, which gave me a unique advantage [the Nose has
many thin cracks and pin scars], but I don’t buy
that. The Nose will be freed in a day again, by the next
person who comes along with the right desire, vision,
and background.”
Lynn is not
someone who likes to be put on a pedestal, and most
likely will not like being called a ‘legend’ for
the purposes of this article, but it is fair to say her
climbing accomplishments are legendary. At the very least,
Lynn Hill is an inspiration, and for this she is much
admired.
—Matt
Niswonger
[Back to Top of Page]
Mind
over Suffering: Mark
Allen
Growing up in Palo Alto in
the ‘70s, there was
little to suggest that Mark Allen would rise to become
the most dominant athlete in the most demanding of
sports. Of course, triathlons at the time were not
on the radar screens of America’s youth, or just
about anyone else for that matter.
“Athletically,
I grew up as a competitive swimmer. But my results
were outstandingly mediocre,” says
Allen, now 46 and eight years into retirement. “I
never qualified for anything big like Olympic trials
or national championships. So there was definitely
a severe lack of foreshadowing that I would be able
to do anything that one would consider better than
middle of the pack in any other sport.”
So much for not standing out from the
pack.
After years of disappointing collapses, Allen won the
Hawaii Ironman six times, the toughest one-day
sporting event in the world. His first victory came
in 1989 in an epic duel with six-time winner Dave Scott,
and his last in 1995 at age 37, making him the
oldest champion ever. Allen also excelled at short-course
races, went undefeated in 10 trips to the Nice
International Championships, and put together a winning
streak of 20 races. He was named Triathlete of the
Year six times and in 1997 Outside magazine pronounced
him “The World’s
Fittest Man.”
Before emerging from the pack,
Allen went to college at UC San Diego, which
he had chosen for its proximity to the waves, for
he had been infected by the surfing bug while
learning at the Hook in Santa Cruz. At UCSD, he lived
right above Blacks Beach. He swam on the swim team. He
worked as a lifeguard. Life was pretty ideal,
if not particularly challenging.
In 1982, he tuned in
to watch the Ironman and witnessed one of the most
gripping scenes in sports history. After a 2.4 mile swim,
112-mile bike ride, and 26 miles of running, Julie Moss,
a 22-year-old San Diego native, was in first
place. A mere 400 yards the finish line, she
fell and rose to her feet three times. Twenty
feet from victory, she collapsed a final time
and was passed. She crawled across the finish
line to finish second, 29 seconds later.
For
Allen, the moment was serendipitous in more ways than
one. It inspired him to take up the sport, and seven
years later, he and Moss would get married and have
a son, Mats, now 10, together.
Unlike in the pool, Allen immediately distinguished
himself as a triathlete. In his first race,
he finished fourth behind the Great Scotts:
Dave Scott, Scott Molina and Scott Tinley.
“When
I started in triathlons right away things
were different … As a swimmer, if
someone got even a half a stroke lead on
me my race was done. However, from my very
first triathlon in 1982 I tried to see this
sort of scenario from a different perspective.
If someone did start to pull away from me,
I just tried to relax and not worry about
it, telling myself that something might change
and that the person might come back to me
if I just focused on racing as fast as I
could … This
turned out to be huge later in my racing
in Kona where I always came from behind,
especially in my final race in 1995 having
to come back from a 13:30 deficit on the
bike.”
Over the years,
Allen’s
reputation for mental toughness was often
described as a “Zen-like focus.” More
accurately, his mental strength was derived
in part from the Shaman teachings of the
Huichol Indians of central Mexico, a small
tribe which has no history of war and accentuates
celebrations of life. It was his connection
with Shamanism that he credits with helping
to kick off his wins in Hawaii.
“The ‘Zen-focus’ was something the
media dreamed up to describe the way I tried to approach
my races. Basically, I went to them to get a job done.
I was not there to be anyone’s friend or to win
the most popular personality contest. I was aware of
how much energy could leak out before an event by interacting
too much with others. And I knew I didn’t have
the genetics to rely on if my tank was not completely
full at the start of a very long day. So I tried to just
stick to myself … to hold onto all
the energy I had stored up prior to the race
and then use it at the right moments in the
event.”
“This all became easier to do once I started studying
Huichol Shamanism with Brant Secunda. He
helped me to be able to just approach everything with more of a calm
steadiness, which is something the Huichols
value in life. He always emphasized that if we let ourselves
get too up then we are also vulnerable to being really down.
And I saw this play out over and over in
races. Some athletes would be totally psyched up going into an
important event, but then at the first moment when things started
going in the wrong direction their whole
demeanor changed and they started to lose their positive focus.”
While Allen
was nearly unbeatable at most races, before the ’89 Ironman he seemed
to be eternally vexed by the ghosts of Kona, year after year falling
victim to one thing or another, from a
broken derailleur to internal bleeding. Six times he had finished in
the top five, but when it came to winning,
he was saturated with self doubt. And physically after six
to eight hours of racing he seemed to fall
apart. In both 1984 and 1987, Allen was leading on the run
when he was passed in the lava fields by
Dave Scott.
In early 1989,
Allen tried to remedy this on a six-week training trip
to New Zealand with several other top athletes. Without
any distractions, “we put
in some unbelievably monstrous training
days and after six to eight hours I still felt
strong. To my surprise, I could absorb it.
It opened my eyes as to what was possible physically.”
Psychologically,
though, Allen still felt shaky. “Somehow
Kona finds where you’re weak,” he
says. “There
were plenty of things about it that intimidated
me. In ’89,
I knew I needed to overcome that.”
Allen shadowed Dave Scott throughout
the race. “I
swam right on Dave’s feet, we stayed
together on the bike, and we ran together … Our
splits were way under world-record pace.” Scott
threw in some surges to try to break
away. Allen, who was suffering from painful
blisters that had formed and popped in
his Nikes, was at first overcome by doubts. “Suddenly
my mind went completely blank and all
my negative thoughts left.” The
image of Don Jose, a renowned 110-year-old
Huichol shaman, whose face conveyed peace
and power, lodged in his mind and he
felt a surge of energy. At the last water
station, Allen turned the tables on Scott
and broke away for his first Ironman
victory, winning by 58 seconds, blood
seeping through his shoes.
“Before ‘89
had always gone to Hawaii wanting to
win, thinking that would make my life
complete … Now
I realized it was better to go in feeling
content. I was going about it backwards.”
Having long since conquered the demons
of Kona, today Allen lives blocks from
Pleasure Point, the spot where he learned
to surf as a kid. He has his own online
training website, MarkAllenOnline, in which
he spills the knowledge from his 15 years
at the top of the fitness pyramid. He also
does occasional teaching clinics and TV
commentary.
He is passionate
about his work with Secunda and the Dance of the Deer
Foundation Center for Shamanic Studies, based in Soquel.
They developed a workshop, “Fit
Body, Fit Soul,” and are finishing
a book by the same title, aimed at athletes
who have their bodies finely tuned but
are missing something else and at spiritually
oriented folks who know little about
fitness and nutrition.
If triathlons hadn’t come about, Allen says he
probably would have focused mostly on surfing. “It
is a sport I do for pure exercising enjoyment. I don’t
think I would have picked up running
or cycling as a way to keep fit. But
it is really hard to say now. In terms
of a career, I probably would have ended
up in some form of healing profession.
Which form it would have taken I am not
sure, but it definitely would have been
something other than a Western approach
to health and healing.”
—By
Pete Gauvin
[Back to Top of Page]
The
Great Stuntman: Warren
Miller
Warren Miller was born in 1924 in Hollywood, California
during the era of silent films. Among the great silent
films of that year was one by the comedic actor Buster
Keaton called Sherlock Jr. In it, a young man works
at a theatre manning the projector. Daydreaming,
he slips into the world of the reel that he is playing
and soon his life is dictated by the story of the
film. Keaton was a consummate stunt man and often
choreographed and then performed most of the stunts
in his own movies.
It seems fitting then that Warren
blazed the trails to make some of the best and
most beloved of ski films in which he has choreographed
unbelievable stunts and mixed in a bit of his own
life and humor. He started making his films in
1949, and for the last 55 years, they have traced the
arc of both cinematography and snow sports and pioneered
many filming techniques.
1924 was also the year
that the first Winter Olympics were held. Fittingly,
they were held in Chamonix, France, a location that
he would visit to film many times during his career.
It hardly seems possible for him to have been born in
a better year.
Though he was
born at a pivotal time in the world of film and winter
sports, he hardly enjoyed an easy childhood. The depression
arrived when he was still a kid, but fortunately, he
was able to buy his first camera during that time and
begin his lifetime pursuit documenting “his
own quest of freedom,” as he describes
it. Warren also pursued a number of other interests,
like the military, surfing, drawing and self-publishing
books of his cartoons. (His book Wine, Women,
Warren and Skis is currently in its 15th edition.)
But
the winters of 1946 and 1947 changed everything
for him. It was also a very important time
for skiing for two reasons. The first was that the
ski lift began to see public use in Aspen,
Colorado and in Europe. It was also the year that P-Tex,a
dense abrasion resistant plastic, was developed.
P-Tex would become one of the primary components
for making modern, light and durable skis.
1946 was also the most profitable year ever at that
time for Hollywood films. Coincidentally, it
was the year that Warren and Ward Baker spent
traveling to ski resorts throughout the west.
Arguably, Warren and Ward ushered in
the lifestyle of the ski bum when they spent the next
couple of years traveling to different ski resorts, teaching
ski lessons and living out of their trailer in various
parking lots.
In 1949, after negotiating the loan of
a movie camera and a small filming budget, Warren
made his first ski film, which was called Deep and
Light, probably a reference to the way
he best likes his snow. The movie was made for a few
hundred dollars.
He had essentially
hit a gold mine. The rising interest in skiing, which
was no longer just for the wealthy, combined with
the rising numbers of moviegoers created
a niche that he was only too ready to fill.
Originally, Warren himself attended his
film screenings and delivered a running
commentary to the audience. But by the
end of the ‘50s, his films were too
popular for him to attend every screening,
so he began to record his signature comments
and narration right onto the film. Even without
being there in person, he still managed to
create an air of intimacy in his films, like
a grandfather or uncle telling you a great
story.
The difference between Warren and a
lot of grandfathers and uncles, though, is
that he tells a much hipper tale. He recently
turned 80 years old, but has stayed current
in the world of snow sports. As a result,
his films have appealed to generation after
generation of skiers and snowboarders. In
fact, the soundtracks of his films feature
a lot of great popular and underground music.
Each film has become a time capsule of the
culture of skiing in that year.
In 1954, he
filmed what may be the first extreme move caught on
film–the
legendary Stein Erickson doing a front flip. Since
that time, he has filmed Glen Plake popcorning down
mogul fields, Olympic champion Johnny Moseley skiing
Wiegele’s
Alaskan territory, as well as Bode Miller, Barret Christy
and Terje Haakonsen, among many, many others. In essence,
Warren has caught 55 years of the evolution of skiing
and snowboarding on film. But jack-of-all trades that
he is he has also filmed skydiving, BASE Jumping, and
kayaking.
He may or may
not be retiring from making his films in the next year
or so. He sold the company to his oldest son, Kurt,
in the late eighties and has since moved to San
Juan Island, Washington. “Right now we’re
negotiating for the next film,” he
explains.
Somehow, though,
the thought of a film with Warren’s
name on it, but without his voice
just doesn’t
seem right. It would be akin to watching
a silent Keaton film where he suddenly
starts speaking to the audience,
or where he is completely absent.
What made a Keaton film was Keaton
himself.
This is another important year for
Warren. In the midst of completing
a 22,000 square foot skateboarding
park, he just celebrated his 80th birthday
with a surprise party hosted by his
family and friends. On his web page,
www.warrenmiller.net, he wrote this about
the party: “I
still find it hard to believe that
the whole thing was to celebrate my 80th birthday. The joke is on everyone
else because it was really just the
66th anniversary of my 14th birthday and I’m really only a 14-year-old
kid trapped in a senior citizen’s
body.”
—Christa
Fraser
[Back to Top of Page]
Golbal
Warmer: Jack
O ’Neill
Jack O’Neill never
figured out what hit him in the eye back in 1971 while
surfing out front of his Pleasure Point home. Whatever
it was caused him to go blind in his left eye. Over
the years, the eye patch he donned to cover it up has
become part of his iconic pirate-like image. He completes
the part with a full beard, tussled hair and a mischievous
twinkle in his right eye. The eye patch, however inadvertent
at first, now seems like such a natural fit, for in
many ways his life path has been that of a wayfarer
of the sea.
Even with losing
his eyesight, O’Neill
never lost his vision. He has seen many waves and is
pleased with the life he’s created directly and
indirectly from their energy. “The ocean belongs
to all of us. I’ve gotten so much from the ocean,” he
smiles, his features softening.
Indeed he has,
but he’s never taken this good
fortune for granted.
From his creation
of the first wetsuit back in 1952 in order to surf
the chilly Northern California waters to his development
of a company that would become one of the largest and
most recognized brands in the industry, O’Neill
has long been a living legend in surf circles and
in local ocean lore.
He desires to instill in future
generations the respect and wonder for the ocean
he has. His Sea Odyssey program, started in 1997,
offers young students free ocean education tours.
The Sea Odyssey catamaran sails out of Santa Cruz
harbor and teaches young generations about
the ocean and sea life of the Monterey Bay National
Marine Sanctuary.
“The Sea Odyssey
is a way of putting things back. Once kids
learn about the sea they never forget and
want to give back to the ocean,” says
O’Neill,
now 81.
The view of
the ocean from O’Neill’s
cliff-side home in Santa Cruz is so close
it’s like living
on a boat. On big swell days, O’Neill
must batten the hatches (literally, since
his downstairs windows are actually portholes)
to prevent waves from crashing onto his bed.
Being a Pisces, it’s easy to see
that Jack O’Neill is a man who can’t
live far from the sea and its salty air.
Ironically,
O’Neill was born well
inland, in Denver in 1923. Jack made his way to the
coast early in life and spent his youth in
Southern California. There he began his passion
for the ocean by body surfing in the waves.
Not content with exploring just the sea,
Jack decided to take to the skies, as well.
He enlisted in the Navy for World War II,
where he learned to fly Waco 220-hp biplanes.
After the war, he bought a Stearman biplane
and went into business for himself doing
aerial advertising. But business was slow,
so Jack decided to return to the sea and
earn his living by commercial fishing off
the San Francisco coast. That venture led
to other jobs as varied as selling skylights
and fire extinguishers.
San Francisco
never has been known for its welcoming beaches. The
dense coastal fog alone can chill to the bone, not
to mention the fact that the average water temperature
year round is a meager 52 degrees. Ocean
Beach, in particular, is known for its life-threatening
currents, caused in part by the enormous
tidal drain of San Francisco Bay. These notorious
currents were deemed dangerous enough that
there was a law against swimming in effect
during the 1950s when O’Neill
lived there. Step into the water and a
horse-mounted policeman would come down to order
you out.
Luckily, one cop decided to allow swimming
and surfing at a single spot along the beach,
Kelly’s Cove
at the north end. That’s where Jack would return
time and again to the purity of the ocean amidst the
industry of a city. “If I got all screwed up being
in downtown San Francisco working, I’d
get into the water at the beach, catch
that one wave and everything would be all
right again.”
Even the frigid water wouldn’t keep O’Neill
from his craving to feel the waves. “Without
a wetsuit, you could only last about an
hour on the best of days,” he recalls. “Still,
your teeth would start to rattle after
about 20 minutes.”
Tired of cutting
short his wave time because of the cold,
Jack started experimenting with what would
become the first true wetsuit. His determination
and ingenuity would change the face of
surfing forever.
His initial
attempts to stay warm included stuffing his trunks
with unicellular foam. “I thought that if
I put the foam between me and the water,
I might be able to trap body heat,” he says.
This modestly succeeded and so he went to the next
step and cut the foam in pieces to form a surf vest,
much to the amusement of his surfing buddies. “They
always laughed,” O’Neill
chuckles. “They laughed at every
stage of the development of the wetsuit.
They laughed every time.”
It was
around this time in 1952 that Jack opened
up the “Surf
Shop” in a garage across the Great
Highway from his favorite bodysurfing
break. “I got a federal
registration on the name ‘Surf
Shop,’” he
recalls. “I think we were the first
to use it. Only two surf shops existed
at that time, Velzy and Hobie both down
south. We sold wetsuits, paraffin wax,
and surf boards.”
As the surf industry
grew, he refined his wetsuits with different
styles and materials. He developed designs
for the shorty, long john, and beaver-tail
wetsuits.
In 1959, he
moved to Santa Cruz and opened O’Neill’s
Surf Shop. His timing could not have
been more perfect. The movie Gidget had just hit theaters
and it seemed like everyone wanted to surf. O’Neill’s
business boomed and hasn’t slowed down yet. By
1980, O’Neill’s
Surf Shop had become the leader in
wetsuit manufacturing, dominating the American, Japanese,
Australian, and European markets.
Today, O’Neill
is the best-selling wetsuit brand in the world, but
Jack still views it as a “family
business.” All of his six children
have worked with the company, even
scrubbing toilets in the early days.
His son Pat became O’Neill’s
CEO in 1985. Though Pat is the head
of O’Neill today,
he gives credit where credit is due. “Jack
O’Neill
made O’Neill what it is today.”
Jack
himself is still somewhat baffled
by the enormity of his success.
“Nobody is surprised more than me. I thought
that it would be a good time to open a shop, get a load
of balsa wood and shape some boards. But the doors kept
opening. That really surprised me.”
Looking out his back window, O’Neill
could see about 20 surfers in the water, every
one of them wearing a wetsuit. The company
motto, “It’s
always summer on the inside,” is an apt summation of
his enormous gift to millions of fellow ocean lovers.
—Krista
Hammond
[Back to Top of Page]
Singletrack
Mind: Keith
Bontrager
The rough and narrow bike
trail ahead quickly swoops right. Instantly you feather
the front brake, set your pedals, and drop your weight
into a railing turn. Pedaling through the turn exit
your brain flashes to focus on the next banking turn – a
slightly off camber and uphill left. Click. Clack.
You drop a gear in a single pedal stroke. Slamming
on the gas, you arc into the corner and accelerate
so fast you launch the rise and boost six feet down
the trail…
Fast,
twisting singletrack mountain biking—if you
love it, you probably owe Keith Bontrager a beer. For
the last 24 years Keith has been putting his heart and
soul into designing mountain bikes for this very pursuit.
From his first custom steel frames to his latest carbon
fiber wheel sets, Keith has helped pioneer cycling innovations
that directly translated into major riding improvements.
The result – nearly every mountain bike design
on the market is indebted to his work and cyclists
like Lance Armstrong look to him for wheels and components.
Still riding and ranting, Keith Bontrager is a living
legend of cycling.
Keith first learned how to ride
a bicycle when he was about eleven years old growing
up in Santa Clara. Not allowed to have a bicycle of
his own until he was in high school, the first bike
he pieced together was an old Schwinn Stingray. As
he settled into high school, he became sharply focused
on two-wheeled machines, but not human-powered ones.
Instead, Keith was fascinated with the throttling power
of motorcycles. For the next twelve years, he rode,
raced, and worked on motorcycles. Drawing on technique
learned in industrial arts class and work as an apprentice
machinist at Ames Research Laboratories, he became
a skilled motorcycle mechanic. From there, he began
to experiment with metal fabrication as he modified
various engines and suspension systems.
Beat up from several hard years of motocross riding
and racing, Keith turned his focus back to bicycling
around 1978. By 1980 he had built his first custom
bike frame, which was a road frame for himself. Soon
he was building lots of frames. In 1981, he decided
to start an official business, Bontrager Cycles, so
that he could get frame materials directly from the
suppliers. Bontrager Cycles specialty was making custom
fit steel frames for mountain, road and track, as well
as cycling components like rims, handle bars, and forks.
Over
the next 15 years, Keith and his cohorts at Bontrager
Cycles helped revolutionize the art of producing
hand crafted bike frames. The champion of meticulous
standards of quality, Keith focused his company’s research
on improving frame or component strength, while reducing
weight, and improving precision. Some of his most notable
innovations include one of the first lightweight mountain
bike specific rims, the composite fork, and a still
popular weld reinforcement piece called a gusset. Along
the way, Bontrager’s testing on the metallurgical
effects of welding and brazing of steel frames and
the durability of components such as handlebars and
stems became reference points for bike manufacturers
around the world.
In 1996, Bontrager Cycles
went through a reorganization that began transitioning
the business toward where it stands today. Faced with
slumping sales, Keith decided to merge with colossal
bike maker Trek Bicycles. Operations were moved from
Santa Cruz to Waterloo, Wisconsin. But the mass-produced,
Trek-made, Bontrager-designed bikes never caught
on. Yet Keith took this seeming failure in stride
and simply focused instead on what made him stand
out in the cycling world–his ability to
design and test components that lead to flawless
performance. That talent has inspired other bike
makers to strive for those same standards.
Eight
years after the merger, Keith is now an ”Ambassador
and Engineer-At-Large“ for Bontrager Wheelworks
and Components. Despite the bulky title, Keith’s
main responsibilities are now found in the saddle. “I
work on product development in tires and rims for
the most part. The other work I do is ongoing testing
and long term testing on the rest of the bike…In
general it’s pretty easy to find people
who are interested in working on the glam racing
stuff so I spend a lot of training time riding
on consumer-level equipment to see how it is
working and to make improvements where possible.”
Keith is also designing components for the demigods
of cycling. Last winter he worked in Santa Cruz
perfecting a new design for a carbon fiber rim
and special all weather brake pad that Lance
Armstrong himself rode to victory in the Tour
de France. Although Lance’s ultra light
bikes garnered notable attention this year, Keith readily
admits that the most revolutionary part of those winning
steeds was still the motor. “[Lance] didn’t
even use all the trick stuff we had because he
was in such a strong position in the race all
along.”
Dedicated to cycling for both
work and pleasure, Keith has also parlayed his work schedule
into top-notch performance results. He is a consummate
racer and enters events from February to
December. An animal in the Masters division, Keith
finishes strong in ultra endurance mountain bike races
such as 24–hour solo events and marathons.
A 24–hour race in Moab this month will
mark the 50th 24–hour bike event he
has entered.
Complimenting his off road pedigree,
Keith also finds time to race a handful
of cyclocross events.
Having focused and fretted over every conceivable
bicycle component, Keith’s
experience commands uncommon respect in the cycling industry. Generally outspoken,
Keith writes magazine articles and maintains a log of mini essays he calls ‘Rants’ on
the Bontrager website. Tackling sometimes sticky topics like frame stiffness,
spinning, and bike fit, Keith’s Rants are humorous and well
spoken rambles, juicy with insider information and sound engineering
principles.
No bicycle enthusiast can deny his or her debt to Keith Bontrager’s influence.
His dedication to quality and his early and steadfast attention to innovation
laid the foundation upon which many cutting-edge cycling technologies are still
constructed. If your dream bike is light, strong, and built with flawless precision,
you share the performance priorities to which Keith has continually dedicated
his life. Watch out for this cycling legend at any raucous singletrack near you
or check out his ‘Rants’ and world–class components
at www.Bontrager.com.
—Seth Lightcap
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