She was young and wanted the driver's license - that's why Susi Dahlmeier, actually middle distance runner, drove her first race in 1988. As a 17-year-old she saved for the driving school, and in Garmisch-Partenkirchen a run of the Grundig Cup was held. It was one of the first mountain bike racing formats in Germany and forerunner of the World Cup. There were 2000 Marks and a lot of electrical goods to win.
Dahlmeier, who was still called Buchwieser at the time, put on her climbing helmet, slipped on her running pants and swung herself onto the wheel of her athletics trainer: a heavy steel donkey with a cracking gear, she recalls. It started on Saturday in the discipline Dual Slalom, on Sunday at Cross Country - and won. So she could distribute in the relationship small television and radio equipment.
"In the interviews, I was asked if I would come to the next race in Belgium and I replied: Well, I do not even have a bike," says Dahlmeier. Quickly a sponsor was on the spot. 31 years later, her first mountain bike is still in her father's garage.
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German mountain bike pioneers: freedom and adrenalineSusi Dahlmeier, by the way the dam of biathlon star Laura Dahlmeier, together with her sister Regina Stiefl is one of the pioneers of mountain biking in Germany. She grew up in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The mountainous region became the nucleus of the off-road scene.
Soon it was for races in other cities, including Berlin. There athletes were the Teufelsberg up and down driven to get the height, so Dahl Meier. In the beginning, the wall was still confessed, "an oppressive feeling to do recreational sports there". A year later she was able to start training runs in the East.
Hasardeurs in California
The mountain bike was invented in the USA. If you wanted to train in the early 1970s, you picked up the road bike. However, some riders around Gary Fisher, Joe Breeze and Charles Kelly stopped their light asphalt runners more and more often to use more robust wheels to roll down the gravel roads of the nearly 800-meter-high Mount Tamalpais in California - spectacular and rather risky: the material was not yet released the gamblers make up for it with courage.
For this they built stable cruisers of the brand Schwinn. This was anything but comfortable without suspension, but it worked well enough to host first races. Back then, the troupe called itself "Repack" because the heated drum brakes had to be continually repacked with lubricant.
Which year marks the birth of the sport, it is at odds. Maybe it was 1976 with the first downhill race at Mount Tamalpais. The term "mountain bike" is said to have fallen for the first time in the late 1970s. In an interview with the magazine "Bike", frame builder Tom Ritchey says that a customer showed one of his wheels in the showroom - saying "Hey, this is a mountain bike".
This pleased Ritchey so well that the welder-guru started producing mountain bikes under his name. His wheels were especially suitable for longer tours through the terrain, with modern thumb gear and quick release on the saddle.
In the middle of the eighties the wave sloshed to Europe and almost broke directly in front of Ulrich Stancius feet. At that time, the journalist published the magazine "Surf" and was otherwise interested in everything that brought sport and fun together. The liberal thinking of the American windsurfing and skateboard scene fascinated German youth. "We brought California to the quarry," says Stanciu. "We were the 68ers of the sport."
Thick tires and wide handlebars on Sylt
At the Windsurf World Cup on Sylt in the summer of 1985, he discovered the strange bike of Swiss surfing champion Karl Messmer. "It had thick tires, and the handlebar was very different, I'd never seen anything like it." He borrowed the bike and drove up and down the concrete dyke. He realized: that suits us surfers. You do not have to sit in the sand anymore and turn your thumbs during a downing.
Stanciu used to like racing bicycles in shorts and striped socks, and was more likely to be laughed at. The mountain bike promised the freedom of conventions.
His ski friend Klaus Stanner worked for a sports shop in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and got him the idea of a magazine for mountain bikers. At that time, the US military still had a base in Garmisch. The soldiers had driven their bicycles through the place and the people had been crazy about it; Stanner imported containerized mountain bikes from the USA. "He said: Uli, that will work, you have to make something of it," says Stanciu. He spoke with the management of the Delius Klasing publishing house, the first "Bike" issue appeared in 1989.
Uli Stanciu is also co-founder of Transalp. The mountain bike stage race will take place for the 23rd time in July 2020, with participants from 40 countries. For the good 500 kilometers and 18,000 meters altitude you have seven days time. The idea arose during a multi-day tour with two friends from Mittenwald to Bolzano. "Just driving off and beating the passports in nature that the ancient Romans used to have made us really excited," says Stanciu.
The suspension fork, what a relief
From a tour he made a roadbook, a 40-page table with detailed instructions on where to turn where. Readers could get the list via the "Bike" magazine. "We had four and a half thousand inquiries in the first week," says Stanciu. Students were hired and did nothing but print and send. It was clear: tours through the Alps, that's a new holiday idea.
For his achievements in the sport Stanciu was included in the 2015 Mountain Bike Hall of Fame, two years before the German ex cyclocross driver Wolfgang Renner, who brought in 1982 with his company Centurion the first German series mountain bike on the market. Since then technically a lot has happened. V-brakes were replaced by disc brakes, frames made of aluminum or carbon. Recently, the e-technology revolutionized the sport.
But the biggest milestone was probably the invention of the fork and later of the rear suspension. "There was a key point, a root passage with a deep jump, which was insanely difficult to drive without suspension," recalls Susi Dahlmeier at the Downhill European Championship in 1990. "Today, the athletes laugh at such passages broken." Dahlmeier went by the motto "victory or coffin" and won.
The days when you could race on the podium as a foolhardy natural talent with a climbing helmet are over. The equipment is today uncompromisingly trimmed to performance, the drivers are too. Children jump on enduro bikes through the grounds at the age of five.
Nevertheless, it is still basically the feeling that shared the Repack gang in their California dives with Uli Stanciu as Deichbiker on Sylt and Susi Dahl Meier in the root labyrinth: Freedom. And adrenaline. Naturally.