Mountain Bike Hall of Fame announces 2016 inductees
Originally posted on August 2, 2016 at 12:53 pm
The Marin Museum of Bicycling announced the 2016 inductees into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame. More votes than ever were cast this year. Here are the winners, with introductions provided by the museum. To learn more about this group, the museum, the hall of fame and the upcoming ceremony, visit the museum’s website.
Hank Barlow
Hank created and launched the first issue of Mountain Bike Magazine in June 1985. Mountain Bike Magazine was the first publication to reach beyond the distribution of locally produced ‘zines’ and offer off-road enthusiasts the same level of reporting that existed for road riders. With virtually everything being new in mountain biking, Hank figured it made perfect sense to offer a full-color publication that covered the rapidly evolving world of bikes, components, races and places to ride, including a place hardly anyone had heard of: Moab, Utah.
Matt Fritzinger
As the founder of the NorCal High School Cycling League (NorCal League) in 2001 and the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA) in 2009, Matt has seen his efforts result in nearly 10,000 student-athletes and 3,500 coaches participating in interscholastic mountain bike racing in 2016. The numbers are anticipated to double by 2020. Through Matt’s vision, passion and tireless work, U.S. mountain biking is experiencing the largest resurgence in its history. Mountain bike racing is now a recognized, national interscholastic school sport.
Missy “The Missile” Giove
One of mountain bike racing’s first female superstars and a cultural icon, Missy is the all-time leader in NORBA downhill wins with 14, and is fourth on the list of World Cup medals with 11. Giove’s additional accomplishments include three overall NORBA downhill crowns, two World Cup overalls, and the 1994 world championship title. Missy won an X Games Gold in Dual Slalom in 2000. Before she took up cycling, Missy was a nationally ranked downhill skier. Her style, attitude and personality brought a tremendous amount of attention to the sport of mountain biking.
Román Urbina
Dozens of multi-day mountain bike stage races can be found around the world today, events such as the TransAlp Challenge in Europe, the BC Bike Race and Breck Epic in North America, the Trans Andes Challenge in South America and the Cape Epic in South Africa. These races have provided the ultimate challenge for tens of thousands of enthusiast mountain bikers — and they have Roman Urbina to thank. In 1992, Urbina founded the race that established the multi-day genre — and it was a doozy. La Ruta de los Conquistadores is often referred to as the “The World’s Toughest Mountain Bike Race.”
Jeff Archer
In 2005, Jeff Archer founded the Museum of Mountain Bike Art & Technology (MOMBAT), which is housed at First Flight Bicycles, his bicycle retail store in historic Downtown Statesville, NC. The MOMBAT collection includes more than 400 vintage bikes and thousands of parts, accessories, and literature pages accumulated over the better part of three decades. The collection is augmented by the MOMBAT.org website, which provides history and specifications of the bikes, plus photos and written details of other notable mountain bikes that have passed through the shop over the years. It is the most comprehensive collection of its type in the world and is available to both the industry and the public at no charge.
Four inductees were voted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in the 2016 election year. Every person on the Hall of Fame ballot is worthy of induction after being chosen by the MBHOF Nominating Committee. Nominees can remain on the ballot for up to five years. All of us on the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame nomination committee and the Marin Museum of Bicycling board were stunned and deeply saddened to learn of Jeff Archer’s tragic death on July 19, 2016. We have chosen to honor Jeff, his work and his memory by adding him to the inductee class of 2016.
The Mountain Bike Hall of Fame was founded in 1988 in Crested Butte, Colorado. Ten mountain biking pioneers were inducted in that first year. Since then, three to seven mountain bike legends have been selected annually. In 2015, the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame relocated to the Marin Museum of Bicycling in Fairfax, California.