Vote for Geoff Apps - Mountain Bike Hall of Fame 2011

[john]

Geoffrey Cleland Apps, the UK mountain bike pioneer has been nominated for the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame - hopefully this year he will be voted in and a glaring omission corrected. Mr Apps was riding bicycles off road in the mid 60s and his unique take on the 'mountain bike' pre dates the Marin County pioneers by several years. If you don't know about Geoff Apps I suggest you read up about him and his bicycles here on retrobike, here on wikipedia or here and here in the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame.

Graham Wallace, long time Apps aficionado has made the nomination once again but has indicated this maybe the last time he does so. What can you do? Simple. Click here to register for the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame and vote for Geoff Apps! I know votes are closing soon so please be quick.

 

[GrahamJohnWallace]

Last year Geoff's nomination was supported by such mountain bike luminaries as Joe Breeze, Gary Fisher and Charlie Kelly. However, many Hall of Fame members also wanted Marin' pioneer Alan Bonds to be elected. Because of the way the voting works, (up to 6 votes per member with the but with only a few top-scorers actually being elected), voting for more than one candidate can reduce the chances of the one you really support being elected.

Now that Alan Bonds' has been voted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame his many supporters are free to cast their votes elsewhere. Some American Mountain Bike Hall of Fame members who voted for Alan have told me that this year they intend to vote for Englishman Geoff Apps. Unlike Alan, Geoff never took part in the pioneering Marin County races and has never even set foot in California, But he is the Father of a little known and uniquely British form of off-road cycling based not around mountain bikes but his own design of Cross Country Cycle collectively known as ‘The Clelands'. So why will some American members vote for an Englishman who was designing his off-road bikes before the term mountain bike was even coined?

Well Geoff Apps is better known and more highly regarded by the American pioneers than he is amongst many UK cyclists. Back in the early years Geoff corresponded with the likes of Fisher, Breeze and Kelly, ideas and components where exchanged. The Americans got 29er and 650B tyres, and Geoff's uncanny ability to preempt future developments:- larger wheels, upright frame geometry, twist grip gears, low pressure tyres on narrow rims, wide bottom brackets, short wheel basses, sloping top tubes, high bottom brackets etc. In return Geoff got confirmation that he was not alone in his dream that off-road cycling would one day become popular.

So their is a consensus amongst the US pioneers that Geoff deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.

Geoff Apps may not be famous, but the recognition of his contribution to mountain biking is well overdue.

http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/viewto ... of&start=0

 

[hydorah]

Yes!

The thing I 'love' best about the Geoff Apps story, is the unique Britishness of the outcome of his approach to Dawes

They politely declined the rights to manufacture Geoff's designs 'cos even in 1982 they didn't think there was enough interest in that type of thing

http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/viewto ... &start=165 the letter is about the eighth post down from RBer 'GrahamJohnWallace'

Kind of like declining the Beatles... Or the Jet engine