Courtney, mountain biking share roots
Olympian had Mount Tamalpais in backyard where sport was invented in Marin County
Mount Tamalpais rises above Tom and Maggie Courtney’s home like a green-carpeted playground where their daughter Kate first felt the adventure of riding a balloon-tire bicycle.
The 2,572-foot promontory had a strong presence in Courtney’s active childhood as an inviting open space beyond her backyard in Kentfield.
You don’t need to squint, or even turn your head to see Mt. Tam from the Courtney home.
“We live right underneath the mountain,” Tom Courtney said over the phone from his deck with birdsong in the background.
The origins of modern mountain biking can be traced along Tam’s bumpy fire roads and chamise-lined, single-track trails that helped mold Kate Courtney, 25, into a world-class rider.
She is the latest Marinite to reach the Olympic stage and enters the women’s cross-country race Tuesday in Izu City, Japan, as a bona fide medal contender. Mill Valley’s Susan DeMattei won a bronze medal when mountain biking made its Olympic debut in 1996 and Mary McConneloug of Fairfax had top-10 finishes at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics.
Courtney, a Stanford graduate now living in the Peninsula foothills, has blossomed into the best
U.S.riderinalmosttwodecades. In 2019, she became the first American to win the World Cup overall title in 17 years. Courtney also won the 2018 World Championship race in her first season on the senior level.
While growing up Courtney looked forward to riding the forested, rolling trails with her dad. Father and daughter would pedal out of the driveway, turn left on a tree-shaded road and in a quarter of a mile be on a mountain that holds a mythical place in the annals of mountain bike history.
“Growing up at the base of Mt. Tam and just seeing the value of being outside and pushing toward that mountaintop is something that has shaped how I see the world,” she said.
Mountain biking began in 1973 with Gary Fisher, Tom Ritchey, Joe Breeze and a few others pedaling up Tam.
According to Otis Guy, one of the originals and the director of the Marin Mountain Biking Hall of Fame, the friends grew up hiking on the mountain and racing road bikes in Northern California. They also fiddled around with old bikes they called “clunkers” that they eventually tested on Tam’s spider web of trails.
The relic one-speed Schwinn bicycles couldn’t withstand the punishing terrain. So, the men added hand brakes, multiple gears and finally sturdy but lightweight frames and fat tires. Within a decade, the innovations catapulted Fisher, Ritchey and Breeze into internationally acclaimed mountain-bike builders.
“Otis and those guys figured this thing out 3040 years ago,” Tom Courtney said. “Then Kate rolls in and has the right mindset, the right body type and loves it.”
Courtney didn’t fall in love with racing until joining the Branson High School mountain bike team as a freshman.
“That first race, she went out and destroyed everybody and then it became fun,” said Tom Courtney.
Guy, who coached Archie Williams High School (formerly Sir Francis Drake) to multiple California state mountain biking titles, saw Courtney’s potential from her first season.
“You knew if she wanted to do it she could do anything,” he said.
Courtney was a candidate for the Rio Games in 2016 but didn’t make the team. Two years later at age 22, she won the World Championship and then joined the Scott-SRAM team to work with Switzerland’s Thomas Frischknecht, one of the greatest mountain bikers of all time.
Frischknecht, the 1996 Olympic silver medalist, knew all about Tamalpais’ place in mountain biking lore. He came to the Bay Area in 1990 to develop into a champion while racing for the Ritchey team.
Frischknecht shared what it was like in the early days of professional racing, helping Courtney understand her connection to the sport’s history.
“It is special to be part of a community that shares my love of the sport,” she said. “It has kept it authentic.”
Courtney stayed connected to the Bay Area during the COVID-19 pandemic after much of the World Cup season was canceled, and officials postponed the Tokyo Games for a year. When she did race, Courtney crashed at the 2020 World Championships in Austria, forcing her to withdraw because of concussion-like symptoms.
She had a promising start to the 2021 World Cup season in May. But another crash interrupted her pre-Olympic racing plan. Courtney broke a bone in her forearm when she fell on a wet day in the Czech Republic.
She was able to continue riding in the Bay Area but had to stay on the roads. Courtney described it as “three out of 10 for fun but an 11 out of 10 for fitness.”
The latest setback highlighted how different Olympic preparation has been for the past 1 1/2 years. But Courtney looks back at the lockdown with gratitude because she had more time to share the Olympic preparation with her family as well as train in one of the country’s best locales for the sport.
The forced break gave Courtney time to reassess what appearing in an Olympics means to her. Courtney, who earned a degree in human biology, has seen other Olympians feel adrift after spending four years pursuing a singular goal.
Courtney doesn’t expect to suffer from a postOlympic letdown because she has a wedding to plan. Will Patterson, captain of Courtney’s high school cycling team and also a Stanford graduate, proposed in February 2020. He asked for her hand during a ride while her Red Bull sponsor made a marketing video.
At the time, Courtney had mapped out 2020 like this: Get engaged, get a dog and win a gold medal.
“We did get a dog and we did get engaged,” she said.
The final piece could come Tuesday.