Ritchey on…

… The circle of cycling life

‘If you’re a student of history, you realise that 40 years is a pretty normal lifecycle for things to start repeating themselves, because 40 years is about a generation, right? So when people started getting excited about gravel bikes it was because they solved what was just becoming a problem for them. Mountain and road bikes were becoming so burdened with technology that you needed a mechanic, and the roads were less appealing, so people were looking to ride off-road for fun. And people will probably go through a similar process in another 40 years.’

… Technological advances

‘Technology has improved – braking, clipin pedals, indexed gears – but have bikes gotten better? You can’t duplicate the ride quality that older bikes give – steel bikes from the 1970s and 80s. What rider or designer today knows how those bikes felt? Not many, so how can you duplicate that ride quality? My prediction is that in a few years gravel bikes will all have suspension. And then things will get too complicated; “true feel” will be lost, so the next generation of those bikes is going to basically be what the mountain bike was in 1979. It will roll back around.’

… His hopes

‘The most important thing is people get back to the pure joy of riding a bike. Whether it’s my grandchildren, a homeless guy having trouble getting by, a Rwandan that doesn’t have any idea what a real bike is. It’s giving them a tool and helping understand the tool in a mechanical sense so they can repair and maintain it. I went to Rwanda in 1975 and those guys, they were mending spokes with fence wire, tying knots in tubes to fix punctures. They didn’t have any way of fixing their stuff except for those kind of solutions, and that’s what I love.’