Tom Ritchey

Upon seeing Joe's bike, he said, "I think I’ll build something like that also." Breeze returned to his home of Fairfax, CA and told Gary Fisher of Ritchey's intentions to build a 26" "ballooner." Immediately, Fisher called Ritchey and asked Ritchey to build him one as well. Because of Ritchey's production mindset, he built a third frame. When Fisher picked up his frame a few months later and learned of the third frame, he told Ritchey, "I can sell that." The seeds of the new "mountain bike" company were sewn, beginning with Fisher selling bike #3 to a fellow Marin resident.

Ritchey often cites his friend, the late Jobst Brandt as being crucial not only to his development as a cyclist and component designer, but for his deep passion in off-road riding. Brandt, author of the iconic book, The Bicycle Wheel, had a riding style that was unlike anyone else at the time. Brandt would lead his infamous rides that quickly left the paved roads behind and ventured onto to dirt single-track trails on traditional road bikes with no modification—something completely unheard in the 1960s and '70s.

Again, Jobst Brandt was crucial to the young and aspiring Ritchey, and the products he was designing. Brandt, a mechanical engineer at Hewlett Packard, always called into question Tom's new ideas—scrutinizing every detail of his designs. Ritchey, who sought to design and produce components that were light and fast, was often countered by Brandt who demanded components be durable and strong enough to endure the back country epic rides Jobst liked to do. Ritchey's foundational design principles emerged from these dueling philosophes.

On September 16, 2006, Ritchey sponsored the first annual Rwandan Wooden Bike Classic in Karongi Stadium, a mountain bike, wooden bike, and single speed colonial bike race. Attendance was over 3,000.

In December 2005, Ritchey toured Rwanda by bicycle. He found the landscape to be a beautiful one, but the people and their journey of reconciliation even more compelling.

In 1983, Ritchey left the relationship. Kelly also left due to personal reasons. On his own, Ritchey sold his remaining frames to a new company out of British Columbia, called Rocky Mountain Bicycles. Out of this turbulent time Ritchey built his own sales and marketing company, hired a retired professional road racer, Mike Neel, as his salesman and created Ritchey Design.

By the early 80s general interest in cycling was in decline, however, mountain biking was growing. Events like Pearl Pass and the NORBA '83 National Championships drove interest in the emerging sport. By the mid 1980s, over 25 percent of the bike industry was based on mountain bikes, with Ritchey emerging as the #1 off-road component design company outside of Shimano.

In 1978, Ritchey was approached by Joe Breeze and Otis Guy to build a tandem for them to use in a record attempt across America. Breeze brought his newly made off-road "ballooner" bike to Ritchey's shop in Menlo Park.

Tom rode for Team USA's Junior Worlds road racing squad, and then a stint on the U.S. National Road Team. In 1976, Ritchey retired from road racing. He continued to race mountain bikes through the early 1980s, competing more recently in races like the Downieville Classic, La Ruta, Trans Andes, Trans Alps and Cape Epic in South Africa.

During his early racing years, Ritchey began building bikes for Palo Alto Bicycles and its national mail order catalog. In 1974, as his senior year in high school approached, Ritchey had already built approximately 200 frames. It was around this time he honed his fillet brazing or "lugless" method of fabricating frames. Ritchey sought to challenge bicycle industry standards of frame tubing diameter at the time limited by the use of fixed dimensioned lugs. Ritchey's fillet brazing construction method allowed choice of larger thin-wall tubing diameters and unique ovalizations to create lighter -stiffer frames. By 1979, Ritchey had produced over 1,000 frames on his own.

After learning to repair/replace other builders' damaged tubes, Ritchey built his first racing frame. He decided to build his own frame out of a necessity for an affordable, lighter, faster bike. He bought the tube set and lugs from local builder Hugh Enox at the time for $21, and in 1972 built his first frame, which he raced on that year. On this very frame he won many junior races and titles and eventually on future bikes he built winning the Senior Prestige Road trophy and the BAR (Best All-Around Rider) in 1973 and 1974 as a Junior. These feats led to Ritchey being known as the "Senior Slayer", having beaten top Californians (many of whom considered to be some of the best riders in the US at the time) and former Olympians.

Tom Ritchey moved to Menlo Park, California from Cherry Hill, New Jersey in 1963 when his father was hired as an engineer at Ampex Corporation, an electronics company located in Redwood City, California. that pioneered the magnetic tape recorder. Ritchey attributes his interest in bicycles to his father's own interest in cycling; as his father found cycling as a means to get to work and fell in love with the sport himself.

Tom Ritchey (born 1956) is an American bicycle frame builder, Category 1 racer, fabricator, designer, and founder of Ritchey Design. Ritchey is a US pioneer in modern frame building and the first production mountain bike builder/manufacturer in the history of the sport. He is an innovator of bicycle components that have been used in winning some of the biggest cycling competitions in the world including the UCI World Championships, the Tour de France and the Olympics. In 1988, Ritchey was inducted into the inaugural Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in Crested Butte, Colorado (now located in Fairfax, California): and 2012, inducted to the United States Bicycle Hall of Fame in Davis, California.