Tom Ritchey

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.

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.

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, pioneered the magnetic tape recorder.

Ritchey attributes his interest in bicycles to his father's interest in cycling, as his father found cycling as a means to get to work and fell in love with the sport himself.

At age 11, Ritchey's father taught Tom Jr. to build his wheels and repair tubular tires.

Ritchey started a small business repairing tires to earn money to buy his first road bike, a Raleigh Super Course.

When he was 14, Ritchey joined the Belmont Bicycle Club (BBC) and began racing.

Shortly after this, he upgraded his bike to a frame he repaired himself, a broken Cinelli "B."

His father taught him how to braze around this time, and he started repairing bicycle frames for local racers.

After learning to repair/replace other builders' damaged tubes, Ritchey built his first racing frame.

He decided to build his 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.

He won many junior races and titles on this very frame, and eventually, on future bikes he built, he won 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 U.S. at the time) and former Olympians.

Tom rode for Team USA's Junior Worlds road racing squad, and then a stint on the U.S. National Road Team.

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 the choice of larger thin-wall tubing diameters and unique ovalizations to create lighter -stiffer frames.

In 1976, Ritchey retired from road racing.

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.

While he credits Joe Breeze for building the first custom off-road specific 26" wheeled frame, however, known only to a few people, Ritchey had already built an off-road specific 650b bike along the design lines of a fatter tired, flat barred "woodsy/cow trail" bike. Ritchey says he was influenced by the late John Finley Scott, who encouraged him to build a bike for years with 650b wheels and tires.

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.

These "ballooners" were first featured in BMX Plus magazine, before the world identified them as a mountain bike, and a new buzz surrounded this new style of off-road bike.

Fisher enlisted the help of his friend and roommate, Charlie Kelly, to market and sell the bikes Ritchey was building.

Because Ritchey had years of custom frame and component manufacturing experience, he was uniquely suited to tackle and establish many of the new designs and standards this new breed of bicycle would require.

The company initially was called Ritchey MountainBikes, with Ritchey fillet brazing over 1000 bikes over the course of those beginning three years.

By 1979, Ritchey had produced over 1,000 frames on his own.

Ritchey is married to his second wife, Martha.

Together they have six children; son Jay, and daughters Sara and Annie (Tom), and sons Steven, David, and Christopher (Martha).

Tom and Martha have six grandchildren.

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.

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 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.