Charlie Kelly

Who is Charlie Kelly?

Charles Richard "Charlie" Kelly was an early pioneer in the development of modern mountain bicycles.

During the late sixties and early seventies Kelly was a roadie for a San Francisco rock band, The Sons of Champlin. When the band broke up in 1977, Kelly turned his attention to his passion for bicycling and "klunker" bikes he and his friends were constructing from old frames and taking off road.

In 1972 Kelly was a founding member and later president of Velo-Club Tamalpais, a bicycle club whose membership included most of the early Marin County mountain bike pioneers.

In 1976 he started promoting the Repack downhill race, the first great mountain bike event. In connection with his downhill racing efforts, he commissioned custom off-road bicycle frames from builders Craig Mitchell and Joe Breeze. These were among the first "mountain bikes" ever built.

In 1979 Kelly joined his former roommate Gary Fisher and framebuilder Tom Ritchey in a business venture called "MountainBikes," the first place in the world people could buy a complete mountain bicycle, rather than putting it together themselves.