PLEASANT HILL, CA (BRAIN)—The man who helped create NORBA (National Off-Road Bicycle Association), John "Mountain Jack" Ingram, passed away recently after a long bout with an illness.
Ingram played a seminal role in establishing that first national mountain bike organization to sanction races, urging the likes of Joe Breeze, Gary Fisher, Charlie Kelly, Tom Ritchey and others to think outside their respective biking businesses in 1983 to get it started.
"It was also the first national mountain bike group to encourage stewardship and land access," Breeze said of NORBA. "We wrote up by-laws, created a logo, arranged for race insurance, grew our membership, oversaw mountain bike races and became the organization that Jack had dreamed of and knew we needed."
Ingram's early work, Breeze said, played a critical role in mountain biking becoming a World Cycling Championship sport (first in Durango, CO, in 1990), and eventually an Olympic sport (first in Atlanta in 1996), only 20 years after the sport's first races at Repack.
—Jason Norman
