MBA 1990 Durango Worlds Remembered

20 years ago, time does fly. I was part of the british team that was out there for three and a half weeks, have great memories eventhough me and my room mate Nick Craig fell ill the day before the race which to say we were gutted about is an understatement.

Great read, passed a afternoon whilst at work !

fantastic read,the best 30 minutes this site has ever given me......great photography and insite into the politics behind the david and goliath thing with an up and coming yeti team......i smiled at the photo showing ned overend turning his middle ring while frischnecht had resorted to carrying his (stunning looking!) ritchey......

Love the swapping all the Campag stuff out for Shimano the night before the big race

A great read, nice to see the atmosphere at the 90' Worlds was similar to some of the early 90's local races I remember, generally chilled out.
There were some real characters in MTB back in those days!

That was a great read, it all came flooding back.

A couple of things struck me:

For all the 'developments' in bike design, Furtados Yeti bike looks basically the same to the very best xc bikes on the market today. Even the weight is not much different.

The innocence / honesty of John parker at Yeti in changing the gears on Furtados bike. It would have been easy to keep the distinctive Campy brakes and put campy stickers on the Shimano stuff. No one would have noticed. Furtado would have won and Parker could have kept the Campy sponsorship deal going a little longer.

Campagnolos attempt at the MTB market is probably a good story waiting to be told. We take Shimano dominance forgranted but Campag were sponsoring Tinker Jurez (sp?) at Klein as well as Fat Chance and Yeti. For all Campags mistakes they chose some cool bike brands to associate with.

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I don't know the details of the Campag / Shimano / Yeti relationships or personalities but I thought that Parkers honesty in covering up the Campag sticker contrasts with what most manufacturers do, which is to rebadge another brands product as their own. Just thinking of the full page Specialized adverts in road bike mags showing Tom Boonen in full flight on a range of products from Campag, Ambrosio, San Marco, Veloflex which are covered in 'S' logos.
In cases like this I don't think there is much the minor brands can do about it. I guess they are just happy to see their parts on winning bikes.