Charlie Kelly (businessman)

Life

• 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. In 1982 Kelly sold his interest in the company to Fisher, who renamed it Fisher Mountain Bikes.
• Also in 1979, Kelly began contributing articles to bicycle publications on the new and growing sport of mountain biking.
• In 1980 Kelly and Denise Caramagno started the first mountain bike magazine: The Fat Tire Flyer. Until 1986 this was the only publication for mountain bikers.
• In 1983 Kelly participated in the founding of the National Off-Road Bicycle Association, the first sanctioning body for mountain bike racing, and in collaboration with Tom Hillard, wrote the first set of rules for off-road bicycle racing.
• Kelly is the author of a definitive history of the sport of mountain biking, .

Film

• Charlie Kelly appears in an around-the-world two-hour mountain-bike travel documentary produced by New & Unique Videos of San Diego in 1994.
• Charlie Kelly was profiled in the 2007 documentary film.