While Tomac’s career would go on to include a multitude of wins, including the 2005 Mammoth Kamikaze (despite officially retiring in 2000), there was one event that best exemplified his true talent-the 1991 World Championships in Il Ciocco, Italy, where he won the cross-country race and finished a close second the following day in the downhill.īoth Tomac and Tinker credited their handling skills on the mountain bike to their BMX days.
Tomac, of course, would go on to prove himself to be the most multi-faceted rider the sport had ever seen, with dual-slalom and downhill titles eventually added to his XC resume. What separated Tinker and Tomac from the wave of BMXers who followed in their wake was that cross-country racing was the venue where they would claim their earliest fame. Coincidentally, both also shared an early relationship with MBA, as John Ker had been using Tomac as a test rider for MBA’s sister ’zine, (and now-defunct) BMX Plus! magazine, and MBA was there to loan Tinker a bike for his first-ever mountain bike race in 1986. Two of the earliest would have to be Tinker Juarez and John Tomac, who both made the transition to fat tires in the mid-’80s. Photo by John Ker THE BRIDGE FROM BMX TO MOUNTAIN BIKINGĪs much as the sport of mountain biking was fueled early on by an influx of road riders (remember that all the Marin pioneers came from road-racing backgrounds, as did the very first NORBA XC national champion, Steve Tilford), the sport of BMX also delivered riders who would go on to become household names on fat tires. Whether on a BMX or mountain bike, Toby Henderson was one of the most stylish riders ever.