Charlie Cunningham

Charlie Cunningham

Charlie Cunningham (b. (1948-08-23) August 23, 1948 in Washington, D.C.) is a mountain biking pioneer from Fairfax, California. With schooling in mechanical/aeronautical engineering, he rode a modified skinny tire ten speed bicycle up and down Mt Tamalpais, valuing nimbleness and gear selection (aided by toeclips—when platform pedals were the norm) over the ungainly 1930s ballooners then in vogue. When Ukai came out with wide 26" aluminum rims, he designed and built his first mountain bike, completing it in 1979. It was an experiment with lightweight heat treated 6061 aluminum tubing and purpose specific brakes, forks and hubs of his design. At a time when the first custom mountain bikes were made of steel tubing with traditional components, this bike, now in the Fairfax, California Mountain Bike Hall of Fame, was controversial. Along with frame builder Steve Potts and his helper Mark Slate, Cunningham co-founded Wilderness Trail Bikes or WTB. Cunningham and Potts were forced out of WTB in 2002 at the urging of WTB's CEO, Patrick Seidler. Seidler, a lawyer by trade had them both agree to and sign non-disclosure agreements, AKA "Gag-orders". Because of this, Cunningham and Potts will not talk about why they left WTB. Cunningham and his wife Jacquie Phelan are charter inductees to Crested Butte's Mountain Bike Hall of Fame.

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