History is harder to follow when it’s flammable

Like most people, I was dismayed to see the damage from the recent wildfires that levelled parts of Los Angeles. It was especially poignant as I suspected that I might know people whose houses (and lives) might have been in danger. It turns out that one of those people was Zapata Espinoza who edited Mountain Bike Action Magazine, and later Mountain Bike Magazine, for many years spanning the ‘Golden Age’ of mountain biking in the late 1980s, 1990s and into the turn of the century.

‘Zap’ was as embedded in the scene as you could have been back then. He reported on early races in the USA, then charted mountain biking’s spread into Europe and the racing battles that took place when the technical bike handlers of the US met the all-out speed of the Europeans. All the while, he shot photos (on print and slide film, back then) and documented the technical innovations that were emerging, like index shifting and rudimentary suspension, interviewing the likes of Gary Fisher, Paul Turner and Keith Bontrager.