You're going to have to fill some of us in on the European Stingray conspiracy theory.
If the Stingray derailed a generation of American racers, why didn't the Raleigh Chopper derail European racers?
I was a Stingray kid in 1969 but my next door neighbor Danny was a Chopper kid. These bikes were the BMX and Mountain bikes of their day. I know I road mine not only to school every day (yes we did that back then), but I spent many days blasting through the woods and making jumps with plywood with Danny in our neighborhood. When I built my first go kart, my Stingray got parked for most of that summer. 1972 maybe?
So, why didn't we figure out mountain bikes back in the early 1970's? Blokes in Marin County figured that out a few years later....
Road racing in America as a whole (excluding some pockets like Colorado and California) was not popular back then. It wasn't until years later that Greg LeMond increased awareness and the popularity.
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