Mountain Biking Legend: John Tomac

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When it comes to legends from the sport of mountain biking, John Tomac is right at the top of the list. We had the opportunity to chat with Johnny T from his home in Durango, Colorado.

BB: Johnny, when you made the transition from BMX, mountain biking was just getting going. 

JT: Yeah, that was in the mid 1980s. BMX was pretty strong from the mid 70s to the mid 80s and I rode BMX as a kid from about age 7 to 17. I rode a year as a pro and then the sponsorship dried up a little bit. I went to school, moved out to southern California and got involved in mountain biking through my brother-in-law and a friend. I kind of just did it as something fun and just kept riding with my friends, and shoot, I started racing and did really well right away.

BB: If you look back at that era it was yourself, Ned Overend and Tinker Juarez and that was sort of the heyday of mountain biking. It was young and fresh and really a sexy sport for people to get involved with.

JT: Yeah, it just doesn't seem to be like that anymore and it's hard to say why. But I'd say from 1986 even all the way through the early part of the 90s it was rolling. It was great to be a part of it.

BB: When I look back at your career, to a certain degree you're linked with Ned Overend just because you guys had some classic races against each other: up at Mammoth, and other places around the globe. Were those head-to-head matchups with Ned something you really enjoyed, something you look back on as the highlights of your career?

JT: Definitely. It was interesting racing with him because our strengths were quite a bit different. I mean, a lot of times we'd finish at the same time, but he's such a great a climber and I would use the descents, power on the flats and bike-handling skills to help me out. A lot of times we'd be racing each other and battling, but we wouldn't actually be together a whole lot.

BB: And there's a pretty big difference in ages, right?

JT: I remember being an 18-year-old kid, just started mountain bike racing, racing the top cross-country guys and hearing about Ned and knowing he was, you know, 30 years old and he wouldn't be around much longer.

BB: And here he is 50 and still kicking butt!

JT: He's amazing. It was great racing him and I still see him occasionally. He's a good friend; it was a great time doing battle with him back then.

BB: In terms of those matchups with him, some of the classic races, do any stick out particularly?

JT: One of our better ones was probably in Italy at one of the World Cup races. God it was tough. We were out at Elba Island and it was just really steep and a really hard course, and he caught me on the last climb and passed me and I couldn't catch him coming down that last hill. I always tell people now I don't know if I ever did beat Ned when we were over eight or nine thousand feet, he was just so efficient and so good at that high altitude it was almost impossible to beat him at that elevation.

BB: When did the downhill become such a big part of mountain biking? At the beginning it was all uphill and cross-country, and there were the trials...

JT: We always did some downhill back in the early days of the sport. We'd race uphill and then turn around and race back down a lot of times at the local events. It didn't seem like downhill really caught on big time - I think the Mammoth Kamikaze really helped to kind of put downhill on the map. Then when the sport got more specialized, guys were just doing downhill and guys were just doing cross-country. That was in the early 90s. Downhill got a bit gnarlier and a little more edgy and the equipment obviously evolved a lot.

BB: So you were doing downhill and cross-country, and then you moved into road - what was that transition like and why'd you make that move?

JT: I raced the roads professionally in 1990 and ‘91, and the years just before that I was doing really well in mountain biking, especially in cross-country racing. I was just looking for another challenge and road racing was it at that time. I did a year with 7-Eleven and then a year with Motorola, racing a lot of the spring classics. I was in the Giro d'Italia and that was good, but I don't think I was in the right program at that time to really develop myself as a road racer. I was better as a mountain biker at that time and it just kind of suited me more so I decided to go back into the mountain bike thing full time in 1992. I did love those spring classic races. Riding the cobbles in the rain, that was great.

BB: You really enjoyed races like Paris-Roubaix.

JT: Yeah and that race is so hard that a lot of times you just do your job and you're done. That particular year I was actually on pretty good form, I got top 20 at the Tour of Flanders just a few days before, and I just overdid it riding the cobbles. Usually we'd do Tour of Flanders on Wednesday and then pre-ride Paris-Roubaix on Thursday, but I rode too hard that day and I didn't recover that well before Roubaix. But I got to do it a couple of times and I got to finish it, and given a few more years over there I think I could have done pretty well in that race.

BB: In mountain biking no matter how many people are out there it's just you against the course. And with triathlon it's pretty much the same thing, like an Ironman-type distance. Then when you're talking about road racing, it's a team thing and there's so much strategy and psychological stuff going on. How tough is that adaptation, going from just being out there worried about yourself and then going out there and having to be part of a team?

JT: You know road racing is quite a bit different than the individual sport. There are certain times when you have to dig deeper than you would if you were time trialing, say, or doing a mountain bike race. The other thing about road racing that helped me a lot is it really taught me how to race strategically. When I went to mountain biking after doing road racing I really thought races through and was really keen on how to race efficiently, not waste energy and have something left in the tank for the end of the race.

BB: Johnny, when you think back to that 7-Eleven team, who were some of the guys on the team with you, some of the legends?

JT: Let's see, Andy Hampsten, Steve Bauer, Phil Anderson... they were on there. It was a pretty good squad - it was big, which was one of the problems. It was a 22-rider squad and we had a split team: there was the Tour de France team, and then usually the guys that did the classics like the Giro d'Italia. That's why I think the young guys got a bit lost on that team.

BB: Did you want to do the Tour de France?

JT: I did, and I almost made the team my second year. I was up for the last slot and I would have done it, but they probably thought I was too young and I probably was. I was 21 or 22 at the time. 

BB: When you were balancing both road and mountain, did you spend the majority of your time on the road training and just rely on your skills for the mountain? Did you use the road for strength training, or would you spend equal time on the mountain? How did you balance that out?

JT: I kind of keyed off of what I'd be racing.  When I was road racing as a pro for those few years, obviously I did a lot of road racing, but if I had a mountain bike race coming up I'd go out there and I'd hit the trails at least a couple of times before I went to one of those events. But gosh, I was going and racing every weekend just about...

BB: Somebody told me they saw you out there at the mountain bike races with road bars on, drop bars.

JT: Yeah I did that. I think that was the year I was working for 7-Eleven, I just wanted to leave my bikes really close to the same. I did that, but it was a handful on the downhill.

BB: I remember your one-and-only duathlon, you had double disks on out in Palm Desert!

JT: That was a handful for sure. It was howling wind out there and I was getting blown a full traffic lane at any minute, at any time. That was before we had the aero bars so that kinda helped me, they were just coming around then and I didn't have them.

BB: And you had to run two 10Ks, one before and one after the 62K bike ride - had you done any running at all?

JT: We did one race with a friend a couple of weeks before that one and I ran that one cold turkey, no running at all and I was super super sore for probably five days. And then I went out there with Johnny O'Mara for Desert Princess. He was like ‘Yeah let's do this one, the big one,' so I said okay, and you know the first 10K wasn't that bad. And then the bike was good for me, I passed all the way up to the lead... and then the second 10K was, uh, something else.

BB: You mentioned Johnny O'Mara who came from the world of motocross and supercross... when did you get into riding a motorcycle? That must have helped you train for downhill.

JT: I didn't ride that much, I was a fan when I was a kid and then when I got to California I was friends with Johnny and did a little bit of training with him. I kind of just had a bike to ride around a little bit, and shoot, I never really did the sport. I rode a little as a cross-training tool when I was doing more downhill racing towards the end of my mountain bike career, and then I got into it more after I finished mountain biking. I rode a fair amount and got pretty good after awhile and I would just kind of do it for fun. Now my boy's really into it so it's keeping me busy. It's a major commitment doing the big-time amateur motocross thing at the level we're at; it's quite an ordeal.

BB: How old is Eli?

JT: He's 15, and he's been racing since he was 5 or 6. We're gone all the time, it's been a haul... in a couple of years he's going to be pro, so like I said it's a lot of time but he's really good at it and pretty dedicated, so it's all worth it. It's all good.

BB: Do you ride with him?

JT: Not so much now. I have in the past, but I'm pretty much just trying to handle his program, and it's almost a full-time job. I'm working on the bike at home and telling him how to train and handling all the contracts. 

BB: Besides the full-time job taking care of Eli and being an agent, what else are you up to?

JT: I actually live on a ranch here, and I do hay farming. I train another top pro motocross guy - Ben Townley. He works for Honda. Then I work for Kenda Tires doing mountain bike tire designs, and a friend of mine Joel Smith is running the Tomac Mountain Bike brand. I started it with my partner Doug Bradberry and we licensed it to the American Bike Group. We got the brand back from them because it wasn't really doing what they wanted. 

BB: You're only 40 now, right? You retired fairly young.

JT: I could have continued on, but at that time I was a downhill racer and 2000 was my last season. I got hurt in ‘98 and I got hurt in ‘99 and then 2000 just didn't go that well, so I decided it was time.

BB: Did you do that first winter ESPN X Games up at Big Bear?

JT: I did the second or third one. Those were good times. Snowcross is an awesome event, man it was great. The courses were really good and I'm bummed they got rid of it.

BB: The one event you're associated with most, I think, is the Kamikaze up in Mammoth. It certainly lent itself to great images and that is a perilous course. Watching you guys bomb down that trail with really nothing to keep you from going over the side of the mountain was amazing. What was it about that course that you dug?

JT: When I got into mountain biking, that was one of the first events that I went to that was really a big event. That course is just so legendary and when you're sitting on top of that mountain and looking down at the fire road or whatever we ride down there, it just looks like it falls off the face of the earth. That mountain can be intimidating and you've got to have your head together to race fast down that thing. I just really enjoyed that race, it was so fast and you had to be right on the money with your line selection and your breaking point. It's just a really cool event. We actually got to go back and do it two or three years ago, and I won it those last couple of times. There were some young kids that were top World Cup guys and it's pretty funny because that course is just so different from what they race on, and they didn't have a chance. They thought they were gonna beat me but they just couldn't do it. There's so much you learn from that place over years and years of racing and it's just a different deal for sure. 

BB: Johnny, when you look back on your career, which moments stick out for you?

JT: Probably that cross-country championship in Italy, that would be 1991. I had some really good World Cup wins in the mid ‘90s. When you look back, at my age... it all kind of blends together. 

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