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GT Bicycles designs and manufactures road, mountain, and bmx bicycles — originally in the United States, and now as a division of Canadian conglomerate, Dorel Industries, which also markets Cannondale, Schwinn, Mongoose, IronHorse, Dyno and RoadMaster bicycle brands; all manufactured in Asia. GT was founded in 1972 by Gary Turner and Richard Long in Santa Ana, California and was noted at its inception for spearheading the prominence of BMX bicycles, later for developing a range of bikes around its "triple triangle" design, and at the end of its independent history, winning a commission to manufacture a $30,000, 16lb. carbon fiber "Superbike"〔 for the 1996 Summer games. GT sponsored numerous race teams and individuals, including noted riders Rebecca Twigg and Juli Furtado. In 1998, the company went public and subsequently merged with Questor Partners, then owner of Schwinn. The conglomerate went bankrupt in 2001 and was acquired by Pacific Cycle, which was in turn acquired by Dorel Industries in 2004. GT is noted for their "triple triangle" hard-tail frame design — where seat stays are parallel to the downtube and attached to the top tube forward of the seat tube, rather than directly at the seat tube. The company often uses a frame design where the bike's top tube extends rearward past the seat tube, claimed to reduce the vibration transferred to the seat from the rear wheel. Later versions would have "GT" stamped on the end of the extended top tube. ==Early history== GT was co-founded in 1972 by bike shop owner Richard Long along with welding engineer and custom bike maker Gary Turner, in Turner's Fullerton, California garage — at first manufacturing for the youth motocross sport, BMX bicycle racing.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = LA Times, July 16, 1996, John O'Dell )〕 Turner had been a musical instrument repairer by trade, and began making BMX bikes for his children, improving on the quality over then available bicycles.〔 Long had used money from a motorcycle accident settlement to open his bike shop in 1975, the Anaheim Bicycle Center, where he and Turner would later market their bicycles. GT would grow to a multimillion-dollar firm supplying bicycles to the U.S. Olympic cycling team,〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = The New York Times, July 20, 1996, Robert McG. Thomas Jr. )〕 In 1993 Long and Turner sold a controlling interest to Boston-based investment firm Bain Capital, which took the company public in October 1995.〔 In 1996, GT won the commission to manufacture a highly aerodynamic bike design that would later become known as the "Superbike," hailed at the time "as the best on the planet"〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = Washington Post, Arnie Stapleton, July 31, 1996 )〕 and later banned by Olympic regulations for being "too fast." A byproduct of a year-long development program with the U.S. national team known as Project '96, the bike featured a carbon graphite frame with no top tube, extremely thin seat and downtubes, a seat tube with a deep cutout to accommodate the rear wheel, as well as differently sized aerodynamic wheels. Describing the bike, the U. S. Cycling Federation's track endurance coach Craig Griffin said "it's so thin and light, and it's as strong as anything built. It's so aerodynamic that when you look at it from the front, it disappears."〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = Sports Illustrated, Richard Deutsch, April 29, 1996 )〕 Controversially, just prior to the 96 Summer Olympics, Rebecca Twigg quit the team, citing her Superbike's ill fit〔 as one of the reasons for departing. A week before GT's debut at the 1996 Summer Olympic, GT co-founder Richard Long was killed in a motorcycle accident on his Honda Valkyrie en route to a national championship series race for the National Off-Road Bicycle Association at Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino mountains.〔 At the time of Long's death, GT maintained an office at the factory in Santa Ana as well as a factory in Huntington Beach〔 — and manufactured 600,000 bicycles annually under the GT, Powerlite, Robinson and Dyno brands, distributed bikes, parts and accessories via its Riteway network and had annual revenues of $150 million.〔 Less than two years after Long's death, in 1998, Bain Capital sold GT to another investment group, Questor Partners, which at the time also owned Schwinn, for $175million. Questor would file for bankruptcy on June 27, 2001, five years to the day that Richard Long had died. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「GT Bicycles」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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