13 Facts About Ned Overend

Edmund Overend was born on August 20,1955 and is an American former professional cross-country mountain bike racer.

Ned Overend is a six-time NORBA cross-country mountain bike national champion who became the first-ever cross-country world champion by winning the inaugural UCI Mountain Bike World Championship in 1990.

The son of an American diplomat, Ned Overend was born in Taipei, Taiwan and raised in Ethiopia and Iran.

Ned Overend attended high school in San Diego, California and was involved in motocross racing.

Ned Overend moved to Durango, Colorado in the early 1980s where he first became involved in cycling by entering Durango's Iron Horse Classic, a 47-mile road race with 6,700 feet of climbing along a narrow gauge railroad.

Ned Overend was hired to race for the Schwinn factory racing team in 1984 and won two consecutive NORBA Mountain Biking National Championships for the team in 1986 and 1987.

Ned Overend then signed a contract to race for Specialized Bicycles and went on to win the NORBA Mountain Biking National Championship in 1989,1990,1991 and 1992.

At the age of 40, Ned Overend made an attempt to qualify for the United States Olympic team to compete in the inaugural Olympic Cross-Country Mountain Biking competition in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia.

Ned Overend needed to finish the qualifier race in fourth place to qualify for the Olympic team alongside Tinker Juarez but, one and a half miles from the finish line, he suffered a flat tire and finished in eighth place.

Ned Overend won the US National Winter Triathlon Championship in 2000 and the UCI Masters Cyclo-cross World Championship in 2012.

In 2015, Ned Overend won the first-ever US Fat Bike championship.

Ned Overend is the current captain of the Specialized Cross Country Team.

Ned Overend appears in competition sequences of "The Sun Valley Mountain Bike Challenge," a video chronicle of that year's NORBA Championships released in 1988.