Edmund ("Ned") Overend (born 20 August 1955) is an American former professional cross-country mountain bike racer.[1] He 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.[1][2] Overend was inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in 1990 and into the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame in 2001.[1][2]
The son of a U.S. diplomat, Overend was born in Taipei, Taiwan and raised in Ethiopia and Iran.[1] He attended high school in San Diego, California and was involved in motocross racing.[3]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.[3] From road racing, he eventually moved on to mountain bike racing where, his previous motocross experience combined with his physical fitness from road racing made him an exceptional competitor.[3] He was first hired to ride for the Schwinn factory racing team from 1984 to 1987 and then signed a contract to ride for Specialized Bicycles.[3] He went on to win the NORBA Mountain Biking National Championship in 1986, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1992.[2] At the age of 40, 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.[4] He 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.[4]
Ned Overend, John Tomac and Tinker Juarez Compete in the Cindy Whitehead Desert Classic, Palm Springs, California, 1989 - Photo by Patty Mooney
Even though he retired from professional mountain bike competition in 1996, he continued competing in endurance competitions, winning the XTERRA Triathlon in 1998 and 1999 and competing in regular road triathlons.[3] He won the U.S. National Winter Triathlon Championship in 2000 and the UCI Masters Cyclo-cross World Championship in 2012.[3] In 2015, Overend won the first-ever U.S. Fat Bike championship.[5] During his professional mountain biking career, Overend earned the nicknames "Deadly Nedly" and "The Lung", because he was very difficult to beat and for his exceptional aerobic endurance at altitude (especially so for a man of his age), respectively.[2] He is the current captain of the Specialized Cross Country Team.
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