Born in San Francisco CA 1955, Jacquie was a commuting cyclist as a youngster in LA: mom dreaded driving. Despite evidence of athletic potential, JP was steered toward a professional career -- preferably medicine. This provided an ideal challenge for a teenage feminist with authority issues. When she graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont, she moved to San Francisco, worked as an au pair, interned at the Women's Sports Foundation. It wasn't long before she saw the 1976 movie "Breaking Away" and launched herself into road and mountain bike racing.
The fat tire frontier of Marin County became a haven to this rebel without a car. She competed successfully with men in huge, mass-start races that resembled rolling parties. A pro from day one, she raced a bike built by her future husband, Charlie Cunningham. This aluminum bicycle--an unfair advantage over the bikes available then--changed the direction of bicycle manufacture, but that's a different story. Unbeaten for five and a half years, Phelan had to wait to be national champion until such a title was created in 1983, then she won three times. Such a long winning streak spelled opportunity for JP. ("I need women to race with!") She developed the world's first offroad skills camps in1984. These women's camps are still her most popular events. Her annual St. Packrat's Day bicycle swap funded her racing: riding a custom-built bike means not being part of a factory-sponsored team. Covering cycling here and abroad for Dutch, Italian, French and Swedish magazines helped develop her current career as a writer. Modeling for Rock Shox forks clinched her place as the queen of the mud.
Encouraging women simply to ride (as opposed to race) bicycles was her mission when she was unbeatable; now many racers follow her example and mentor other women and girls. She was a NORBA founder in 1982, keynote speaker of the inaugural IMBA meeting in 1987, created the Women's Mountain Bike & Tea Society (WOMBATS) in 1987, and raced on four world championship teams from 1990-1993 during her "second wind". Her annual fundraiser for abused women of Santa Cruz inaugurated in 1984 still occupies her time, as do dreams of a car-free future where everyone has free health insurance. Writing about these pipe dreams still takes up a chunk of her day.
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