Some ideas are born in a moment of blinding epiphany. Jim Kruse’s was born in a simple moment of commerce.

One day in 2008, he unlimbered his wallet to buy back the steel Pogliaghi bicycle he raced as a kid in the 1980s, and the germ of an idea – a throwback racing circuit for devotees of steel bikes, which went out of style about 20 years ago – was planted. And he found ground more fertile than Kruse could have dreamed.

Seems like everyone he met had one of those old steel frames hanging in his or her garage or basement or attic, just waiting for the chance to be rediscovered.

“These vintage racing bikes are everywhere,” Kruse says, two months after he, John Martin and Tim Hall, all of Fort Wayne, launched their Men of Steel Racing Web site (www.menofsteelracing.com).

“It’s like vintage Ferraris just hanging around. And there’s really nothing you can do with them.”

Now there is – and the response to that fresh reality has taken Kruse, Martin and Hall aback.

There was the one guy, a couple of weeks ago at the Twilight Criterium in Athens, Ga., who couldn’t stop talking about the steel bikes and the good old days of steel-bike racing. Pro riders gathered around when Martin, Kruse and Hall unloaded their steel bikes, wallowing in nostalgia. The Men of Steel Web site has gotten hits from as far away as Japan and Switzerland, racers from all over the world requesting Men of Steel jerseys and gear.

“We’ve kind of struck a nerve,” Kruse says.

Martin thinks he knows why.

“There’s just that nostalgic feel to these bikes,” he says. “You go to a big race now, I’d say 90 percent of the frames you see are carbon fiber. Nothing against that bike – I’ve got a carbon fiber bike, and they’re great bikes – but it’s more of a technological frame than it is craftsmanship.

“You look at some of those old frames, there’s real craftsmanship that goes into those bikes. Those were handmade bikes. They weren’t, you know, chunked out of a manufacturing line.”

And yet those who raced them in the 1970s and ’80s had no outlet to do so anymore, after aluminum came along in the late ’80s and carbon fiber in the late ’90s. So they went up on the wall in the garage. There was no outlet for racing them, or even one for talking about them.

“I think we made a mistake when we originally targeted it toward the Masters, the 40-year-olds ands up,” Martin says. “Steel is making a comeback even for the younger crowd. I think we’re on the forefront of this. We kind of stumbled onto it, but that’s how these things happen.”

To date, the Men of Steel Racing Series includes the Athens event, time trials in New Haven and Auburn, a stage race in Woodburn and the MOS Racing Championship, which is part of the USA CRITS Championship Series. There will also be a steel event at the Three Rivers Festival Fort Wayne Cycling Classic on July 10 and 11 at Parkview Field, on the 0.8-mile closed circuit laid out on the city streets surrounding the ballpark.

The response is expected to be, well, enthusiastic.

“I like to make the analogy between this and vintage sports car racing, which was unheard of in the 1970s,” Kruse says. “Then it just kind of grew from nothing, grassroots style, and today it’s one of the hottest things going.”

Same deal here.

“We had a racer at Athens who was almost a pro in the 1970s, but he’s 6-2 and 300 pounds now, and never thought he would get on a bike again,” Kruse says. “And he was so excited to be able to get back out there.”

Him and a whole lot of others.

bensmith@jg.net