BMX
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A BMX Race. First round of the 2005 European BMX Championships held in Sainte Maxime, France on 23th April 2005 |
BMX is a form of
cycling on specially designed bicycles which usually have 20-inch wheels (smaller than the 26-inch wheels found on
mountain bikes and the 700C or 27-inch wheels found on more conventional road
racing bicycles). The sport includes races on sandy and hilly tracks—
BMX racing—as well as the performances of tricks on flat ground, wooden ramps or obstacles found on the streets—
BMX freestyle.
BMX originated in the state of
California,
United States in the late 1960s, when teenagers imitated their motocross heroes (most notably
Steve McQueen) on their bicycles. Scot Breithaupt is credited as the founder of BMX. The 1971 motorcycle racing documentary "On Any Sunday" is generally credited with inspiring the movement nationally. In the opening scene, kids are shown riding their
Schwinns off-road. It wasn't until the middle of that decade that the sport achieved critical mass, and manufacturers began creating bicycles designed specially for the sport. In the case of Freestyle BMX, it wouldn't be what it is today without
Bob Haro's contribution. He merged skateboarding tricks with freestyle BMX which led to the current-day style of this extreme sport.
In the beginning of the BMX movement, kids would strip down their Schwinn Sting Ray bicycles and add knobby tires and perhaps motorcycle handlebars, and in time modify the frames for performance, strength or personal preference. Early BMX bicycle manufacturers, such as R&R Racing Products,
Mongoose, Webco and RedLine, eventually created bicycles expressly for the sport. Mongoose can be credited with building the quintessential early BMX bike, featuring a straight-tubed, gusseted frame; reinforced handlebars; Motomag wheels and long crankarms. The initial construction emphasis was on durability, but weight became a consideration as racing gained popularity. R&R Racing Products, noted for introducing the first 3 pound frame, forged the path for light weight, yet strong BMX bikes designed specifically for racing. Other manufacturers soon followed using lighter materials like aluminum and chromium molybdenum (chromoly) for frames; steel rims, mag wheels and coaster brakes were replaced by aluminum rims with freewheels and caliper brakes. Once BMX racing became a professional activity, racing bikes became as specialized as in all other forms of cycling competition.
The next wave of innovation came with the advent of freestyle BMX. Freestyle bikes look much like BMX racing bikes, but they have extra places to position the feet while performing tricks and are much stronger. Many freestyle bike also feature a 'Gyro', a device located by the headtube that allows the handlebars to be spun 360 or more degrees without tangling the brake cables. The design of the Gyro was based on the rotor of a helicopter, which requires blade adjustments while maintaining a steady speed of rotation.
The explosion of BMX created many startup companies, and lured many known manufacturers into the market. In addition to the above mentioned, other notable companies include GT, Haro, FMF, Patterson, Fit Bike Co, S&M, MBK,
Schwinn, Eastern, Torker, Boss, Diamondback, Hoffman Bikes, Volume bike co, Poverty, Cook Brothers, CW, Free Agent, FBM, The Take, Fly Bikes, Twentyvelocross, Superstar, Sputnic, Odyssey, Skyway, Mosh Bikes, Kuwahara, DK,
Huffy,
Murray, Federal, Hutch, SE Racing,
JMC Bicycles and many more.
Many manufacturers also produce 24" wheel versions of their BMX bikes called Cruisers, that ran in their own classes.
BMX racing is where BMX started. The courses emulate
motocross tracks, but are generally smoother, and are about 900 to 1,100 feet in length. Races last about 25 to 40 seconds hitting speeds of 15 to 35mph depending on track conditions, the skill level and age bracket of the class. The participants race for points in which the rider with the most points under district (local), state/provicial, regional, national and international rules and regulations is declared the number one (#1) or Champion Racer. These rules and qualifications are determined by governing organizations who promote and sanction these events called
Sanctioning bodies. BMX racing in the US consists of 2 leagues, NBL (National Bicycle League) and ABA (American Bicycle Association). Both are similar, but still have differences.
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BMX Flatland rider at Santa Monica beach. |
'Freestyle BMX is a creative way of using bicycles originally designed for bicycle motocross racing.
In most countries, the popularity of Freestyle BMX has outgrown that of racing. Many of the top-selling magazine have no, or very limited, coverage of racing, while extensively covering every aspect of Freestyle with perhaps the notable exception of Flatland.
Freestyle has now been split further into a number of disciplines with bikes being specialized to cope with the demands of different ridingstyles. These disciplines are street, vert, park and dirt. Dirt involves some of the traditional aspects of BMX racing with jumps being built out of earth. the rider will then proceed to do tricks over these jumps rater than going for speed as they do in racing. Street is a trick orientaded discipline in which riders will use objects they find such as banks, steps and ledges to do tricks. Vert involves the riders gaining air out of a half-pipe and doing tricks before landing. Park puts together elements of all of these disciplines. The skatepark will be designed so that a rider can ride around in loops without having to stop. Typicaly there will be a number of different height banks, quaterpipes and ledges.
The early days of BMX - both racing and freestyle - was chronicled in the movie
Rad. The movie, filmed in Calgary, Canada featured many talented and famous BMX riders of the 1980s as stunt riders, including Eddie Fiola, Travis Chipres, Mike Dominguez, Hollywood Mike Miranda, Martin Aparillo, and Fred Blood.
Other films featuring BMX include
BMX Bandits, Spielberg's
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and more recently
Joe Kid on a Stingray which documents the early days of the sport from an American perspective.
The musical group
Wheatus penned
BMX Bandits on their 2005 album
Too Soon Monsoon.
BMX also has its own dedicated magazines to promote and popularize the sport. The more notable and historic American publications included
Bicycle Motocross News, a
tabloid newspaper published by Elaine Holt which debuted in June 1973, It was the first BMX publication, now defunct;
Bicycle Motocross Action, later shortened to
BMX Action now defunct*;
Freestylin', BMX Action's twin publication focusing on freestyle riding, also defunct*;
BMX Plus!, formerly
BMX Action's biggest competitor (still publishing);
Super BMX & Freestyle which evolved from
Minicycle/BMX Action (not to be confused with the other
BMX Action) which in turn derived from
Minicycle Action. Super BMX & Freestyle ended publication in 1989.
Other notable magazines are
Dig BMX and
Ride BMX (both UK-based),
Transworld BMX(now defunct) which was a descendant of
BMX Action and is now part of
Ride BMX. In 2006,
BMX World began publication, an offshoot of
BMXPress an Australian BMX magazine.
As a youth culture sport the BMX industry has seen itself both fully embraced by the mainstream media during the late 70's and early 80's as well as abandoned during the late 80's and early 90's. In part due to this, as well as the inspiration of an often very underground and local network of individuals, the BMX scene produced many 'zines'. Zines were a non-commercial, privately published magazine. These were often freely distributed and/or non-profit and formed a creative outlet and means of communication between BMX riders the world over. In the beginning as personal computers were few and far between, the majority of these zines were handwritten or typed black & white photocopied pages produced as a smaller (often DinA5 due to the practicality of being able to fold a standard DinA4 page in two) magazine. They had become a more in-depth version of the very earliest forms of single-page newsletter that had previously been used to communicate the very first BMX events, echoing the advancements in the BMX scene as a lifestyle. As the mainstream media, general public interest and with it large companies' interest and money left the BMX scene, zines helped maintain communication and inspiration between BMX riders.
Many BMX companies (particularly the rider owned ones) also produce videos to showcase the skills of their team riders and to promote their products.
* BMX Action and
Freestylin would recombine in October of 1989 as
Freestylin'/BMX Action. This publication would in turn become
Go beginning with the November 1989 issue (although the cover still carried the
Freestylin'/BMX Action Title on it until the February 1990.
Go, the direct heir to
BMX Action, ceased publication with the March, 1992 issue. However, a second (albeit merely spiritual) descendant of
BMX Action magazine called
Snap, started publishing in September 1994. Its tie to the venerable
BMX Action was its revival of the Number One Rider Award (NORA) Cup in 1998. That was
BMX Action's coveted annual award to the most popular racer via reader's poll. Beginning with the June 2001 issue
Snap changed its name to
TransWorld BMX to reflect the diminished emphasis on racing and traditional freestyle and the rise of
streetstyle (generally speaking an
urban version of trails riding) and dirt jumping. Racing was still covered, just not as much.
TransWorld BMX ended independent publication with the January 2005 issue. It was combined with its sister publication
Ride BMX which makes it the closest descendant to the venerable
BMX Action.Back in the mid 1980's near the peak of the first wave in the sports popularity, female BMX racers were about 4% of the racers in the United States. In freestyle today it is estimated that 1% of Freestyle riders are female. This number continues to grow with advocacy from female riders and support for female competitive events from contest organizers. See (http://www.wofbmx.com) for the only female rider support group in BMX, Women of FreeStyle BMX.
There was one female BMX rider that truly received great fame during the 1980's,
Cheri Elliott. For most of her short BMX career she raced on the
Skyway Recreation factory team in the girl's division which used to be known as "
Powder Puff", but was so dominant she often raced against the boys in her age groups (9-15 over the years) when there weren't enough girls to make a separate division during an event. She often won. Cheri paved the way for other females as well, such as Melanie Cline, who dominated the sport for much of the 80' and 90's, ultimately winning 10 national and 4 world titles. Another is Corine Dorland from the Netherlands who won 10 World titles in her career. On September 25th. 2005 Corine Dorland did compete in her last race and finished a 25 year cycling career. Up till this date, Corine is the unbeateble Queen of BMX. After 14 years in BMX she changed to mountain biking in which she was active eleven years.
Today's top women riders include Nina Buitrago, Stacey Mulligan, Corey Coffey.
The BMX Industry is a niche group of both mass market and "core" companies that supply nearly every country around the world with BMX bicycles, parts, accessories, and lifestyle products. The industry is generally broken into factory owned companies and rider owned companies, where most hardgoods products are manufactured in Taiwan and China. Textiles and other lifestyle products are generally manufactured in China and the United States. Many bicycle shops stock BMX products, and mailorder catalogs that focus on BMX bikes, clothing, parts, etc. are also popular across the world.
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List of Freestyle BMX tricks*
Bunny hop*
Dirt Jumping*
Endo*
Tailwhip*
WheelieBMX and/or Freestyle themed movies or with BMX and/or Freestyle included. Links are to their Internet Movie Data base listings.
"On Any Sunday" (1971)
IMDB entry "On Any Sunday II" (1981)
IMDB entry"E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" (1982)
IMDB entry "BMX Bandits" (1983)
IMDB entry"Uncommon Valor" (1983)
IMDB entry "Let Me Try" (1984)
"Ask Max" (1986)
IMDB entry"Rad!" (1986)
IMDB entry"Joe Kid on a Sting-Ray" (Documentary 2005)
IMDB entryBMX Racing Sanctioning Bodies.
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www.ababmx.com - ( ABA ) - American Bicycle Association.
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www.nbl.com - ( NBL ) - National Bicycle League.
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www.uci.ch - ( UCI ) - Union Cycliste Internationale.
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www.usacycling.org - ( USAC-BMX ) - USA Cycling.
BMX Racing Links
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www.bmxandmore.com - One of the biggest Dutch/European racing sites.
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www.bmxbasics.org - articles by BMX industry gadfly Jim Boswell.
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www.bmxmania.com - BMX Mania BMX News!
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www.bmxtalk.com - The largest online BMX community in the UK.
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www.cyclingnz.com New Zealands BMX articles, photos, and results
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www.genesbmx.com - Gene`s BMX, The home of over 1000 BMX links!
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www.gobmx.com - Go BMX Northwest BMX Racing.
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www.njbmx.org - The internets first BMX web site 1995
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www.bmxwheels.com - Your complete guide to BMX Companies, parts, and BMX bike reviews.
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www.univofbmx.com - University of BMX site with history about BMX.
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www.vintagebmx.com - Vintage BMX history for BMX fans, enthusiasts message boards.
Freestyle BMX Links
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www.bikeguide.org - All around helpful site/BMX forum
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www.bmxboard.com - BMXBoard - push with your arm google it 5.0 clearcorners.
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www.bmxclub.com - 818 riders BMX club!
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www.bmx-forum.com - Large online BMX community.
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www.bmxmuseum.com - A BMX museum photos of classic BMX bicycles.
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www.bmxtotal.com - A Brasilian BMX site, showing how BMX has reached every part of the planet.
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www.bmxweb.com - BMX Web (formerly know as Den's) Links.
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www.dewactionsportstour.com The five-stop event broadcasts on NBC and USA TV.
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www.bmx-zone.com - BMX articles, photos, tricks.
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www.fatbmx.com - Fat BMX web site.
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www.genesbmx.com - Gene`s BMX, The home of over 1000 BMX links!
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www.pedalbmx.com - Active BMX Freestly Forums, Wiki and Banner
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www.saugabmxzine.tk - Sauga BMX zine from Canada.
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www.sjbmx.com - SJBMX covers the San Jose, CA BMX scene.
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www.streetphire.co.uk - UK Messageboard. Central to the scene.
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www.vintagebmx.com - Vintage BMX history for BMX fans, enthusiasts message boards.
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www.20inchers.com - Covering BMX without tricks.
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www.23mag.com - A nostalgia site, scans of past issues and active BMX publications.
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www.bmxwheels.com - Your complete guide to BMX Companies, parts, and BMX bike reviews.
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www.4130riders.net A BMX forum.
