{"id":47,"date":"2020-02-13T21:24:48","date_gmt":"2020-02-13T21:24:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jralong.com\/theworldofbmx\/?page_id=47"},"modified":"2020-02-18T01:28:57","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T01:28:57","slug":"excerpt","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/theworldofbmx.com\/?page_id=47","title":{"rendered":"Excerpt"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

CHAPTER 1: FROM BUSTED BIKES TO BREAKOUT ACTION<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

If ever there was a sport begging to be named, it was BMX.\u00a0 Since kids first swung their legs over bicycles, they had been riding in dirt, in woods, over jumps, racing their friends and trying to outclass one another on tricky sections.\u00a0 It took the invention of motocross and the drive of some intrepid kids to make BMX into its own thing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Motocross, or mx, is motorcycles going into the dirt, mud, woods, desert, whatever.\u00a0 It is about getting away from the road.\u00a0 The bike bikes are raced on technically difficult dirt tracks.\u00a0 After motorcycles took hold in the early part of the 20th<\/sup> century, there were flat track and road competitions, but the off-road aspect took time to develop.\u00a0 Part of the problem was technology; the gear couldn\u2019t quite do what people wanted it to do.\u00a0 As the technology grew, so did the sports popularity and it saw a real boom in the 1960s.\u00a0 The thrills and speed made it exciting and kids were getting into it.\u00a0 Some kids started to think \u2018if motorcycles can do it, so can bicycles.\u2019<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ron Mackler was a teenage employee at Palms Park, a county park in Santa Monica, CA.\u00a0 He had been involved with the Boys\u2019 Club, and liked its mission and accessibility.\u00a0 He was running youth programs at Palms, and noticed that kids were riding to the park on their bikes.\u00a0 He had been doing motocross himself, and believed he could share the thrills of mx with the kids riding in.\u00a0 \u201cWe had a big sandbox there,\u201d he says.\u00a0 \u201cI said, \u2018why don\u2019t we throw sand on the corners of the sandbox and do some slides?\u2019\u00a0 They seemed to have a good time doing it.\u00a0 I asked, \u2018why don\u2019t we have TT races?\u2019\u00a0 I would line three or four kids up and they\u2019d go 5 laps around the sandbox and slide on all the corners.\u00a0 The kids got into it.\u00a0 Then I ran into a guy with a construction business. There was another guy named Dave Donovan who was good with kids, so we got this guy and permission from the parks department to put this track together.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The first race was on July 10, 1969.\u00a0 All the basic ingredients were there; uphill, downhill, berms, jumps, turns, a flashlight for the starting light.\u00a0 Mackler ran races at the park for the next fifteen years.\u00a0 Once word got out, kids came from all over, parents driving up to two hours to get their kids in the Thursday night action.\u00a0 Some BMX greats came out of the early days at Palms.\u00a0 They include Tinker Juarez, Perry Kramer, and Stu Thomsen\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Scot Breithaupt was a sponsored motocross teen.\u00a0\u00a0 Only 13, he wanted to create a practice course where he could hone his skills.\u00a0 In 1970, the Long Beach, CA native started creating a loop in a semi-abandoned space known as Bums Park\u2014for all the homeless who hung out there\u2014and rode the loop with his friends.\u00a0 In order to make it a real race, he needed a sanctioning body.\u00a0 Scot created BUMS (Bicycle United Motocross Society), turning the home field moniker into an acronym.\u00a0 Scot was both an excellent racer and imbued with entrepeneurship.\u00a0 He got 35 kids paying a quarter each at his first race.\u00a0 He gave them trophies he had won racing motocross.\u00a0 The second race drew 150.\u00a0 Scot\u2019s track grew, and he helped build others; he had eight tracks by 1974.\u00a0 Harry Leary and a number of others came out of Scot\u2019s tracks.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The early bikes were the basic kid ride.\u00a0 Schwinn Sting-Rays, and the Huffy, Murray, and Sears knock-offs.\u00a0 Kids being kids, they sometimes went for style and sometimes went for function.\u00a0 The Sting-Rays had the classic cantilevered frame that Schwinn made famous–some liked to cut off the seemingly unnecessary frame tubes that went forward from the seat tube.\u00a0 The modified frame was lighter; but this seriously weakened the frame and often led to failures.\u00a0 Others tried raising the bottom bracket height by cutting out some of the seat tube and putting in a second bottom bracket shell.\u00a0 Others still liked taking their sisters\u2019 bikes out because the girls\u2019 frame made it easier to do funky tricks\u2014but this frame design was weak to begin with and couldn\u2019t take the pounding.\u00a0 Others went for more motocross style and practicality, like adding motocross handlebars.\u00a0 The difficulty here was that the mx bars needed a shim to fit in the bicycle stems.\u00a0 Breithaupt made some extra money by selling motocross stuff to other kids; handlebars, grips, and number plates.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 These two tracks were the start.\u00a0 Mackler wanted to keep things accessible and interesting, so he kept entry low, $5 for a ten-week session, and each session had up to four hours of racing.\u00a0 He gave out as many awards as he could, certificates, plaques, trophies, with the largest trophy being for sportsmanship.\u00a0 If kids couldn\u2019t pony up the cash, Mackler let them work it off.\u00a0 He changed his track around as often as he could.\u00a0 He had wheelie contests, jump contests, whatever it took to keep things from getting boring.\u00a0 While Mackler was keeping things simple, Breithaupt was creating a league, with a scoring system, and rules, and champions.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The term BMX is still somewhat of a mystery.\u00a0 Both Breithaupt and Mackler claim credit.\u00a0 There is evidence that it was called \u201cpedal cross.\u201d\u00a0 Mackler says he called it BMX from the start.\u00a0 Breithaupt says he used it to explain the sport to national magazines.\u00a0 Later, in 1974, Bicycle Motocross News was created and the publisher, Elaine Holt, is given naming credit by some.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 While the tracks were gaining great cred from word of mouth, and bike companies were beginning to notice, the biggest boost came from a motocross movie, On Any Sunday<\/em>.\u00a0 Released in 1971, the documentary highlights motorcycle racing, the movie actor Steve McQueen (a motorcyclist who did many of his own stunts in movies), and the heretofore unknown sport of kids racing bikes on a dirt track.\u00a0 The bmx scenes were short, but it was enough to stir the pot of interest.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

GEARING UP FOR BMX<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In the early days…<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Looks like you’ll have to buy the book<\/a> to find out more.<\/em><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER 1: FROM BUSTED BIKES TO BREAKOUT ACTION If ever there was a sport begging to be named, it was BMX.\u00a0 Since kids first swung their legs over bicycles, they had been riding in dirt, in woods, over jumps, racing their friends and trying to outclass one another on tricky sections.\u00a0 It took the invention … <\/p>\n

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