Well, it may seem chaos down here, and in fact, many of you have never seen so many
people line up for a cycling event before.
This is BMX, that's Bicycle Motocross, and almost overnight.
This has become one of the most popular events in British cycling.
Well, let me have a typical BMX race, but of course, there's a lot more to it than meets the eye.
Now, to try and understand what is quite a complex sport,
let's take a closer look at some of the finer points.
Well, the first thing you'll learn about BMX is that it has a language all of its own.
A heat, like this one, is called a moto, and the riders try to progress through the motos to the
final. What I really mean to say is the main. Berms, camelbacks, 720 rollbacks, lids, bunny
hops and wheelies only skim the surface of the basic language of a BMX rider.
Motos from leaving the gate to the finishing line last only a few seconds,
but three good performances and you're in the quarterfinals,
then the semi-finals and hopefully reaching the main itself.
Usually, eight riders can test each moto and a great deal of skill,
and not inconsiderable nerve is called for.
Well, the first thing that strikes you about a BMX machine is its sheer size,
and no matter how big you grow, the bike will more or less stays the same,
and that's to get you around the berms and also to give you good control on very tight circuits.
Now, we can take a typical machine here, and you'll see first of all good chunky tires for
plenty of grip on the sand and mud, and they are pumped up to twice the pressure of a car tire,
which is about 45 pounds per square inch. The pedals themselves, no toe clips you note like
a normal cycle, but little studs on them to grip under the shoes. The riders can choose their gear
for the course, and if they don't like the gear, they can change the ratio by taking off the chain
wheel here, replacing it with a new one, and of course, as a safety precaution, the bicycle is
protected by these sponge wrappers around the top tube. The other significant thing is,
only one brake normally, but if they choose to do so, they can put two on.
TI Rally produce over 300,000 BMX machines a year, and their burners, as they are called,
are tested often to destruction in the product design center in Nottingham.
Forks are able to withstand a collision with a curb at 10 miles an hour, and the hammer test
is no more destructive than that of a rider in full cry. You can probably imagine the strain on
a pair of handlebars, which are not just used for steering, but also for supporting the whole body
weight, and this is what I mean.
So
sometimes a moto appears more like a battlefield, but thankfully injuries are usually restricted
to dented egos and some lost skin, and there's always a victor in the end.
Each year in Harrogate, the International Festival of Cycling, sponsored by Cycling Magazine,
gives BMX riders the chance to keep up to date with the wide range of machines and equipment.
Although a BMX bike can cost less than a hundred pounds, clothing and spare parts are always in
demand. One of the sport's main attractions is the variety of colors, and because it's backed up with
plenty of hype and presentation, the rider must think of his or her image. The bitty cycle industry,
some say, has been saved by the advent of this new sport from America, and they are certainly
doing their best to impress. There's no shortage of choice now, it's only a matter of how much you
want to spend. In Brixton South London, best use has been made of an old skateboard track.
Now whatever happened to that game? And young enthusiasts put their machines through their
paces with ease. It looks simple doesn't it? But remember, a fall on this surface could be
serious and helmets, sorry, lids, should always be worn. Besides, isn't that part of the glamour?
You certainly wouldn't catch Andy Ruffall, one of Britain's best riders, without his lid on,
and here he is at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre turning this moto
into just that, an exhibition. Ruffall is not just a top competitor, he also specialises in
freestyle riding, but over a course like this, he really excels. And now let's ask him how he does it.
First of all, let's take the start, is that important? Very important, the start is the most
important part of the race. If you can get out of the start first, then you dictate where the other
riders in the race go. Well how do you do that, because you're in mid-air all the time? Well,
BMX racing, you need to get over the line first, so while you're in mid-air you're losing speed.
So BMX racers tend to try and stay low to the jumps and really skim over the jumps. If you go
off the jumps then you're losing speed, so you tend to stay on the ground. So that's a little bit like skiing,
isn't it? The same principle applies. What about your own prospects in the sport? Will you simply
want to be a British champion all the time? Is that the ultimate ambition or can you do something else?
Well in bicycle motocross my ambition is to be, because I do trick riding as well, which is called
freestyle riding, and I aim to be very good at freestyle, I'm very good at racing as well,
and to earn my living from BMX racing. I travel the country doing demonstrations also, promoting BMX,
promoting safety to the kids, and generally explaining about bicycle motocross racing.
Britain's number one is Tim March from Dorset, and like Andy is always ready to pass on the
secrets of success. Trying to teach you how to get around the track a lot safer than you are now,
hopefully a lot faster, and a lot more competently, all right? Now what we do, we split the track up
into three parts, all right? We run from the start to the first turn, the first turn to the second
turn down there, and the second turn to the finish, okay? Now what I'll do, I'll run, I'll
demonstrate myself what I want you to do, okay? Now you watch while I'm demonstrating, then
afterwards you run through one at a time. The start is very, very critical. If you don't get
a good start, it means you're having to work up through a lot of riders that could be a lot
slower than you, which is causing you a little bit of extra hard work. So you've got to concentrate
on the start a lot as well, okay? Now, two pedal starts are the quickest start, okay? You're up on
your pedals already. You don't have to put your second foot up on the pedal when you've gone.
You're up there already. It enables you to balance just a little bit easier, and you're on the bike
in a central position, all right? Now, while we do some starts, I want to see you doing some two
pedal starts. Come on there, number seven. Nice and low. Now for the inside now. On the inside,
okay? Let's keep going. Keep pedaling. Good lad. Nice line. That was clean. Good lad.
Okay, so keep it nice and low over this jump. Come on, let's go.
Come on, you can pedal harder than that. Come on, Lisa. Now for the inside. That's it. Now head for
the inside. Go on. Keep pedaling. Go on. In a group, you can always pick out the ones that want to
try and always the ones that want to win easily. You know, there's always maybe one or two in a
group that will put a little bit more effort in than the others, you know? So they do shine out
a lot of the time, even though they're not the fastest. They're not necessarily the fastest.
They're just the ones that try the most. Now, what we're going to do, well, what I'll do,
is demonstrate which line's going to be used for what, okay? Now the outside line, like I said
earlier, is a little bit smoother and possibly the safest, okay? Now, but we've also got another line
which we can use, which is right on the inside. You see these tires? What we're going to do,
you can come out that turn, set up just about there, and come along these tires and go inside
anybody that's drifted out a little bit wide. It's a little bit more dangerous than all the others,
but if you're in second or third or any other position, it also gives you a chance
for you to overtake somebody, okay?
Okay, like I said, buy the tires, sit on the saddle, okay? Crank out the turn over that side,
up and around. Okay, 508, let's go. You can pedal faster than that. I know you can. Let's go. On
the inside. Concentrate on getting around this turn. Whoa, wipe out. 508, are you all right?
Let's pull yourself up here now. Is the bike all right? Are you all right? You sure you're all right?
Okay, off you go then, Ace. Good lad. Keep pedaling. Go for it.
What about the safety aspect, Tim? One little lad here cut his head earlier on before we started
all this work out. Yeah, well, what you've got at the moment, you see, is a lot of kids
used to do skateboarding, and a lot of them have got skateboard helmets.
And unfortunately, in this country, skateboard helmets are allowed for BMX. Now, they're not
as good as a motorcycle helmet, a motorcycle helmet or a good BMX helmet, you know, something
which is solid around the outside, it's got no holes in it. Because obviously, if you've got
something with holes in it and you fall off on dirt or whatever, you can get something to penetrate
through that hole and could hurt your head, okay? So I always use a motorcycle helmet, you know,
you can buy a motorcycle helmet for 13 pounds 95. And for the sake of protecting your head,
it's worth the money, you know. If you've got, you know, everybody values their head, so you should
protect it with the right amount of headgear. Also, you should wear, always wear your gloves.
And even when you're going out, if you're only riding on the street, but you're going to do
some practicing in the car park or something, always wear your helmet, your gloves and long
sleeves if you can. This particular track in Nottingham is the home of the Bunnies Burners
Club. The track itself was designed and built by the parents and membership is booming.
Well, apart from the odd collision, Tim's words of encouragement and advice have been taken to
heart here and his number one plate may soon be in danger. At the moment, the sport being as
young as it is, no one has set a standard to be, to say, for someone to say, well, you've got to
retire at 28, you know, Fred, whatever his name was, retired at 28, so that is your age limit,
you've got to retire. So no one's really set a limit at the moment. So I guess you can go on for
a long time yet. I mean, top time trialists go on to the 28, 30 when they reach their peak.
So I hope to be riding then, you know, as long as I can really.
There's no limit to what a BMX bike can do. And before a packed house, 18 years old Oscar
Bullard and Roy from Spain produced his own version of freestyle riding.
Not, I must add, to be practiced on the family car.
And with that out of the way, he decided to climb a few pallets
and come down again.
There's nothing like practicing school sports on a BMX bike and here, being allowed two tries each,
riders go for the long jump. The best were clearing over 13 feet,
the best were going to the top of the hill, and the best were going to the bottom of the hill.
And the best were going to the bottom of the hill.
Riders go for the long jump. The best were clearing over 13 feet.
Now you can see why the bikes went through all those tests in the factory.
Here, in the bunny hop, clearing two feet six is difficult enough, but taking your bike with you,
well that's something else.
There really is no end to the versatility of the freestyle rider, and after hours of practice,
it's time to go through the routine in public. By the way, the American voice you might hear is
Bob Harrow, the world's greatest freestyleist and BMX star of the film ET.
In fact, there isn't much Bob Harrow can't do on a BMX bike, so let's meet him now.
Bob, I think you call that a rollback 360, don't you?
That's a 720.
That was a 720. Now that's a freestyle stunt, and I think I'll be writing calling these stunts on BMX machines.
You can still call it a stunt, but more or less it's kind of originated into freestyle now.
And it's nothing to do really with the motor, that's the circuit, though,
because this is a development from it, isn't it?
This is a direct spin-off of bicycle motocross. It's just a different application.
Freestyle is more like free-form riding.
Now it looks very simple when you can do it. How much training?
It's an awful lot. That's the key, is trying to make it look simple.
It's just a lot of practice and things like that.
Now, apart from these stunts, I've seen you go up in the sky and turn around.
How on earth do you get the strength and the courage to go so high and make that first move?
Basically, it's just like anything. You walk before you run, you just try it slowly.
You just keep working your way up, and progressively you get your courage up,
and you just keep trying to go higher and higher.
Right. Now, are you a professional, or would you still call yourself a number?
No, I am a professional.
It's all your life now.
I've been doing this an awful long time. Actually, the freestyle thing is something that I started,
a friend and I started about in 1973 when the skateboard thing was happening.
We started riding our bicycles in skate parks.
Were you a skateboard star as well?
No, I did it as fun, but I was okay. I could do it. That's about it.
Do you see this as going on to be a big sport,
or is it going to be a flash in the pan like skateboarding was in Britain?
No, it's actually been going on 10 years in the US, and it's just growing.
It's been a slow, gradual pace uphill.
It hasn't been like the skateboarding boomer just boomed up and then dropped just as fast as it came.
And what about the accident aspect? I see you're well dressed up here.
You're almost like an American footballer.
Well, I think that helps out your confidence too.
Just wearing the right gear, it prevents injuries.
You can take a fall or not get hurt. That's part of the deal.
Actually, it's not really that dangerous in some sense.
What about yourself? Any serious injuries so far?
Skinned elbows and knees. I did hurt myself once. I dislocated my shoulder,
but that was just... I had been up all night. We arrived to do a show, and I was just tired.
I rode when I was tired. I wasn't awake.
Right, and you've got to be really warmed up.
True.
It's important.
True.
Now, let's have a look at your bike, Rob.
It looks to me as though it is a little bit special to the others we've been seeing.
It is a bit different. This one was made for myself. I did most of the design work on it.
It's just made a bit more heavy duty, you know, to handle the stresses of the freestyle riding.
And basically, that's some of the things that we've done to it.
It's just made a little more heavy duty.
So really, it's not a lot different to what the youngsters are riding here,
except it's more sort of finished.
That's it, exactly. It's just to my liking. This is how I set it up, how I like it.
It's not ultra light, but it does work well for me.
Bob is a real nice guy, and since carrying little ET on the front of his bike towards the moon,
he's become quite a celebrity and spends much of his time traveling the world giving freestyle
demonstrations. You remember the freestyle riding earlier? Now watch it again, Haro style,
and with expert commentary provided by Britain's number one, Tim Marsh.
Okay, now this is Bob Haro, one of the world's top freestyle riders,
and to start his freestyle exhibition, he's going to do a few warming up moves to start with,
and just be basic freestyle tricks. See there, he does a 360 spinner on the back wheel.
This is just real easy to learn tricks he's going to do to start with. That was just a regular rock
wall, and he's just going into a roll back 180 now. That's it, very smoothly executed.
Bob's just getting in sync with his bike before he gets onto the harder stuff later on in the
exercise. That was just a quite nicely executed kick turn there.
Another kick turn on the regular ramp. The two ramps there, the one he's just going up now is
a quarter pipe, which is very good for aerials and droppings, which you do from the top of the ramp,
and the other ramp is for doing spins on one-footed one-handed kick turns, and other basic ground
tricks. That was front wheel 180 slide, very, very difficult to do. Bob makes it look very,
very easy though. That's a one-footed kick turn. Bob's been involved in this sport since the very
start of it, making number plates on tour with the Schwinn factory team, and he's got more involved
as the years go on, and now runs his own product company, which as you can see by his apparel,
make gear, bicycles, number plates, helmet visors, and the rest of the racing apparel.
There we just have another simple kick turn on the quarter pipe there, and that's a roll back fakie.
Just a little 180 down the ramp. Bob's still getting warmed up at the moment,
and he'll be doing some more interesting freestyle tricks in a minute.
Okay, looks like he's going to do an aerial now. Yeah, that's probably a quarter pipe.
I see that a few people behind the ramp are holding it just so that Bob doesn't slide at all when he
goes up the ramp for the pressure he puts on there. There's a one-footed front wheel slide, nicely done,
as you can see over here in the back. Bob, I would think, would be quite nervous now because
it was only his second trip to England, and obviously he's out to impress the English
people with his demonstration, so quite a bit of pressure on him. A simple coaster wheelie there,
and moves into some hot banks.
Bob's using the coaster brakes, which is a pedal back brake, which he finds very, very useful in
his freestyle routine, because if you note when he rolls back, which we'll probably see in a minute,
he doesn't have to pedal back with the bike. He can just leave his pedals set where they are.
This is a drop in, and a front wheel wheelie. Even the best riders do have their little accidents,
and if you note, Bob is, you know, like you can see, one of the best riders in the world,
but he still does wear all the protective clothing, like the helmet and the elbow pads and the
waist pads, just in case he does have a little mishap. Bob might have lost a little bit of his
composure now, I don't really know, but that may have unnerved him a little bit. Just take him a
bit of time to get back into it again. No, but he's back on form with a one-handed one-footer
there on the trick lap, and another one-footer there on the quarter pipe.
Just a 180 fakie rock wall. Yeah, Bob, I think, may have lost a little bit of his composure from
that little accident. I think the pressure's on him at the moment with all the people watching him.
If you watch carefully though when he rides, Bob's very, very relaxed in his riding,
which enables him to be part of his bike when he's riding around. If you're tense and all
worked up, what happens is the bike will go one way, and your body being all stiff will make the
bike want to go the other way, and you end up wiping out or having a bit of an accident. So
the main, one of the main things to do when you're riding a BMX bike is to be very, very relaxed and
try and let the bike do what it wants to do and follow it when it's going around as opposed to
fighting it. There the coastal brake comes into action, there's the free wheels and didn't have
to pedal backwards there. It's a rather long demonstration. Bob gets kind of tired from some
tricks, so he'll do a few really, really hard tricks then settle off with a couple of easy
ones to get his strength back and then have another go. There's a front wheel holder on the top of the
trick ramp. Going out the back of the freestyle arena so he can get a good run up for the quarter
right ramp. As he comes in ready for another aerial, which he does quite nicely.
One-footed X up there, crossing his hands completely over and turning the handlebars
around 180 degrees, and another front wheel slider there with his foot on the saddle,
which isn't the easiest of things to do.
Went 360 there. Maybe Bob was trying for a 540, didn't make it and I think he just ended up putting
his front wheel on the top of that ramp and got out of it quite nicely actually.
He's running out of space here I think, Bob looks, yeah he has run out of space.
Not really the biggest of areas to do the demonstration in, but Bob's making very,
very good use of the area that he has got. As you can see, he will run out the back of it.
Perhaps he'll get it right this time.
Yeah, got it in just in time.
Obviously the crowd appreciates him what they're seeing.
A simple rock walk into a fakie with a pedal down 360 at the end of it.
That's the area from a different angle than we've seen before. You can actually see how high Bob
does get out of the top of the ramp. There's three or four feet now and another front wheel wheelie.
Not the easiest of things to do, quite a simple way to lose your front teeth actually if you're
not that good at it. But obviously Bob spent hours of practice doing freestyle and he's very
experienced at what he does. 360 there.
There's a kick turn on the course pipe.
And one foot with one hand on the trick ramp.
Nice one-handed slide there on the back wheel.
And trying to attempt a 540 on the ramp there, but not really into it. I should imagine Bob's
getting very very tired now. The pressure's been on him for a long time and he's been riding for
a long time as well. So he does it again now. It's very very important when you're doing
demonstrations or when you're riding your bike all the time is to concentrate all the time on what
you're doing because if for a minute you let your concentration lapse like Bob did at this,
the one before, you can make a mistake and not do the trick successfully. The second time to
concentrate is fully important. At the end of the day there was a shock waiting for Andy Ruffle
wearing number one and in the main he lost to Tony Slater who took the top prize in the 16 years age
group. Even the best can lose or through the eyes of Tony Slater perhaps the best one.
Andy Ruffle and Tony Slater's going to win the 16th for Andy Ruffle.
No one now believes that BMX racing is a craze like skateboarding certainly was. In the United
States it's already over 10 years old. In Britain a million bikes have been sold in four years
and waiting in the wings are undiscovered champions who will one day perhaps be every bit as good
as Tim March is here.
you