A BMXRacingHistory.com preview · hosted on Legend Bike Co
ABA — American Bicycle Association
This thing started in a Chandler, Arizona parking lot in 1977, and by the time it was done it owned the whole sport. That's the ABA. Two guys with an idea about how to run a race day, and forty-odd years later the format they invented is what they use at the Olympics.
I'll lay the ABA's story out straight. Where the record's contested, I'll tell you that too.
Where it came from
Back in the mid-1970s there were two sanctions that mattered. The NBA, started by Ernie Alexander in 1973, had California and most of the West. The NBL, started by George Esser out of Florida in 1974, had the East. National in name, sure. But each one really only owned a coast. And Arizona sat right in the middle — full tracks in Phoenix, Tucson, and Chandler, and nobody running them the operators and the parents actually trusted.
Two guys saw that hole. Merl Mennenga ran a BMX track. Gene Roden promoted races. They sat down, worked out a structure, and on October 13, 1977 they incorporated the American Bicycle Association out of Chandler. The Chandler track became ABA Track 001. The first ABA-sanctioned race actually ran a little before that, September 24, 1977, over at Manzanita Raceway in Tucson — before the paperwork was even filed.
The first national: Azusa, February 1978
The ABA's first national landed in Azusa, California in February 1978. Thirty-five tracks showed up, three thousand racers. And the choice of Azusa said something, if you knew where to look. That's home turf for Richard Long's Azusa Bicycles, the shop that turned into GT a year later. Right in the NBA's backyard.
The first ABA Grand National ran December 9, 1978 in Las Vegas. And the Grandnationals idea was dead simple from day one. One race, end of the season, winner takes all. The NBL chased points all year long to crown its champ. The ABA put the whole thing on one weekend.
The transfer system
The biggest thing the ABA ever gave BMX wasn't a Grand National. It wasn't a tracks program either. It was a way of running the actual race day.
Here's how it worked before. You ran a total-points deal. You entered your class, raced three motos in the morning, piled up points, and then you waited. Sometimes for hours. Standing around figuring out if you even made the main.
The ABA threw that out and brought in the transfer system. Ride your moto. Finish high enough, you transfer up — quarter, semi, main. Don't, you're done. You can see the brackets. The math is easy. And the day actually moves.
The reason the ABA gave was a "need for fairness and allowing for the fortunes of luck." One mechanical, one bad gate, and you weren't out of it. Track operators loved it because it kept the program on the clock.
Not everybody was sold. Greg Hill went after the ABA's pro points and format calls out loud through the early '80s, and after the 1982 season the ABA moved the pros onto the same transfer format the amateurs already ran, starting in 1983.
And it stuck. It's still how BMX runs in this country, and it's how they run it at the Olympics.
Growing into the biggest sanction in the country
By 1979 — two years in — the ABA had already passed the NBA to become the biggest BMX sanction in the country. By the start of 1981 the NBA had run its last independent Grandnationals down in Long Beach.
The early '80s weren't all smooth, though. Insurance was killing everybody. The ABA's own paper, ABA Action, couldn't pull enough advertisers, so in 1982 they launched a real newsstand magazine, Bicycles and Dirt, with Stu Thomsen on the first cover. It bled money. They shut it down with the September 1984 issue.
Then on March 5, 1985, Mennenga sold the ABA to track operators Bernie Anderson and Jamie Vargas for $250,000 and walked. Walt Ehnat got named president. The liabilities ran $700,000 to $750,000, most of it from Bicycles and Dirt. The new owners filed Chapter 11 on November 25, 1985. Clayton John came in to replace Ehnat and ran the ABA for the next twenty-plus years. The court signed off on the reorganization September 24, 1987. And the 1988 Grand National in Oklahoma City — 470 pro entries — got called the biggest BMX race in history up to that point.
Living with the NBL
From the late '70s all the way to 2011, the ABA and the NBL ran side by side as the two sanctions that survived. Now and then they worked together. Most of the time they were going at each other.
And they were built different, too. The NBL was a non-profit, run through a Competition Congress where the member tracks got to vote on the rules. The ABA was a for-profit, run top-down out of Arizona. That non-profit setup mattered down the line — in 1997 it's what made the NBL the USA Cycling affiliate that put BMX on the road to the Olympics.
Through the '90s and 2000s both of them kept building. Greg Hill, Stu Thomsen, Pete Loncarevich, Eric Rupe, Richie Anderson, Gary Ellis, Brian Foster — they all raced both circuits. Loncarevich took the ABA No. 1 Pro plate four times: 1984, 1986, 1991, 1992. And the factory teams were stacked with riders on CW, Redline, GT, Haro, Mongoose, and Torker.
The Lévêque controversy: 1995
On November 26, 1995, France's Christophe Lévêque closed out the ABA season with the most points in the pro class. By the standings, the No. 1 Pro plate for 1996 was his. He didn't get it. There was a clause in the ABA rulebook back then that said the No. 1 Pro had to be a U.S. citizen. Lévêque wasn't, so he didn't get the title or the car that came with it. Gary Ellis finished behind him in points and got handed the plate.
They changed the citizenship rule the next season. And Lévêque went out and won the ABA National No. 1 Pro title outright in 1998 and 1999, back to back — the first non-American pro champion the sanction ever put its name to.
The Olympic on-ramp
By the early 2000s BMX was headed for the Olympics. The IBMXF got folded into the UCI back in 1993. USA Cycling picked the NBL as its U.S. affiliate in 1997. So when U.S. racers grabbed three medals at Beijing in 2008, most of them had done their amateur years on ABA. And USA Cycling and the Olympic Committee both ended up working with the ABA to build the amateur and elite training tracks — didn't matter which sanction held the affiliate paper.
The 2011 merger
By 2011 the NBL was in financial trouble. The ABA came to them with an offer. The NBL board approved a letter of agreement on May 17, 2011. The final papers got signed June 18. The whole thing was rebranded USA BMX, run out of the ABA's existing operation in Arizona, with Bernie Anderson staying on as chairman. At the merger the ABA had something like 60,000 members and 250 tracks; the NBL had around 10,000 members and 100 tracks. Put together, that was over 350 tracks and more than 70,000 members.
What ABA is today
The ABA is the legal and operating company that became USA BMX. In 2022 USA BMX opened a new headquarters and event campus in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and that's where the Grands have run ever since. Every USA BMX rulebook still carries the format the ABA cooked up. The transfer system runs the program from a local Tuesday-night points race all the way to the World Cup heats at the Olympics. The Grandnationals — one race, end of year, winner takes all — is still the big one. And the track-numbering system that kicked off with Chandler as Track 001 still numbers USA BMX tracks to this day.
Why this matters to Legend Bike Co.
Pete Loncarevich, one of the three of us who started Legend Bike Co., won the ABA No. 1 Pro plate four times — 1984, 1986, 1991, 1992. Scot Breithaupt, the godfather of the sport and the man who taught me the trade at SE Racing in 1981, came up through the NBA and BUMS but raced ABA nationals right through the early '80s. I raced ABA myself. I vendored TECH Racing Pants at ABA nationals, and I sponsored riders on the ABA pro and amateur circuits for decades. This sanction's history is the history Legend Bike Co. is built on.
Sources
Wikipedia, "American Bicycle Association" — drawing on Bicycle Motocross News (1977), Bicycle Motocross Action (1979, 1980), Super BMX & Freestyle (1986, 1988), BMX Plus! (1983, 1985, 1988, 1989), American BMXer (1986).
USA BMX official history. BMX Canada official history. Wikipedia, "National Bicycle League," "National Bicycle Association," "Christophe Lévêque," "Gary Ellis," and "BMX racing."
Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, "ABA, NBL Join Forces for BMX Racing," June 25, 2011, and "Under One Banner BMX May See New Heyday," August 1, 2011.
ESPN, "BMX pros bid farewell to the NBL following the 2011 NBL Grands." BMXNews.com timeline. bmxultra.com — interviews including Scot Breithaupt's recollections.
Where sources conflict on the ABA's founding date — Wikipedia lists August 30, 1977 and a first sanctioned race on September 24, 1977; USA BMX's own history and the Legend Bike Co. History of BMX page use October 13, 1977 — we've followed the date used by USA BMX itself.