Andy Zirzow

The Riverside Amateur Who Rode for RRS, Then CW BMX

A Legend Bike Co. rider page · primary sources: bmxmuseum.com (“RRS Racing Chronicles”) and the Be Perfect Foundation

At a glance

Scene Riverside, California
Level Amateur in 1979, turned pro at age 16 in the early 1980s
Teams RRS Racing (Riverside Schwinn), then CW BMX (Custom Works)
Known for Leaving RRS for CW BMX in 1979 right before a near-identical handlebar design hit the market; later a national-level amateur mountain bike racer and chiropractor

Andy Zirzow's BMX story starts in a Riverside bike shop, not a magazine spread, which is exactly why most of it never made it into print. He rode as an amateur for a small shop-team called RRS Racing, moved to a bigger California brand as a teenager, turned pro at 16, and quietly built one of the more unusual second acts in early BMX — a national-caliber mountain bike racer and, later, a chiropractor. His story resurfaced publicly only because of a serious accident decades after he last raced BMX.

Riverside Schwinn's Amateur Team

Riverside Schwinn was a bike shop bought by the Kundig family in the late 1960s and later run day to day by Craig Kundig and his friend Lance Gamma, who built an amateur race team around it called RRS Racing. Gamma's own published account on bmxmuseum.com names the riders on that team through the late 1970s: Kirk Claveau, his brother Joe, Keith Peel, Kevin McNeal, Mike Miranda, and Andy Zirzow, described in the account as “a young 15 year old amateur BMX racer from Riverside.” RRS built its own frame chassis and tuned bikes for national-caliber local riders, working with fabricators including a young Gary Turner — later of GT Bicycles — before RRS developed its own in-house geometry.

A Handlebar, and a Move to CW BMX

In the summer of 1979, according to Gamma's account, RRS designed a new handlebar meant to follow the Redline V-bar: a single continuous piece combining the grip and crossbar, 7/8-inch diameter, straight through the middle. Before RRS brought it to market, Zirzow left the RRS squad to ride for CW BMX, the company built by Roger Worsham — another Southern California shop owner turned manufacturer. About two weeks after Zirzow's move, Gamma writes, a very similar bar appeared under the CW name and went on to become one of the best-selling BMX handlebars ever made, with Huffy alone producing it by the millions. Gamma calls it “a painful lesson” for RRS. That's one side of the story, told more than three decades later by the RRS co-owner who lived it — it isn't independently corroborated by CW's side or by Zirzow himself, and this page repeats it as his account, not as settled fact.

Coast Wheels and a Family Name in SoCal BMX

Coast Wheels, a small BMX brand out of Yorba Linda, California, predated CW BMX and was sold to the Zirzow family in 1980, according to bmxmuseum.com's catalog records for the brand. That places the Zirzow name on both sides of the pipeline that built a lot of early Southern California BMX brands — amateur racer on a shop team one year, family name on a manufacturer's letterhead the next — though this page stops short of confirming the exact family relationship beyond the shared name, place, and era.

Turning Pro, and Life After BMX

According to a biography published by the Be Perfect Foundation, Andy Zirzow turned pro as a BMX rider at age 16 and won several national events in the 1980s. He later moved into amateur mountain bike racing, winning national dual-slalom titles, including the 40-49 age class in 2015 at age 49. Off the bike, he built a career as a chiropractor practicing in the Riverside and Menifee, California area — the same region where he raced as a teenager. In February 2017, Zirzow sustained a C6/C7 spinal cord injury in a mountain biking accident at Sycamore Canyon Park in Riverside, leaving him with partial paralysis. His recovery has since been documented publicly through the Be Perfect Foundation, the High Fives Foundation, and a GoFundMe campaign organized by his family toward adaptive handcycling equipment.

Where the public record runs thin

Zirzow's specific national event wins, the exact years he rode for RRS and CW, and any period magazine coverage of him under BMX Action or Bicycle Motocross News are not documented in the archives checked for this page — oldschoolmags.com, bmxsociety.com, 23mag.com, and the USA BMX Hall of Fame, where he does not appear. The RRS-to-CW handlebar story comes from one side of that account, told decades later by a former RRS co-owner; no independent corroboration from Zirzow or from CW's side turned up in this research.

Where Andy Zirzow fits in the bigger story

Andy Zirzow's story runs through Riverside's own shop-team scene rather than the Torrance BMX Action circle covered elsewhere on this site — one more entry in Southern California's early patchwork of bike shops, amateur teams, and homegrown parts brands that built the sport before it had a rulebook. The bigger arc is in our History of BMX series.

Sources

bmxmuseum.com, “RRS Racing Chronicles” (BMX Bikes / R / RRS Racing), a firsthand account published by former RRS co-owner Lance Gamma — the RRS amateur team roster, the 1979 handlebar design, and Andy Zirzow's move to CW BMX. bmxmuseum.com catalog listings for Coast Wheels — the brand's sale to the Zirzow family in 1980. Be Perfect Foundation, “Andrew Zirzow” profile — his BMX pro career, national wins, and mountain bike racing record. High Fives Foundation, “Andy Zirzow” athlete profile, and GoFundMe, “Help Andy Get Back on a Bike Again” (organized by Meghann Adams for Jennifer McNeil Zirzow, 2018) — his 2017 injury and recovery. oldschoolmags.com, bmxsociety.com, 23mag.com, and the USA BMX Hall of Fame were checked for independent period coverage; none returned results beyond the sources above.