Azusa BMX: Rich Long's Track, Where the ABA Went National
BMX Racing History · Track File · Legend Bike Co
Azusa BMX: Rich Long's Track, Where the ABA Went National
Most tracks earn their place from who showed up to race. Azusa earned its place from what got started there. February 1978: the American Bicycle Association was barely a few months old, founded by a couple of guys out of Arizona, and they put their very first national on a dirt track in the San Gabriel Valley — Richard Long's track. A year after that, Long would help start GT Bicycles. So this one strip of dirt out near Azusa sits at the front end of two stories at once. The biggest sanction the sport ever built, and the biggest brand. Both trace back here.
The Promoter
Rich Long owned Anaheim Cycles and ran the Azusa track himself. Shop owner all week, track operator come race day. He was already moving Gary Turner's hand-welded frames across the counter, and in 1979 the two of them made it official and incorporated GT Bicycles. The track had a way of pulling kids into the sport for good. Chris Moeller — the guy who'd go on to start S&M Bikes — still talks about bagging number plates for Rich Long as one of the first real jobs BMX ever handed him.
February 1978
The ABA was three months old when it hauled its first national out to Long's track. February 1978. Think about what that took. A brand-new Arizona sanction, planting its flag on California dirt — and in those days that was somebody else's backyard. It worked anyway. The same stretch brought the first real ABA pro purse, a thousand dollars, and in 1978 that was serious money to race for. Inside a few years the ABA was the biggest sanction in the country. When people tell that growth story, Azusa is where the clock starts.
The Track
Ask anyone who rode the original layout off Azusa Canyon Road and they'll walk you through it: down the start hill into a left-hand sweeper, a quarter berm, a straight loaded with doubles, a 180 berm, then speed bumps to the line. By 1983 and 1984, the way riders remember it, there were two tracks out there side by side — ABA on the south end, NBL on the north — and the newer one was the better one. Some folks even put it in the 1983 film Uncommon Valor. That two-track detail and the movie bit are rider recollection, so we hold them loosely until period coverage backs them up. A track researcher digging through old photos and historic aerials puts the starting line close to where Mirador Drive runs today.
The End of the Long Era
Riders remember the original track shutting down around 1982, with racing carrying on nearby into 1983 and 1984. For a long time this page left it there — no documented reason, just rider memory of something ending. Thanks to someone who wrote in, we can finally say more about what actually happened next. Rich Long, meanwhile, went on to build GT into the biggest BMX company on the planet before he passed in 1996. The whole GT story is Chapter 6.
The People Who Ran It Wrote In
In 2026, Thomas Ainsworth — one of Russ and Lauren's three kids — wrote in through the library's contact page. His family's account lines up with the rider memory of a 1982 shutdown, but the story behind it isn't a closure. It's a sale.
By the early 1980s Rich Long was stretched across his shops and GT, and it was Rhonda Long, his wife, who kept Azusa running day to day. In 1982 the Longs sold the track to Russell and Lauren Ainsworth, who bought in alongside co-owners Jan and Dave Wilson. The original layout kept running for a short stretch under the new owners, then the group opened the redesign up to the neighborhood — a local contest inviting anyone nearby to submit a new track design. The Wilsons' son, David Wilson, won it. The track shut down around the summer of 1982 to rebuild to his design — longer than the original, but built to keep several of its familiar features.
The Wilsons stepped away from the business after a couple of years, and Russ and Lauren ran Azusa on their own through the end of 1987. They then passed the track to Bill Sarver and a co-owner whose name has been lost to memory over the decades. Early in 1988 the Ainsworth family relocated to East Tennessee, where the ABA built them a track of their own — one that later went on to host the Dixieland Nationals.
One more thing worth keeping on the record: Thomas's sister Cyndi raced for Team Diamond Back, riding alongside teammates like Eddy King and Matt Hadan, plus Harry Leary, Doug Davis, Lisa Terry, Sean Allston, and Justin Green.
One more piece from Thomas's account: the Azusa locals rode for the local bike-shop team S&K, which carried a co-factory sponsorship from Free Agent. The person on that side the Azusa kids knew was Yvonne Shoup — Thomas remembered her only as "Helen," and Bill Ryan confirmed the name firsthand in 2026.
Thomas wrote back with more, and he opened the second letter with the same care he opened the first: "Please have room for revision as I was only a young kid." Take what follows in that spirit, same as the account above.
Before his parents ever bought the track, his dad was already part of it — helping the Longs out in the infield whenever he could, one more thread in how much of early Azusa ran on the community around it.
Race day had a rhythm under Rich Long. Sunday mornings belonged to Monrovia, Darrel Foster's track; Sunday evenings belonged to Azusa. Tom Kocen ran the gate at Azusa — starting back in the hand-operated days and carrying through when automatic gates came in — working alongside his wife Cindy. Linda Dorsey announced, alongside S&K team manager Tim Bastido, and the Fosters were part of the same circle of families that kept the tracks running.
When Monrovia closed, a track called Pipeline opened around the Chino area, run by a man Thomas knew as Stan and sharing its site with a skatepark — later identified, per the record, as Stan Hoffman, the family that owned Pipeline. Pipeline picked up the Sunday-morning slot Monrovia had held; Azusa kept the evening; the two tracks promoted each other rather than competing for the same riders. As Thomas remembers the week filling in: Azusa raced Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings, plus Sunday evening; Pipeline raced Tuesday and Thursday, plus Sunday mornings — "racing pretty much every day of the week."
A few days later Thomas sent a third letter, this time picking apart the local scene around Azusa — the shops that kept the track and its racers running, and the names he remembers lining up at the gate. Bill Ryan added a few pieces of his own along the way, credited here as his.
The track had its own belt of shops nearby. Ralph's Bicycles was one — run by Ralph and his wife Karen. Bill Ryan knew Ralph firsthand: "Big Daddy Ralph was truly one of a kind." (Ralph's full history, including the mobile trackside shop that made the name statewide, is in The Bike Shops That Made BMX.) Rounding out the neighborhood: Norm's Bicycle, run by Norm Massey; El Monte Cycle, run by Dennis; and S&K, run by Ratcliffe — the same shop the Azusa locals rode for, with the Free Agent co-factory sponsorship noted above.
Thomas also ran through the names he still remembers lining up at Azusa. Mark Kotsay — today the Oakland Athletics manager — was an Azusa local and a big competitor at Thomas's age. Scott Felt is the only one of the bunch Thomas knows is still active in BMX today. Also on the list: In-hee Lee, Ryan Crupi, Matt Hadan, Erik Kocen, Brandon Allen, Jason Palmer, Danny and Deena Corbett, and Bob Shaw and his two sons.
A fourth letter came in that evening, this one about Matt Hadan specifically — Thomas flagged him as a good source for anyone with more Azusa questions. Bill Ryan wrote back with a couple of firsthand pieces of his own.
Matt Hadan's father, Don Hadan, was among those who helped with track operations at Azusa. And with Azusa local Matt Hadan aboard, S&K became — as Thomas recalls it — a two-time No. 1 ABA Bike Shop Team in the country.
Bill Ryan also added a memory tied to another name on that roll call: Brandon Allen's dad used to drive his Jaguar down to La Palma Cycle Center so Bill could lace up Brandon's wheels.
One thread is still loose: Thomas is trying to place the name of the local professional photographer who toured nationally with the Azusa crew back then. If that's you, or you know who it was, the invitation below is for you too.
What we still don't know: the ownership and closure questions this page used to leave open — who bought the track and when, why it shut down in 1982, and what came after — are now answered by Thomas Ainsworth's firsthand account above. We're treating it as exactly that: one family's recollection, not an independently documented record. What's still genuinely open is the track's final closure — we don't know what happened to Azusa after Bill Sarver took it over, or the name of his co-owner.
This section exists because someone wrote in. Raced Azusa under the Longs, the Ainsworths, the Wilsons, or Bill Sarver? Got photos of any era of the track, know Sarver's co-owner, or remember the name of the local pro photographer who toured nationally with the Azusa crew? Legend Bike Co wants to hear from you — this page grows as the people who were there fill in the record.
Sources: BMX News, "A Partial History of the Sport of BMX Racing" (Mike Carruth) — first ABA national, February 1978; University of BMX (Gerrit Does) — the $1,000 ABA pro purse; bmxmuseum.com forums — track layout, two-track era, location reconstruction from period photos and aerials (rider recollections, marked as such); bmxweekly.com Chris Moeller interview — bagging plates for Rich Long. Richard Long's ownership of Anaheim Cycles and his role running the Azusa track confirmed firsthand by Bill Ryan. The 1982 ownership sale to the Ainsworth and Wilson families, the design contest, the 1987 handoff to Bill Sarver, and the family's move to Tennessee are per Thomas Ainsworth, whose parents co-owned the track from 1982; account received 2026 through the Legend Bike Co contact page. The identification of Yvonne Shoup as the Free Agent contact the Azusa/S&K locals knew is per Thomas Ainsworth's account, with the name confirmed by Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026. His father's pre-purchase help with the Longs in the infield, the Sunday-morning/Sunday-evening split between Monrovia and Azusa, the Azusa gate and announcing crew (Tom and Cindy Kocen, Linda Dorsey, Tim Bastido), the Fosters, and the weekly race schedule across Azusa and Pipeline are per Thomas Ainsworth's second letter, 2026. The identification of Pipeline's operator as Stan Hoffman is per Legend Bike Co's Pipeline BMX page, sourced there to the Skateboarding Hall of Fame and period BMX Plus! coverage. The San Gabriel Valley shops around Azusa — Ralph's Bicycles, Norm's Bicycle, El Monte Cycle, and S&K — and the roll call of Azusa-era locals are per Thomas Ainsworth's third letter, with additions from Bill Ryan, 2026. Don Hadan's role in track operations, the S&K two-time No. 1 ABA Bike Shop Team detail, and Brandon Allen's wheels being laced at La Palma Cycle Center are per Thomas Ainsworth's fourth letter, with additions from Bill Ryan, 2026.