Bicycle Motocross News — The Magazine That Started BMX, Published by Elaine Holt (1974 to the Late 1970s)

A BMX history chapter, told by Bill Ryan · hosted on Legend Bike Co

Before BMX Action, before BMX Plus!, before any of the magazines that raised guys like me, there was a woman in Orange, California running a paper called Bicycle Motocross News. Her name was Elaine Holt, and depending on who you ask, she either named this sport or came about as close as anybody ever will. I never held an issue of hers — she'd already sold newsstand space to the next generation of magazines by the time I got to a track — but everybody who came up ahead of me did. Scot Breithaupt was in her first issue. Bob Osborn worked for her before he ever started BMX Action. Trace the family tree of every BMX magazine that ever ran, and hers is the trunk.

Where it came from

Elaine Holt got into BMX through her husband, Ben Holt, who'd introduced one of the first plastic gas tanks for BMX bikes — the little motorcycle-style tank kids stuck on their top tubes to look like a real moto bike. Elaine saw what was building across Southern California's dirt lots and did what nobody else had done yet: she started a magazine for it. Bicycle Motocross News ran out of Westword Publications, her own shop in Orange, California, with the first issue hitting bike shops in June 1974.

Most of the sport's own histories — including the one on our own hub page — have dated the launch to 1973. The magazines themselves say otherwise. Every surviving early issue is dated 1974, starting with Volume 1, Number 1 in June of that year, and both the USA BMX and ABA Hall of Fame bios tie her induction to that same June 1974 start. We're going with what's printed on the cover.

What was in the first issue

Volume 1, Number 1 came out in June 1974 with racer R.L. Osborn — running number 99 — on the cover, and an interview with a Long Beach kid who'd already started his own outlaw racing club a few years earlier: Scot Breithaupt. That first issue also listed four tracks running BMX at the time: Palms Park, Escape Country, BUMS, and Dominguez Park.

A month later, issue two put Breithaupt back on the cover, this time next to Brian Ramocinski, testing Yamaha's new entry into the sport — the roughly 19-kilogram steel Yamaha Moto-Bike. Between those first two issues, Holt had already covered the two things that would define BMX media for the next fifteen years: the riders, and the hardware.

The woman who named the sport, or came close

The American Bicycle Association's Hall of Fame credits Holt with coining the term "BMX" itself — short for Bicycle Motocross, the name of her own magazine. Whether she was the very first person to say it out loud or not, she's the one who put it on a masthead and mailed it to bike shops across the country every month. She covered races up and down California, and by November 1975 she was one of the people who helped bring riders out to the first BMX Grands at Randall Ranch in Newhall, California — an early shot at crowning a real national champion, years before any of the three-letter sanctions had that kind of reach. That same year her magazine also ran an interview with Ernie Alexander, who'd go on to found the NBA, BMX's first national sanctioning body.

The Osborns cut their teeth here

Before Bob Osborn ever started BMX Action, he was one of Holt's contributors — writing and shooting for Bicycle Motocross News alongside his own kids. His son R.L. Osborn joined the magazine's first-ever BMX test team at age 11, riding for it from late 1975 into late 1976. His daughter Windy was already behind a camera for Holt by January 1975, at just 14 years old — years before she became one of the best-known photographers in BMX. When BMX Action launched in December 1976, a lot of what made it work — the test team, the family operation, the access to riders — had already been worked out first at Bicycle Motocross News.

Tricks were already showing up in the pages

Freestyle wasn't its own category yet in the mid-1970s, but the moves were already there. A 1975 issue of Bicycle Motocross News carried what's believed to be the first documented "helicopter" — a full 360-degree spin — landed by a young Stu Thomsen. Nobody was calling it freestyle yet. It was just a kid doing something nobody had seen on a bicycle before, in a magazine that happened to be there to catch it.

What happened to it

The trail runs out sometime after 1978. The last issue we can confirm from the surviving archive is dated March 1978. Whether Holt sold the title, folded it, or just stopped running it isn't something we could pin down from a source we'd stand behind — see the box below. What's certain is that by the time BMX Action and then BMX Plus! took over the newsstand in the late 1970s, Bicycle Motocross News was gone. In 2007, the ABA inducted Elaine Holt into its BMX Hall of Fame for building the paper that got the sport talked about in the first place.

Related Legend Bike Co. chapters

• The History of BMX (1970-1995)
• BMX Action Magazine · Bob Osborn · R.L. Osborn
• Scot Breithaupt · Stu Thomsen
• Ernie Alexander · The NBA · BUMS

Sources

23mag.com — Bicycle Motocross News archive, 1974-1975 ("Publisher: Westword publications, Orange, California. (Elaine Holt)"; Volume 1 No.1 June 1974 cover and contents; Volume 1 No.2 July 1974 Yamaha Moto-Bike test; R.L. Osborn's start on the magazine's test team at age 11, late 1975 to late 1976; Windy Osborn shooting photos at age 14 by the January 1975 issue) and 1976-1978 archive (last confirmed issue, March 1978). USA BMX Hall of Fame — Elaine Holt bio (Ben Holt's plastic gas tank, first BMX publication launched June 1974, credited with coining "BMX"). ABA BMX Hall of Fame 2007 inductee list, republished at fatbmx.com (Holt's induction; Dennis Dain as one of her original bike testers). bmxmuseum.com — 1974 Redline Squareback bike profile (Bob and Windy Osborn as Holt's staff; first documented "helicopter" by Stu Thomsen). bmxsociety.com community forum, "I Found Elaine Holt Today!" thread (Holt's role bringing riders to the first BMX Grands, November 22, 1975, Randall Ranch, Newhall, California; accessed via search summary, direct page fetch unavailable at research time). oldschoolmags.com — checked directly for a Bicycle Motocross News archive; the magazine is not among its scanned titles (BMX Action, BMX Plus!, Super BMX, Freestylin', and GO only), so 23mag.com's dedicated archive was used instead for the period-magazine record. Legend Bike Co.'s own History of BMX and BMX Action Magazine chapters (Osborn family history, the near-sale to Osborn in 1976).