A Legend Bike Co. rider history page. Heavy first-hand record on bobharo.com, oldschoolmags.com, and bmxsociety.com; cross-checked against Wikipedia, the official Haro Bikes history, 23mag.com, theharofreestyler.com, DIG BMX, BMX Weekly, and the period BMX press.

Bob Haro

"The Godfather of Freestyle" · born June 29, 1958, Pasadena, California · ABA BMX Hall of Fame, 1987

At a glance

Born
June 29, 1958, Pasadena, California. Raised in San Diego. The Haro surname comes from the town of Haro in Spain's La Rioja region.

Nicknames
"The Godfather of Freestyle" · "The Godfather of BMX Freestyle"

Known for
Founder of Haro Designs / Haro Bikes · Co-founder of the BMX Action Trick Team with R.L. Osborn, 1979–1980 · Designed the 1982 Haro Freestyler — the first frame and fork ever built specifically for freestyle — manufactured for him at Torker · BMX Action magazine staff artist starting 1977 · Stunt rider in the BMX chase scene in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) · Choreographed the bike-and-dove sequence at the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony

Major honors
ABA BMX Hall of Fame, 1987 · Designer of the first freestyle-specific frame and fork (1982 Haro Freestyler) · Founder of the first dedicated freestyle bike company (Haro Designs, 1978) · Co-founder of the first BMX trick team · Author of the 1983 instructional book Freestyle Moves · His September 1978 Rock Walk is the earliest documented BMX flatland trick

Active years on a bike
Approximately 1976–1984. Stopped riding after four knee surgeries in 1984. Still on a bike for demos and events today; runs bobharo.com as his current design and product home.

Bob Haro is the one BMX rider you can credibly call the founder of a sport. Other riders started teams, designed frames, signed sponsors, won titles. Bob Haro did the harder thing — he took something that didn't exist as a discipline and built every piece of it from scratch. The art that made BMX look like its own thing in print. The trick team that proved riders would pay to watch tricks. The bike built to take the punishment that tricks put on a frame. The company that sold the bike. The tour that brought it to towns that had never seen any of it. The movie scene that put BMX in front of every kid in America. He was 23 years old when the 1982 Freestyler launched. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame at 29.

Pasadena to San Diego — motocross trophies and a brother's bike

Bob Haro was born June 29, 1958 in Pasadena, California, and raised in San Diego. He grew up the oldest of four kids and got into racing the way most California kids of his generation did: motocross first, bicycles second. Through his sophomore year in high school he raced motocross — his father bought him a Honda 100, he stripped it down and ran motocross events, and he had over 50 motocross trophies by 1975. When the money for motorcycle racing ran out, he started racing BMX around 1976 on his brother's bike.

Spring Valley, 1976 — the first Factory Plates

In 1976, Bob started making custom number plates for racers at the San Diego tracks. The early ones were straightforward: he'd take a blank Preston Petty motocross plate — the unbreakable plastic plates that were standard in motocross at the time — and stick hand-cut sheet vinyl numbers and graphics onto them. When demand grew, he started molding his own plates on his mother's kitchen stove. The whole operation ran out of his parents' house.

In the summer of 1977, his cartoons and illustrations — which he had been mailing to BMX Action magazine on spec — caught the eye of BMX Action publisher Bob Osborn. Osborn brought Bob Haro in as Wizard Publications' staff artist. Bob was 19.

August 1978 — the founding ad

The official Haro founding date is August 1978. That month, BMX Action ran a small black-and-white feature in its Products column for "Haro's Factory Plates" — $6 each, shipping included. By the May 1979 issue, the cover of BMX Action showed five of the six pros pictured running Haro Factory Plates. Within months he was the de facto number-plate brand of BMX.

Bob's own line about that ad: "The demand from the first ad in BMXA was enormous, and from it, my company was born."

The Rock Walk, the BMX Action Trick Team, and the start of freestyle

While Bob was selling plates and drawing for BMX Action, he was also riding — but not racing. He and his neighborhood friend John Swanguen had been riding the smooth concrete bowls at Skate Heaven Skate Park in San Diego, carrying lines from skateboarding over onto BMX bikes. In September 1978, Bob Osborn shot a photo of Bob Haro doing what Haro called a Rock Walk in a schoolyard near the BMX Action offices in Torrance. That photo is cited as the first documented BMX flatland trick.

In 1979, R.L. Osborn and Bob Haro — the publisher's son and the magazine's staff artist, both already messing around with tricks — started practicing together in earnest. They called themselves the BMX Action Trick Team. Their first public show was at the ABA Winternationals in February 1980, in Chandler, Arizona. That date is the one most people use as the start of organized BMX freestyle.

In early 1981, Bob left the trick team to focus on his own brand. R.L. brought in BMX Action test rider Mike Buff as his new partner; the BMX Action Trick Team continued under R.L. through 1985.

Summer 1981 — the first Haro Freestyle Tour

The next step was a national tour. Bob teamed up with Bob Morales — a fellow rider with sharp ramp skills — and Bob's younger brother Ron. The three of them loaded into a brightly painted Dodge Ram van with a portable plexiglass quarterpipe ramp in the back and rolled out of Torrance in June 1981. Vans, Oakley, and Off Shore Surf apparel sponsored the run. Eighteen thousand miles, three months, coast to coast and back.

The long drives gave Bob and Bob Morales hours of time to talk through one specific problem. Every freestyle rider was breaking race frames. Race bikes were built for a 30-second sprint on a dirt track. Tricks demanded a totally different bike. By the time the Dodge rolled back into Torrance in September 1981, Bob had the bike sketched in his head.

Fall 1981 — Bob takes the Freestyler to Torker

Bob's frame sponsor at the time was Torker, in Fullerton, California. In the fall of 1981, Bob walked his sketches and his specs into the Torker offices. Torker said yes. Torker built a prototype for Bob and a second for Bob Morales. The two of them rode the prototypes in San Diego-area skateparks through the winter, tuning the geometry. By spring 1982 the design was locked.

The Haro Freestyler launched in summer 1982. Chrome plated, with a graphic package Bob designed himself. The first frame and fork ever built specifically for BMX freestyle. Original Torker-built Freestylers carry serial numbers ending in "F."

Before the Freestyler, you could ride freestyle on whatever race bike you had until it cracked. After the Freestyler, freestyle had its own bike. The other brands followed within two years — GT launched the Performer (designed for Eddie Fiola), Hutch, Redline, and others all launched freestyle-specific frames. The discipline went from a sideshow inside BMX racing to its own market with its own equipment. That whole shift starts with the 1982 Haro Freestyler.

1982 — five days on the set of E.T.

That same year, Steven Spielberg was finishing E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The film's climactic chase scene needed BMX riders. Bob was hired as a stunt rider and spent five days on the set, doubling for the kids in the chase. The film released June 11, 1982, became the highest-grossing movie of the year, and put a generation of kids on BMX bikes. The chase scene is one of the most-watched pieces of BMX riding ever filmed.

1984 — the next generation: Master, Sport, and Mike Dominguez

By 1984 the company was sourcing its own frame production — the Torker-built Freestyler era ended in 1983 — and launched two of the most important freestyle frames ever built: the Haro Master (Bob's flatland-focused frame) and the Haro Sport, the first signature freestyle bike, designed for and ridden by 14-year-old vert prodigy Mike Dominguez. The team kept growing through the mid-1980s — Dennis McCoy, Ron Wilkerson, Brian Blyther, Dave Nourie, Joe Johnson, Rick Moliterno. A teenager named Mat Hoffman later did his first 900 on a Haro Sport.

Bob himself stopped riding in 1984 after four knee surgeries. He stayed on at Haro as the design and creative lead, but the riding side of his life was over.

1986–1987 — the sale to West Coast Cycle, and the Hall of Fame

In 1986–87, Bob sold Haro Designs to West Coast Cycle. He stayed on at the company under contract for several years afterward as a designer and brand voice. In 1987, the American Bicycle Association inducted him into the ABA BMX Hall of Fame. He was 29 years old.

1993 to today — Haro Design, Axio, and a second career

In 1993, Bob founded Haro Design, Inc. — a design and branding firm. Client list: Red Bull, Vans, Oakley, Nike, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Ducati Motorcycles. He also started his own performance-luggage brand, Axio, which made tech and power-sports cases. He grew Axio and sold it in 2009.

In 2008 and 2012, he served as spokesperson and creative design partner for the U.S. Olympic BMX teams through Nike 6.0. In 2012 he choreographed the bike-and-dove sequence in the London Olympic Games opening ceremony — one of the most-watched ceremonies in television history.

Today he runs Bob Haro Design out of bobharo.com, selling art prints, apparel, the 40th Anniversary Factory Plates package, and limited-run product. The 2005 documentary Joe Kid on a Stingray features him as one of the major voices on the history of the sport.

What separates Bob Haro from everyone else

Most BMX legacies are built on one thing. Bob Haro's legacy is different in kind because he made four separate things that didn't exist before he made them:

• The first dedicated BMX number plate as a category-defining product (Haro Factory Plates, 1976–1978).
• The first organized BMX trick team performing as the headline act (BMX Action Trick Team with R.L. Osborn, 1979–1980 debut).
• The first frame and fork built specifically for freestyle (Haro Freestyler, designed 1981, launched summer 1982).
• The first dedicated freestyle bike company (Haro Designs, 1978-present).

Legacy

Bob Haro is the rider every freestyler in the world owes some part of their sport to. He drew the look, he started the team, he toured the country, he designed the bike, he sold the bike, he founded the company, he rode in the movie that made BMX a cultural moment. He did most of it before he was 25.

The Godfather of Freestyle isn't marketing copy. It's the accurate description. Everything that came after — the Master, the Sport, the King of Vert, the X Games, BMX at the Olympics in 2008, Charlotte Worthington's Tokyo gold in 2021 — all of it traces back to a kid in Spring Valley cutting vinyl numbers and a $6 ad in BMX Action.

Sources

Bob Haro Design, "The Bob Haro Story" (bobharo.com/pages/my-story). Bob Haro Design, "Factory Plates" (bobharo.com/pages/factory-plates). Wikipedia, "Bob Haro." oldschoolmags.com, "Bob Haro Art" + the "BMX Action Trick Team" summary. oldschoolmags.com magazine archive — August 1978 BMX Action with the founding Haro's Factory Plates feature, the May 1979 BMX Action cover. BMX Society community forums — "30 Years of the HARO Freestyler," "Happy 60th Birthday Bob Haro," "The Rockwalk by Bob Haro," and the Bob Haro artwork thread. theharofreestyler.com era-by-era history. BMX Weekly, "Bob Haro's Factory Plates 40th Anniversary Package" (December 2, 2017). DIG BMX, "Haro's First Generation and the Rise of BMX Freestyle" (April 14, 2020). 23mag.com Bob Haro biography. Torker Racing, "The #1 BMX Factory Team in America" (the Torker / Haro Freestyler manufacturing relationship). Joe Kid on a Stingray (2005 documentary, dir. Mark Eaton). Personal correspondence with Bill Ryan for the Torker / Haro Freestyler manufacturing context.

Bob Haro and Legend Bike Co.

Bob isn't a Legend Bike Co. co-founder, but three of the brand stories Legend is preserving run directly through him. Haro Designs built the first freestyle-specific frame and made freestyle a sport. Torker — owned and operated by Bill Ryan today — built the 1982 Haro Freestyler in Fullerton. And the Trick Team partnership with R.L. Osborn built the first organized BMX freestyle act in the world.

---

Read more on Legend Bike Co.

Riders: Eddie Fiola · Pete Loncarevich · R.L. Osborn · Eddy King · Martin Aparijo · Scot Breithaupt · Greg Hill · Mike Miranda · Perry Kramer · Stu Thomsen · Todd Anderson · Tommy Brackens · Denny Davidow · Clint Miller · Jeff Bottema · Damian Fulton · Billy Griggs · Darwin Griffin · Brian "Bogi" Givens · Todd Steen · Matt Hadan

Brands and shops: Haro · Torker · CW Racing · Diamond Back · Centurion Cycles · GT · Hoffman Bikes · Hutch · JMC · Mongoose · Redline · Schwinn · Skyway · S&M Bikes · SE Racing · Webco · TW BMX · CRD · Bottema Forks · Hustler Bikes · Voris Dixon Bikes · Hyper Bikes · Hi-Tech BMX · Panda Racing Products · Robinson Racing · Free Agent · White Bear · Rebel Racing · Titan BMX · Brian Scura / BS Bikeworks · LRV · S&S Performance · Bassett Bikes

Sanctioning bodies: BUMS · NBA · NBL · ABA · IBMXF · USA BMX

Overview: The History of BMX