A Legend Bike Co. rider and founder history page. Sourced from Bob Morales' own year-by-year company history (moralesbikes.com, reproduced at 23mag.com), the 23mag.com American Freestyle Association archive (period BMX Action, BMX Plus!, Freestylin' and Bicross magazine citations), Wikipedia, USA BMX's National BMX Hall of Fame Class of 2018 writeup, and Legend Bike Co.'s own Dyno and GT histories.

Bob Morales

Founder of Dyno and the American Freestyle Association · co-designer of the GT Performer · born December 7, 1963, Redondo Beach, California · National BMX Hall of Fame, 2018, Industry

At a glance

Born
December 7, 1963, Redondo Beach, California.

Also known as
BME — the initials of Bob Morales Enterprises, the company he started as a teenager and never really stopped running under one name or another.

Known for
First member of the Haro Freestyle Team, 1980 · Co-designed the very first BMX freestyle frame, the Haro Freestyler, with Bob Haro · Founded Dyno Design in 1982, later sold to GT Bicycles in 1985 · Founded the Amateur Skate Park Association in 1982, renamed the American Freestyle Association (AFA) in 1984 · Co-designed the GT Performer with Eddie Fiola in 1983, credited on two patents · Later founded Auburn Cycles, KORE Bicycle Components, Morales Bicycle Company, and ASV Inventions

Major honors
National BMX Hall of Fame, 2018, Industry · Designer of record, with Eddie Fiola, on two U.S. patents for the GT Performer frame · Founder of the AFA, freestyle BMX's first dedicated national sanctioning body

Active years on a bike
Started BMX racing around 1975, age 11. Turned to freestyle in 1979–1980. Retired from competition in 1985 to run Dyno and the AFA full time.

Most people who built something big in BMX built one thing. Bob Morales built three at once — a freestyle brand, a freestyle sanction, and a freestyle bike — and he was still a teenager when the first one started. He sold stickers out of a briefcase on a moped before he could drive a car. By 21 he'd co-designed one of the best-selling freestyle bikes of the decade. By 22 he was president of the organization that gave the sport its first real national contest series. That's a lot of company for one last name.

Redondo Beach to the racetrack

Bob Morales was born December 7, 1963, in Redondo Beach, California. He started racing BMX in Southern California around 1975, at age 11, and paid his own way early — repairing neighborhood kids' bikes in his garage for cash. Skateboarding, surfing, and motorcycle racing were all in the mix too, but bicycles are where his business sense showed up first.

In 1976 he landed a part-time job that put him at the center of the sport before he was old enough to drive to it: working for BMX Action magazine, test-riding bikes for articles and helping out in the office. His best friend was R.L. Osborn, whose father Bob Osborn owned the magazine. Through the Osborns, Morales met a staff cartoonist and rider named Bob Haro in 1977 — the connection that pulled him out of straight racing and into freestyle.

Sticker Factory to BME

At thirteen, in 1977, Morales started his first business: Sticker Factory, selling BMX stickers at races. He couldn't drive yet, so he ran his inventory around on a moped with a briefcase. In 1978 he took the operation wholesale, selling to bike shops the same way — moped, briefcase, no car — while also introducing 26-inch "Cruiser" BMX racing at a local Southern California track. In 1979 he promoted the first national Cruiser race with a Pro class and real prize money; the ABA and NBL both added Cruiser racing to their programs not long after. That same year he added T-shirts and accessories to the sticker business and renamed it Bob Morales Enterprises — BME.

The Haro Freestyle Team and the first national tour

In 1980, Morales retired from BMX racing to focus on freestyle stunt riding and was hired as the first member of the Haro Freestyle Team. He spent 1981 on the road with Bob Haro, touring the country performing shows and helping design the Haro Freestyler — the first frame and fork ever built specifically for freestyle. BME grew alongside the tour, picking up Haro, Oakley, and GT Bicycle accessories as new vendors, and running mail-order ads in BMX Plus! under the name Morales Racing.

Eddie Fiola, Kuwahara, and the E.T. bike

In 1982, Morales met a young rider named Eddie Fiola and brought him onto the Haro team. It didn't last. By the end of the year both of them had left Haro and signed a one-year deal with Kuwahara — the company that supplied the BMX bike Elliott rides in Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial — to design and promote Kuwahara's own freestyle bike and the licensed "E.T." model. Fiola and Morales would stay riding partners and business partners for years after.

ASPA, Dyno Design, and the youngest exhibitor at Interbike

That same year, 1982, Morales organized a skatepark riding contest and formed the Amateur Skate Park Association — ASPA — to give freestyle competition an actual structure. And he added a new line to BME's catalog: Dyno Design, starting with BMX jerseys, racing pants, and T-shirts, not bikes. BME/Dyno exhibited at the first Interbike trade show in Las Vegas that year, and Morales — still a teenager — became the youngest company owner ever to show at a bicycle industry trade show. He graduated high school in June 1982 and went full-time on the business.

Dyno's full story — the 1985 sale to GT, the Compe and its signature bent top tube, the chrome years — is its own chapter. Read it here.

1983 — the GT Performer

Fiola and Morales finished their Kuwahara contracts and signed with GT Bicycles in 1983. Together they designed GT's first purpose-built freestyle frame and named it the Performer. GT's own advertising gave them the credit outright: "Designed by professional freestylers, Eddie Fiola and Bob Morales." The design earned two U.S. patents, both awarded to GT Bicycles, and the Performer went on to become one of the best-selling freestyle bikes of the entire decade — the frame under thousands of kids in driveways across the country. GT co-founder Gary Turner built frames and ran the company; the Performer's design credit belongs to Fiola and Morales.

1983 was also the year Morales renamed ASPA to the American Skate Park Association — same acronym, so he could keep using his existing logo — specifically so he could add a Pro class with real cash prizes. Oakley came on as a co-sponsor that year too, for grips and a new "Oakley Eyeshade System" that became the company's first pair of sunglasses; Morales worked directly with Oakley founder Jim Jannard on the promotions, including a Fiola/Morales freestyle exhibition in front of 40,000 fans at the Superbowl of Motocross at Anaheim Stadium.

1984 — ASPA becomes the AFA

By 1984, Southern California's skateparks were closing, so Morales moved his events off concrete and onto portable wooden ramps set up in parking lots. Because "freestyle" was now the word everyone used, he renamed the American Skate Park Association to the American Freestyle Association — the AFA — and started a formal membership organization with Fiola as the first member. He incorporated the AFA and became its first president. BME/Dyno had grown to roughly $250,000 a year in sales; the AFA hired its first two employees and set up shop inside the BME/Dyno warehouse, planning its first full event series for 1985.

1985 — selling Dyno, keeping the AFA

Morales retired from cycling competition in 1985 to run Dyno and the AFA full time. Later that year, GT Bicycles made an offer to buy Dyno. In his own words: "I accepted their offer because Dyno was severely undercapitalized and in need of investment. I negotiated a contract with GT to design bicycle frames and components and to consult on a marketing strategy for them." Part of that deal let him keep running the AFA on the side. He designed Dyno's first bike, the 1985 Compe — its prototype hand-welded by GT co-founder Gary Turner, with Morales adding the bend in the top tube at the seat-stay platform that became the brand's signature look.

The AFA completed its first full contest series that year, leaned on Fiola's name to help sign up members, hit 1,000 members, published its first rule book, and opened affiliate offices in Texas, Florida, and New York.

1986 — Madison Square Garden and the end of the GT years

Morales kept designing for GT and Dyno through 1986, then left to run the AFA full time, staying on as a part-time consultant. That was the AFA's peak year: its first true national series included an event at Madison Square Garden in New York City with more than 200 rider entries and 5,000 paying spectators, membership hit 2,000, and new affiliate offices opened around the country. On the side, Morales and his old friend Todd Huffman won a low bid on an inventory lot from a bankrupt bike company and started Mor Distributing — "Mor" for Morales — which grew into the Auburn brand.

1987–1990 — the AFA's biggest purse, and its last event

1987 brought the AFA's high-water mark: corporate sponsors like Socko and Converse, a $25,000 purse at the Socko Finals at the Los Angeles Olympic Velodrome — the largest in BMX freestyle history at the time — over 100 sanctioned events nationwide, and European affiliates in England, France, and Germany. Membership peaked above 4,500 in 1988, the same year top pro freestylers started out-earning pro BMX racers, some pulling in over $200,000 a year while still teenagers.

It didn't last. After an unsuccessful push to get BMX freestyle into the Olympics, Morales concluded in 1989 that the AFA had gone as far as it could and handed the presidency to his national director, who moved the operation to Ohio. A recession hit the bike industry that same year and gutted Mor Distributing; Morales sold his stake to Huffman (GT bought Mor Distributing the following year to acquire the Auburn brand). The AFA itself downsized back into Morales' own office in 1990, put on its last series of events, and closed for good late that year — leaving the door open for riders like Ron Wilkerson and Mat Hoffman to build the harder-core contest scene that followed it.

KORE, Morales Bikes, and the businesses that came after

Morales didn't slow down. Through the 1990s he built KORE Bicycle Components (best known for the Thrashguard, the first bolt-on bash guard, developed with help from Chris Moeller and Dave Clymer of S&M Bikes), ran his own Morales Bicycle Company building flatland frames — ridden on the cover of Ride BMX by Jesse Puente in 1994 — and designed the "A Frame" for Iron Horse Bicycles, a mountain bike brand he's credited with helping build into an international name. He sold his interest in KORE in 1998 and, in 2000, founded ASV Inventions, a motorcycle parts and accessories company he still runs today. His middle son Dane Morales went on to race BMX at a national and international level, which pulled Morales back into designing BMX products again in the 2010s under a revived Auburn Cycles.

2018 — National BMX Hall of Fame

On September 8, 2018, Bob Morales was inducted into the National BMX Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Chula Vista, California, in the Industry category — recognized for a career that ran from selling stickers off a moped to co-designing one of the defining bikes of the freestyle boom to building the sanctioning body that gave the sport its first national stage.

What we don't know

The exact sale price and full terms of the 1985 Dyno-to-GT deal aren't public anywhere reliable — Morales has described why he sold and what he kept, but not the number. Some secondary sources list a 1980 start date for Morales joining the Haro Freestyle Team while others place it in late 1980 into 1981; this page follows Morales' own account. This page also does not connect Morales to the 1986 film RAD — nothing in the record we could verify places him on that production, so we've left it out rather than assume it.

Sources

Bob Morales' first-person year-by-year company history (moralesbikes.com), reproduced and dated at 23mag.com ("Bob Morales" and "American Freestyle Association" pages), sourced there to BMX Action, Bicross magazine, Freestylin', BMX Plus!, Super BMX and Freestyle, and bmxtrix.com. Wikipedia, "Bob Morales." USA BMX, "National BMX Hall of Fame — Class of 2018" (usabmx.com/site/postings/1610). SplendidBMX.com, "About Bob Morales — Pro BMXer Profile, Biography and History." Legend Bike Co.'s own Dyno BMX and GT Bicycles histories (the Dyno Compe prototype account and the GT Performer credit, cross-checked against the same 1984 GT advertising).

Bob Morales and Legend Bike Co.

Morales isn't a Legend Bike Co. co-founder, but his fingerprints are on two of the biggest names in this library. He was Eddie Fiola's riding and business partner through Haro, Kuwahara, and GT, and the two of them designed the GT Performer together — the bike GT's own ads put both their names on. And Dyno, the brand GT bought and built into a chrome-freestyle powerhouse, started as Morales' teenage sticker business before it was anything else. Eddie is a Legend Bike Co. co-founder alongside Torker owner Bill Ryan; Morales' story runs right alongside his.

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Read more on Legend Bike Co.

Riders: Eddie Fiola · Bob Haro · R.L. Osborn · Martin Aparijo · Ron Wilkerson · Dennis McCoy · Mat Hoffman

Brands and shops: Dyno · GT Bicycles · Haro · Torker · S&M Bikes · AERO Racing Products · Max BMX Pants

Magazines: BMX Action · Freestylin' · BMX Plus!

Overview: The History of BMX