Bobby Encinas

BMX's First National Touring Pro — Shimano's First Sponsored Racer, 1973 to 1983

A Legend Bike Co. rider page · researched from Wikipedia's sourced rider archive (citing Bicycle Motocross News, BMX Action, and Super BMX), bmxsociety.com community record, and the ABA BMX Hall of Fame

At a glance

Level AA Pro
Scene Southern California, 1973-1983
Teams Shimano Sales Corporation (1975-1981, team captain) · Scorpion BMX (1982-1983) · Larry Wilcox Actionline (1983 on, teaching pro)
Known for Racing most of the 1976 season in a cast, becoming BMX Action's first NORA Cup winner, and turning his own career into the sport's first coast-to-coast coaching tour

Bobby Encinas started BMX the way a lot of Southern California kids did in 1973 — pretending his bicycle was a motocross bike on a dirt lot in Acton, California, called Soledad Sands. He was twelve. Six months later he had his first sponsor. Within a few years he was one of the first professional racers in the sport, then one of the first to figure out that BMX's future depended on getting more kids on bikes, not just winning races.

From Canoga Park to the First National

Encinas grew up in Canoga Park and, by his own account, had a rough start — a juvenile record for theft and probation for drinking and using drugs before he turned twelve. He has said BMX pulled him out of that. He started racing officially in mid-1973 at Soledad Sands, one of the kids an MX promoter named Ernie Alexander noticed goofing around on bicycles that summer, an observation that helped lead Alexander to start the National Bicycle Association (NBA) six months later. Encinas raced the NBA's first-ever national on March 29, 1975, in Phoenix, and won the very first sidehack class held at a national with partner John George. He was also on the wrong end of one of the sport's more memorable early moments — Scot Breithaupt accidentally knocked him into a mud hole at the 1975 NBA Tri-State Championship in Tucson, so thoroughly that officials handed him a Sportsmanship Trophy for it.

Shimano's First Racer

Encinas signed with Shimano Sales Corporation in 1975 and stayed through December 1981 — their first sponsored racer and, for most of that run, team captain. He turned pro in 1977, in a sport still small enough that pros and top amateurs raced in the same class. He won the Southern California District No. 1 title and California state title in both 1976 and 1978, and took the NBA sidehack Western States championship with John George that same year. He never won a 20-inch national title outright with the NBA, a fact he was open about, but he took the NBL's 29-and-under Cruiser Grand National in 1980 on the 26-inch bike, and a $3,000 purse at an NBL national in Pittsburgh that same year that landed him a spot on the TV newsmagazine P.M. Magazine.

1976 was rough on him physically. He broke both wrists that year, one crashing a dirt bike and one at a BMX track, and raced the last months of the season in a cast anyway. Riders on the bmxsociety.com forums remember him specifically for that: racing hurt and still beating faster riders like JP and John George.

BMX Action's First NORA Cup

In 1978, Bicycle Motocross Action created the NORA Cup, the sport's Number One Rider Award, and Encinas was its first winner, taking home a custom-painted Bell helmet and $150. He was also a founding member of PRO, the Professional Racing Organization racers formed as a guild in 1977. In 1987, he was inducted into the ABA BMX Hall of Fame.

Turning His Career Into a Classroom

What set Encinas apart wasn't just results. Shimano sent him on public-relations tours around the country, and he used the platform to start teaching kids directly, running BMX clinics at schools and tracks starting around 1977, with Donny Atherton among his first students. He semi-retired from racing in 1979 to focus on that side of the sport full time. The 1980 Bobby Encinas Tour hit 30 stops and 22,000 miles across the U.S.; the 1981 World BMX Tour took the same idea to Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Europe. Riders who crossed paths with him on the early national tour, arriving together in a Shimano van with racers like John George, Eric Richter, and Anthony Galati, describe him as one of the sport's first real stars, right down to Cook Bros.-style number plates and prototype self-righting pedals other kids could only look at.

He kept racing on and off through the early 1980s to stay sharp for the clinics, mostly cruisers, through 1983, before moving into a full-time teaching role with Larry Wilcox Actionline, the BMX apparel company owned by the CHiPs actor.

Where the public record runs thin

Encinas is not connected to Redline Bicycles in any source checked for this page; his sponsor record runs Peddler's West, Kawasaki, Rick's Bike Shop, then Shimano for the bulk of his career. Exact details of his life after the mid-1980s, once the Actionline job ended, are not documented in the sources checked here. oldschoolmags.com's magazine PDF archive and bmxsociety.com were both checked; period magazine citations exist (Bicycle Motocross News, BMX Action, Super BMX) but the specific issue scans could not be pulled as text through this session's tools, so page-level detail beyond what's cited in the sourced record below is left out rather than guessed at.

Where Bobby Encinas fits in the bigger story

Riders: Scot Breithaupt, Greg Hill, Jeff Bottema. Sanctions and press: The NBA, The ABA, BMX Action Magazine. The bigger arc is in our The History of BMX series.

Sources

Wikipedia's Bobby Encinas entry, sourced throughout to period issues of Bicycle Motocross News, Bicycle Motocross Action, and Super BMX (1974-1981), used here as a secondary compilation of primary magazine citations. bmxsociety.com community threads (accessed via site search) for firsthand recollection of the 1976 season and the early NBA touring scene. oldschoolmags.com's magazine archive was checked for independent period coverage; specific issue text was not directly retrievable as text through this session's tools.