A BMX History Library chapter · United States section

Brackens Bikes

The frame company a World Champion put his own name on, built out of a bike shop in La Palma, and gone by 1990

Legend Bike Co · BMX heritage series

In April 1983, a reporter from BMX Plus! asked Tommy Brackens what he wanted to do after racing. Have his own company, maybe? His answer, printed on page 60: no, it was too much hassle having your own company.

By the end of 1987 he had one. It carried his name, it was built in Southern California, and it was gone by 1990.

This chapter used to be short on purpose, because almost nothing of the company's paperwork survived in the places we could reach. Two documents have since changed that. Bill Ryan supplied the brand's first advertisement, a piece he designed himself, from his own copy, and the March 1989 issue of BMX Action — previously known to us only as a line in an index — has now been read. Between them they give us the tube set, the price, the country of manufacture, a business address nobody had, and a complete component list for a factory Brackens as it was actually raced. Bill Ryan has since added the dates that tie the whole story together, and those are dealt with in their own section below. What we still cannot stand behind is listed plainly further down.

The man whose name was on it

Tommy Brackens was one of the fastest starters BMX ever produced, which is how he got the name The Human Dragster. He rode for Powerlite from April 1981 to September 1983, for Torker until that company filed for bankruptcy in November 1984, and for GT from November 1984 through the last day of 1986. 1986 was his year: IBMXF Pro World Champion, European Champion, NBL National number two. He also took BMX Action's 1987 NORA Cup, the reader-voted Number One Rider Award, with 17.91 percent of the vote.

How the GT chapter ended is told two ways, and both are here. The published record has his contract running out at the end of 1986, GT coming back with less money to stay, and Tommy turning that down and walking. Bill Ryan's account, firsthand, 2026, is that Tommy was let go by GT after winning the NORA Cup. Bill's chronology of the whole run is short and flat: Powerlite, then Torker, then GT, then his own name on the down tube.

What happened next is where a frame company starts.

The frame that never got built

Between GT and Brackens there is a company that nearly had his name on it. KHS wanted Tommy to ride for them, and he went to them. KHS wanted to do a "Tommy Terminator" signature frame. Tommy thought it was better to do Brackens instead, and he found his own funding. That account is Bill Ryan's, firsthand — Ryan was there, and he and Tommy started the company together, for Tommy.

It is worth stopping on. An established manufacturer offered the reigning World Champion a frame with his own name on it, which was close to the highest compliment the industry paid a rider in 1987, and he turned it down to build frames under his own name with money he raised himself. The Tommy Terminator is the road not taken. Everything else on this page happened because he took the other one.

When it started

The date the company began has been the biggest open question on this page. Bill Ryan answered it in August 2026, and he did it with a photograph. The BMX Action Probe feature on Kevin Hull's Brackens — the one that carries a March 1989 cover date — was shot in October 1988. And by the time that camera came out, in Bill's words, "we had already been doing Brackens for about a year at that point."

Work backward from October 1988 and the company starts around the end of 1987.

The published record has never said 1987, and it does not have to be overturned to make room for this. Secondary sources give a 1988 founding, and the sponsor record has Brackens Racing appearing as Tommy's own factory team in July 1988. Our reading — and it is ours, not something either source states — is that the two are describing different moments. A small frame company can be drawing, tooling, ordering tubing and selling frames for the better part of a year before it fields a team or turns up in the results and the trade press. That lag is ordinary. Late 1987 is when the company began. July 1988 is when it became visible.

There is now a second date pulling the same way, and it may well be the same date. Bill Ryan has identified the advertisement cited on this page as the first ad Brackens ever ran, and he places it in the July 1988 issue — the same month the published sponsor record picks the brand up. Our reading, and again it is ours rather than either source's, is that those are not two arrivals but one. The month the record first sees Brackens is the month Bill's ad ran. The record did not go looking for the company. The company announced itself, and the record wrote it down.

The other end of that advertisement tightens the chronology further. Magazines of the period closed their pages months ahead of the cover date, and Bill's reasoning is that artwork running in July had to be finished and delivered around February 1988. He placed the ad, so the lead time is his to reckon. Follow that back and February 1988 needs a company that already existed — a logo drawn, an address to print, money set aside for the space, and frames finished enough to photograph, which they were, because the ad carries frame photographs laid out like a contact sheet. None of that assembles in a few weeks. A February deadline argues for the late 1987 start rather than the 1988 one, and it argues for it independently of the October 1988 photograph. Two separate lines, both landing in the same place.

It also tidies up the rest of 1987, which until now was the loosest stretch on this page. Tommy leaves GT at the end of 1986. It takes him a few months to get moving. The KHS arrangement happens — a press release, a fill-in, one race at most — and its brevity makes sense once you know Brackens was already coming together underneath it. By the end of 1987 he has his own company. Around February 1988 the first advertisement is finished and sent to the magazine. In July 1988 that ad runs, and the same month the brand appears in the sponsor record as a team. That October the Probe bike is photographed, about a year into the company's life. The following March it runs in the biggest BMX magazine in the country. That is one sequence, and every document and every account on this page now sits somewhere on it.

What the published record says about the company

The company was Tommy's. Every published account that names an owner names him, and the sponsor record lists Brackens Racing as his own team from July 1988 to 1990. He built frames and forks. He did it in Southern California, by hand at the start.

On who actually made them once the company was running, Bill Ryan's 2026 answer is that the frames were built by an outside framebuilder in Southern California. That is a normal arrangement for a small brand — a rider's name and a rider's design, somebody else's jigs and torches — and it fits a company that could put a frame and fork on the market at $189.95 without owning a factory. This library does not publish manufacturer or factory names in its chapters, so the builder is not named here.

The one design detail that shows up everywhere is the gusset. Brackens frames carried a triangle gusset behind the bottom bracket, sitting on the chainstays. It is the reason a Brackens turns up so reliably in collector listings forty years later: you do not need a decal to identify one. The sizes on record are mini, 20-inch, 20-inch pro, and a 24-inch cruiser. Those are sizes, not marketing names, and Bill Ryan has now confirmed it directly: Brackens frames were sold by size, and there were no model names. We had guessed at that from the absence of evidence. It is now an answer.

It did not last, and it did not taper. The company closed in 1990, and Snap magazine's 1999 retrospective on Brackens puts the cause simply: competition from overseas. Bill Ryan's answer on how it ended is one line — it shut down immediately. Not a wind-down, not a slow fade to a last few frames. Tommy had been working part-time at Huffy Service First, the division that assembled bicycles for department stores, while he ran his own business. When the business folded, he went there full-time and stayed into the early 2000s.

The name outlived the company, barely. Brackens Racing Products was sold to Power Source / Roost in late 1994, reported in American BMXer that December. What was built under it afterward is a question this page put to Bill Ryan in 2026, and his answer was that he is not aware of anything — they killed it after Tommy left. The published record confirms the sale and nothing past it.

What the frames were made of

For a long time this was the emptiest part of the chapter. No spec sheet, no price, no tube set. Two things have now closed that gap, and they agree with each other, which matters more than either one alone.

The first is Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026. His spec is short: the tubing was, in his words, "seamless Patco 4130 Cro-mo," and retail was $189.95 for a frame and fork. Patco was a domestic tubing supplier, and $189.95 in 1988 put a Brackens squarely in the middle of the American race market — well above a mass-market bike, under the boutique end.

The second is a period Brackens advertisement, from Bill Ryan's own copy. It corroborates the first without depending on it. Across the top it states that all frames are constructed from 4130 chromoly and made in the U.S.A. The pitch underneath is the oldest one in framebuilding, told straight: a world class rider demands perfection, he couldn't find it in a frame and fork, so he built his own — and now he's bringing it to you. At the bottom there is a coupon line asking four dollars for a sticker pack and information, and an invitation to dealers. That is a small company advertising like a small company, and there is no shame in it. Half the brands in this library started on a four-dollar sticker pack.

That advertisement now has an author and a date, and both come from Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026. It was the first advertisement Brackens ever ran, and he designed it. The credit does not rest on recollection alone, because it is on the document: his designer's mark, the word RYAN with a trademark symbol beside it, is printed vertically up the lower left corner of the ad, which is where a designer of that period signed work. He puts the ad in the July 1988 issue. Working back from that cover date, and reasoning from the lead times magazines ran on then, he places the finished artwork at around February 1988. He is the man who placed it, so the lead time is his to reckon — but February is his inference from a July cover date, not a date printed anywhere on the page.

The ad also runs a line it calls Tommy's allies: World Class, TECH Pants, Echo Helmets, ODI Grips and Ripp Plates. Two of those are worth a note. TECH Pants is TECH BMX Products, Bill Ryan's own company — so the man who drew the Brackens logo and laid out this advertisement also had his riding pants printed on the brand's advertising. And ODI, the Torrance grip molder, turns up here and again on the factory bike further down this page. The appearance of World Class on that list is its own small puzzle, given that the published sponsor record has Tommy listed with World Class Racing / KHS through July 1988. It reads like a backer or supplier carrying over rather than a team, but we are not going to claim more than the line itself says.

Shot October 1988, printed March 1989: the Sheep Dogmobile

The best single document on this brand is a magazine page. In March 1989, BMX Action's Probe column — the magazine's bike check — ran Kevin Hull's customized Brackens under the headline The Sheep Dogmobile, playing on his Sheepdog nickname. It is a component-by-component breakdown of a factory Brackens as it was actually raced, and it does more for this chapter than a catalog would have.

The cover date is not the shoot date. Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026: the feature was photographed in October 1988 and published the following March. That matters twice over. It means the bike described below is a Brackens as it stood in the fall of 1988 rather than the spring of 1989 — and it is the detail that dates the company itself, because Brackens had been running about a year when that photograph was taken.

The frame is listed as a Brackens Pro, with a Brackens fork. That wants a word, because Bill Ryan's answer on models is that Brackens frames were sold by size and carried no model names. The spec sheet does not contradict him. Pro is the size designation this page has recorded all along — the 20-inch pro — printed the way a magazine prints a size.

The paint was Hull's own doing rather than the factory's: a transparent blue powder coat laid over show chrome by Vincent Campbell at Color Plating Unlimited in Garden Grove, a shop Hull noted had done work for Cook Bros. Underneath the color, he said, the frame was stock.

What he said about how it rode is the closest thing this page has to a geometry note from somebody who raced one. He called the geometry perfect — head tube, forks, the right size of bike — and said it steered a little quicker than his old GT, with a bottom bracket set higher than others for clearance. Coming from a rider who had been a GT factory pro until the end of 1986, that is a working comparison rather than a sponsor line.

One line in that list is new information for another chapter in this library. The stem is an MXR Long, and Hull describes it as a hand-machined prototype that came out early in 1989, sitting between a DK Long and an ESP for length. Our MXR chapter is the story of Brian Moses and his father machining the most expensive hubs in BMX out of a shop in Orange, California, and it runs to about 1989. A hand-machined MXR stem prototype on a factory bike in this period says that shop was making more than hubs, and it belongs in that chapter. Hull was running MXR hubs on the same bike — high flange, sealed.

Two other names turn up in Hull's notes. Danny Millwee was running the same rear gear, and Hull had gone to Eddy King for advice on bladed spokes before settling on double-butted. He also mentioned buying the last twenty-three Tioga Comp IIs a distributor had, which tells you plenty about how hard that tire was to get. The rest of the page is the ordinary furniture of a bike check: his fiancée Toni, his regular riding at the Magnolia Jumps in Huntington Beach, and a plan to make his own Woof pads for the coming season at eight to ten dollars.

The riders

Kevin "Sheepdog" Hull was the first rider Brackens factory-sponsored. He had been a GT factory pro and had worked the RAD movie set in 1985, and he left GT at the same point Tommy did. He was there at the start of the brand, not attached to it afterward. His is the bike in the spec sheet above.

Eric Carter came later in the company's run, at the very front of his pro career, and is the name the brand is most often remembered by. Carter went on to a career across BMX racing, mountain biking and dual slalom that dwarfs the company that first paid him. Signing him was a good call by a company that would be gone before he had properly arrived.

Turnell "Tuni" Henry — Hall of Famer, 1982 NBA number one Pro Cruiser, and Tommy's old Team Jag teammate — is also recorded riding Brackens among Nomura, KHS and Redline. Tuni and Tommy shared a joint feature in BMX Action in January 1988, titled around being ready for the season ahead, by which point the company was already a few months old on Bill Ryan's account, though the brand itself had not yet surfaced in the sponsor record.

One more name comes from Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026, and it is the biggest of them. Bubba Harris got his start on a Brackens as an eight-year-old kid. Harris became one of the most decorated American racers of his generation: fourteen ABA World Championships as an amateur, all of them before he turned seventeen, the youngest rider ever to hold the ABA number one pro plate at eighteen, three straight ABA number one pro titles, the 2005 UCI World Championship, and a first-ballot induction into the National BMX Hall of Fame in 2023. He rides for Supercross BMX today.

The dates on that one need care, and we are going to show the arithmetic rather than hide it. The published record has Harris starting to race on his seventh birthday in August 1992, which puts him at eight years old across 1993 and into 1994 — after Tommy Brackens had shut the company. A Brackens under an eight-year-old in 1993 would have been a secondhand frame a few years old, which is an entirely ordinary way for a kid to get a first race bike, and small frames outlive the companies that made them. We are recording Bill's account as he gave it, and noting the gap rather than pretending it is not there.

Beyond those four, the roster is not documented anywhere we could reach.

Bill Ryan's part in it

The rest of this section comes from Bill Ryan, founder of Supercross BMX and co-founder of Legend Bike Co, firsthand, 2026. It is not in the published period record, and it is marked as his account throughout rather than presented as documented fact.

Bill was at GT in the mid-1980s, running the Robinson Division as team manager. When Tommy's GT run ended at the close of 1986, Bill left around the same time, and the two of them set about building the Brackens operation. Bill's own description of it is the one this page uses: Tommy and Bill Ryan started Brackens together, for Tommy. The two of them got it going, and by Bill's reckoning the company was up and running by the end of 1987. The brand was Tommy's, it carried Tommy's name, and the published record agrees on that.

The graphics were Bill's hand. He drew the original Brackens logo himself, with Letraset and halftone type on a drafting table in a small apartment, with his then-girlfriend and now his wife, Yvonne Ryan, watching over his shoulder while he worked. That logo is the piece of Brackens that Bill points to first when the subject comes up.

The operation ran out of La Palma Cycle Center, and that detail carries more weight than it looks like it should. The shop was owned by Turnell Henry and Richard Schaeffer, a certified public accountant who also coached and managed Henry. Bill Ryan worked there. He was an employee of that shop and never a partner in it, a point he has stated firsthand and on the record because secondary accounts have sometimes had it the other way around. Tuni Henry had taught Bill the fundamentals of BMX at clinics at Harbor BMX in San Pedro when Bill was ten years old. A decade later Bill was helping start a frame company in Tuni's shop. The counter at La Palma in those years also had Tommy Brackens, Kevin Hull and a teenage Sean McKinney working it, and it is where Bill met Brian "Bogi" Givens, who would be one of the five original Supercross BMX TECH Team riders in 1989.

Bill's account of how his own involvement ended is short. A German investor named Hartwig came into the Brackens operation, the business had its footing, and Bill moved on — to Power Plus Cycles in Stanton, and from there to founding Supercross BMX in 1989. Asked again in 2026, Bill could add one thing and no more: Hartwig is the only name he remembers, and the connection came through a German distributor Tommy had met. That narrows where Hartwig came from. It does not establish that Hartwig was the funding Tommy found, and this page keeps those two statements apart, because nothing we have says they belong together.

One piece of Brackens went with him. The fork dropouts from that Brackens frame carried straight into the first Supercross frame. Whatever else the company was, it left a physical part of itself in a brand that is still building bikes today.

Where the record runs thin

Timeline

• April 1983 — asked by BMX Plus! whether he wants his own company one day, Tommy Brackens says no, it is too much hassle.
• October 1, 1983 — Brackens leaves Powerlite and signs with Torker.
• November 1984 — Torker files for bankruptcy and Brackens leaves. Richard Long offers him a GT ride on the flight home from an East Coast trip, and he takes it.
• 1986 — IBMXF Pro World Champion, European Champion, NBL National number two.
• December 31, 1986 — the published record has Brackens's GT contract ending, a reduced offer turned down, and Brackens leaving. Bill Ryan, firsthand, says Tommy was let go by GT after winning the NORA Cup. Kevin Hull leaves GT at the same point. Bill Ryan leaves GT around the same time and, by his own account, he and Tommy begin building Brackens together, for Tommy.
• 1987 — Brackens takes BMX Action's NORA Cup, the reader-voted Number One Rider Award, with 17.91 percent of the vote. oldschoolmags.com records the 1987 NORA Cup as a GT sweep and notes that Brackens had already left the team by the time the results were published. Bill Ryan's account has GT letting him go after the win. The order of the two is not settled here.
• 1987 — Tommy takes a fill-in ride with KHS. KHS issues a press release and the published sponsor record lists him from May 1987; Bill Ryan, firsthand, says he raced for them once at most, turned down a KHS "Tommy Terminator" signature frame in order to build Brackens instead, and found his own funding. Reconciled above.
• Late 1987 — Brackens Bikes starts. Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026: the company had already been going about a year by October 1988, which dates the start to roughly the end of 1987. No document we have found carries a month, and the published sources place the founding a year later, in 1988. Reconciled above.
• 1987 to 1989 — La Palma Cycle Center, owned by Turnell Henry and Richard Schaeffer, is on record. Bill Ryan works there as an employee alongside Tommy Brackens, Kevin Hull and Sean McKinney. Brackens Bikes is run out of the shop.
• January 1988 — BMX Action runs a joint Tuni Henry and Tommy Brackens feature. The published sponsor record has KHS releasing a "Tommy Terminator" signature frame and fork set this month. Bill Ryan's firsthand account is that the Tommy Terminator was an offer Tommy turned down.
• Around February 1988 — the first Brackens advertisement is finished and delivered to the magazine. Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026: he designed the ad, and a July cover date meant the artwork had to be done roughly five months ahead. The ad carries photographs of finished frames laid out like a contact sheet, so frames existed to be shot by then. The February date is Bill's reasoning from the lead time rather than a printed one.
• July 1988 — the first Brackens advertisement runs, in that month's issue: all frames 4130 chromoly, made in the U.S.A., four dollars for a sticker pack and information, dealer inquiries invited, Tommy's allies listed as World Class, TECH Pants, Echo Helmets, ODI Grips and Ripp Plates, and a business address c/o Bicycle Chain, 622 W. Arrow Hwy, San Dimas. Retail is $189.95 for a frame and fork, per Bill Ryan. The ad is Bill Ryan's design and carries his RYAN trademark mark in the lower left corner. The same month, Brackens Racing appears as Tommy Brackens's own factory team in the published sponsor record, with Kevin Hull as the first rider it sponsors. Our reading is that the ad and that first appearance in the record are one moment rather than two.
• October 1988 — BMX Action photographs Kevin Hull's Brackens for the Probe column, about a year into the company's life. The feature runs the following March. Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026.
• March 1989 — BMX Action's Probe column publishes Kevin Hull's customized Brackens as The Sheep Dogmobile, shot the previous October: a Brackens Pro frame and Brackens fork under transparent blue powder coat over show chrome, with MXR hubs and a hand-machined prototype MXR Long stem, Araya 7X rims, Tioga Comp IIs, Dia-Compe brakes and levers, Redline Flight cranks, a Revcore post, Flite pads and a Jive Panel number plate. The bike is listed as dialed in at both La Palma Cycle Center and Bicycle Chain.
• Late 1980s — Eric Carter signs with Brackens at the start of his pro career. A German investor named Hartwig comes into the operation, per Bill Ryan, connected through a German distributor Tommy had met; Bill leaves at that point and founds Supercross BMX in 1989, carrying the Brackens fork dropout design into his first frame.
• 1990 — the company closes, attributed by Snap to overseas competition. Per Bill Ryan it shut down immediately rather than winding down. Brackens retires from racing the same year and goes to Huffy Service First full-time.
• Circa 1993 — per Bill Ryan, a young Bubba Harris gets his start on a Brackens at eight years old. The published record has Harris beginning to race in August 1992, so the frame would already have been secondhand. Noted above.
• Late 1994 — the Brackens Racing Products name is sold to Power Source / Roost, reported in American BMXer, December 1994. Bill Ryan is not aware of anything being built under the name afterward.
• 2016 — Gary Turner, the T in GT, partners with Brackens on a retro signature frame: the 1988 20-inch Brackens design scaled up to 26-inch and 24-inch, full 4130 chromoly, welded by Turner himself and sold through GT1972.com.

What it adds up to

Brackens Bikes is not a big chapter in BMX. It made frames for two or three years, it never had a national number one plate under its own decals, and it was gone before the 1990s properly started. Measured on volume it barely registers.

Measured on people it looks different. It gave Kevin Hull a factory home when GT's roster broke up. It gave Eric Carter his first pro backing. It put a Hall of Fame pro cruiser racer on a frame with his friend's name on the down tube. If Bill Ryan has it right, one of its frames was still going years after the company closed, under an eight-year-old in Arizona who would grow up to be a World Champion. It kept a shop counter in La Palma busy. And its fork dropouts are still, in a sense, in production, because they went into the first Supercross frame in 1989 and that company is still here.

Thirty years after it closed, the man who founded GT built the frame again by hand, at his own bench, for the rider whose name was on it. That is not how most failed bike companies end.

Sources

The first Brackens advertisement, designed by Bill Ryan, from his own copy, supplied 2026 — the statement that all frames were constructed from 4130 chromoly and made in the U.S.A., the pitch that a world class rider could not find the frame and fork he wanted so he built his own, the business address c/o Bicycle Chain, 622 W. Arrow Hwy, San Dimas, CA 91773 with the telephone number 714-592-9973, the line listing Tommy's allies as World Class, TECH Pants, Echo Helmets, ODI Grips and Ripp Plates, the four-dollar sticker pack and information offer, and the invitation to dealers. Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026, identifies this as the first advertisement the company ran and states that he designed it; his designer's mark, the word RYAN with a trademark symbol, is printed vertically in the lower left corner of the ad, so the credit is carried on the document itself. He places the ad in the July 1988 issue. The ad shows no cover date on its face, and the February 1988 artwork deadline noted on this page is Bill Ryan's reasoning from period magazine lead times rather than anything printed.

BMX Action, Probe column, March 1989 — "The Sheep Dogmobile: Kevin Hull's Customized Brackens." The full component list reproduced on this page, the Brackens Pro frame and Brackens fork, the transparent blue powder coat over show chrome by Vincent Campbell at Color Plating Unlimited in Garden Grove, Hull's statement that the frame was otherwise stock and his description of the geometry and bottom bracket height, the MXR Long stem as a hand-machined prototype out early in 1989 and sized between a DK Long and an ESP, Danny Millwee running the same rear gear, Eddy King consulted on bladed spokes, the last twenty-three Tioga Comp IIs bought from a distributor, the Jive Panel number plate, and the listing of the bike as dialed in at La Palma Cycle Center in La Palma, (714) 995-3147, and Bicycle Chain in San Dimas, (714) 592-9973. This feature was previously known to us only as an index entry on 23mag.com; the issue itself has now been read. Bill Ryan, firsthand in 2026, dates the shoot itself to October 1988, five months before the cover date.

Wikipedia, "Tommy Brackens" — the sponsor chronology (Powerlite April 1981 to September 1983; Torker October 1983 to November 1984; GT November 1984 to December 31, 1986; KHS May to August 1987; World Class Racing / KHS August 1987 to July 1988; Brackens Racing July 1988 to 1990), the statement that Brackens Racing Products was a Tommy Brackens-owned BMX company making frames and forks, that it sponsored Eric Carter and Kevin Hull, that it lasted two years and went out of business due to competition from overseas, that Brackens retired in 1990 in part to devote more time to the company, and that he worked at Huffy Service First part-time during the company and full-time afterward. The article's own underlying citations for these points are Snap BMX Magazine, September 1999, Vol. 7 Issue 6 No. 35, pg. 81, and American BMXer, December 1994, Vol. 16 Iss. 11, pg. 11 for the Power Source / Roost sale. The BMX Plus! quote about owning a company being too much hassle is cited there to BMX Plus! April 1983, page 60. The KHS "Tommy Terminator" signature frame and fork set of January 1988 is cited to BMX Action, December 1987, Vol. 12 No. 12, pg. 12.

23mag.com, BMX Action magazine index, 1988 and 1989 — independent confirmation that the March 1989 issue carried a feature on Kevin Hull's Brackens, and that the January 1988 issue carried a joint Tuni Henry and Tommy Brackens feature.

oldschoolmags.com, NORA Cup history page — the NORA Cup as BMX Action's reader-voted Number One Rider Award, introduced in 1979 and run by Wizard Publications until 1991, and the note that the 1987 NORA Cup was a GT sweep with Brackens already off the team by the time the results were published. Legend Bike Co.'s own Torker chapter is the internal record for Torker's bankruptcy in November 1984 and for Brackens taking the 1987 NORA Cup with 17.91 percent of the vote.

SugarCayne, "Tommy Brackens New Retro Signature BMX Frame," September 3, 2016 — the 2016 retro project with Gary Turner, the 1988 20-inch design scaled to 26-inch and 24-inch, full 4130, welded by Gary Turner, sold through GT1972.com, and the quoted USA BMX biography of Brackens reproduced in that article.

Published biographical record for Bubba Harris — fourteen ABA World Championships as an amateur before he turned seventeen, the ABA number one pro plate at eighteen and three consecutive number one pro titles, the 2005 UCI World Championship, first-ballot induction into the National BMX Hall of Fame in 2023, and the record that he began racing on his seventh birthday in August 1992. Cross-checked against Legend Bike Co.'s own Bubba Harris chapter.

Collector and reference listings for surviving Brackens frames — the triangle chainstay gusset behind the bottom bracket, and the mini, 20-inch, 20-inch pro and 24-inch cruiser sizes.

Bill Ryan, founder of Supercross BMX and co-founder of Legend Bike Co., firsthand, 2026 — Tommy's sponsor chain of Powerlite to Torker to GT to Brackens, Tommy leaving Torker when Torker filed for bankruptcy, Tommy being let go by GT after winning the NORA Cup, Bill leaving GT around the time Tommy did, the KHS stop as a fill-in deal announced by press release with one race at most, the KHS "Tommy Terminator" signature frame that Tommy turned down in order to build Brackens instead, Tommy finding his own funding, starting the company together with Tommy and for Tommy, hand-drawing the original Brackens logo with Letraset and halftone type with Yvonne Ryan present, designing the brand's first advertisement and signing it with his RYAN trademark mark, placing that ad in the July 1988 issue and reasoning back from period magazine lead times to finished artwork around February 1988, the operation running out of La Palma Cycle Center, the tubing being Patco 4130 chromoly and the retail price $189.95 for a frame and fork, the frames being sold by size with no model names, the frames being made by an outside Southern California framebuilder, the March 1989 BMX Action Probe bike having been photographed in October 1988 with the company about a year old by then, which dates the start of Brackens to roughly late 1987, Kevin Hull as the first factory rider, Bubba Harris getting his start on a Brackens at eight years old, meeting Brian "Bogi" Givens at the shop, the German investor named Hartwig and the German distributor Tommy had met through whom that connection came, the company shutting down immediately in 1990 rather than winding down, nothing being built under the name after Tommy left, his own departure to found Supercross BMX, and the Brackens fork dropouts carrying into the first Supercross frame. Ryan is also the authority, stated firsthand and on the record, that La Palma Cycle Center was owned by Turnell Henry and Richard Schaeffer and that he himself worked there as an employee and was never a partner in the shop.

Legend Bike Co.'s own Tommy Brackens, Kevin Hull, Turnell Henry, Richard Schaeffer, Bill Ryan, Bubba Harris, MXR, JIVE, S&S Bikes and Powerlite chapters, cross-checked so this page does not contradict them.

Checked and unreachable at the time of research: bmxmuseum.com, which blocks server-side fetching, and bmxsociety.com. Between them they very likely hold Brackens catalog scans, further period advertisements and owner recollections that would move more lines out of the box above and into the body of this page. vintagebmx.com was also attempted and returned nothing fetchable on Brackens.

Last reviewed: August 2026. If you have a Brackens catalog, another period ad, a geometry chart or a team photo, it belongs here.