Legend Bike Co — BMX History Project · Riders & Builders

Brian Blyther

Brian Blyther didn't ride like he was trying to win anything. That was the point. Through the second half of the 1980s, while other vert riders were racking up technical tricks, Blyther built a reputation on something harder to teach: height and flow that looked effortless even when it wasn't. Riders and writers started calling it "Blyther style," and it carried him through five years on the Haro team, back-to-back 2-Hip King of Vert titles, and a Guinness World Record for the highest aerial ever measured on a bike.

San Jose to Pipeline

Brian Wayne Blyther was born February 19, 1968, in San Jose, California. He got into BMX the way plenty of vert riders of his generation did -- through the track. "When I was about 14, I used to race at the Pipeline BMX track," he said in an early interview, "and they used to let us ride the skatepark for free on Sundays if we raced. I started getting into it, so I quit racing and started riding pools and entering contests." Pipeline, the Upland, California skatepark and BMX track, became his home turf and the place most of his early competitive record was built.

1984 — Making a name as an amateur

Blyther entered the 1984 King of the Skateparks round 1 at Pipeline as the only amateur in the highest-air contest and finished third -- a serious result against a pro field. He picked up his first magazine features that year too: an interview in Freestylin' issue #1 (summer 1984), showing a 360 tailspin, and another in Super BMX that August. He finished 2nd in the 16-and-under expert class at King of the Skateparks round 3 in Upland that year, still riding as an amateur.

1985-90 — Team Haro

In 1985, Blyther signed with Haro, joining a team that already ran deep with Dennis McCoy, Ron Wilkerson, and Dave Nourie -- a lineup Legend Bike Co's own Haro history page confirms signed on through 1984-86. He competed at the Kellogg's BMX championship in the UK that year on a chrome Haro Sport.

The next few years were his peak. He landed three magazine covers in 1986 alone -- BMX Plus! in April (shot over teammate Ron Wilkerson), Freestylin' in June, Bicross Magazine in June -- plus a July cover shoot for Freestyle BMX UK back at Pipeline. In 1987 he won pro ramps at the first round of the 2-Hip King of Vert series in Houston, took second at round two in Flint, Michigan (losing out to Josh White's bigger moves), and won pro ramps at AFA Masters round 4 in Columbus, Ohio, riding to AC/DC through a run that included an X-down, a can-can footplant, a chicken-man air, and a 540 flyout. He closed the year as 1987 King of Vert champion.

1988 was bigger still. He and Wilkerson, both riding for Haro, shared the cover and an interview in the January 1988 American Freestyler. Blyther won pro ramps at AFA Masters round 1 in Palmetto, Florida, then swept King of Vert rounds in California and at the Megafree event in Paris. That November, he entered the Guinness Book of World Records with an aerial measured at 10 feet 2 inches -- the highest recorded to that point. He and a young Mat Hoffman were the two U.S. freestylers invited to the fifth Bicross International contest at Paris Bercy that November. He closed the year as King of Vert champion again, with reported yearly earnings around $100,000.

Through 1989 Blyther stayed at the top of the vert circuit -- second at King of Vert's Megafree #2 in Paris, a 900 attempt at the Toronto King of Vert round, a Dyno World Tour stop in Portugal alongside Dave Voelker, and a run of seven consecutive 540s captured in the video Ride Like A Man. He made the cover of Freestylin' twice that year, in January and October.

1990 and the move to GT

By 1990 Blyther had picked up an Airwalk shoe sponsorship alongside his riding, and finished second at the 2-Hip Meet the Street event in Palm Springs that October -- a showing that included jumping the width of a car from the spine ramp and landing on a grind table, plus a 360 dropped onto the caved-in roof of the same car. He closed the decade on the cover of Go magazine in December 1990, can-canning at a ramp in Hermosa Beach. That same year he left Haro for GT, adapting his riding to the street discipline that was starting to take over from vert as freestyle's center of gravity.

Style, and the tailwhip question

A 2008 profile in DIG BMX (issue 65) put Blyther's contribution plainly: "Even though Brian Blyther is credited with the invention of the flatground tailwhip, he's most well known for bringing an element of style and height into vert riding." That's a real distinction worth making. The flatground tailwhip some sources credit to Blyther is a different trick from the tailwhip air -- Legend Bike Co's own Haro history page credits Joe Johnson, Blyther's teammate, with landing the first tailwhip air. Both claims come from period sources, and trick-invention credit from the mid-1980s is often genuinely disputed rather than settled. What isn't disputed is the style. Riders and writers of the era describe him as one of the smoothest, highest, most effortless-looking vert riders of his generation -- a reputation that outlasted any single trick.

After freestyle's crash

Blyther kept riding through the 1990s and 2000s in fits and starts -- an Invert magazine cover and interview in 1991, a Freedom magazine cover in 1997, a comeback appearance at the 2001 Soul Bowl contest where he was still airing to icepick and carving high-speed manuals through the bowl, brief sponsor stints with Giant (2002) and Terrible One (2003). In April 2004 he broke his neck -- two vertebrae -- in an accident while out with friends in the desert. He recovered and became a police officer.

He's stayed connected to Haro and to BMX since. In 2015 and 2016, Haro released tribute editions of the FST bearing his name. He was photographed riding a modern FST tribute bike at Fontana Skate Park for a 2015 DIG X Snakebite podcast interview, and continues to show up at reunion rides and events.

National BMX Hall of Fame, 2015

Brian Blyther was inducted into the National BMX Hall of Fame's Class of 2015 as a Freestyler, alongside Christophe Leveque (Racer), Bob Tedesco (Industry), Frank Post (Pioneer Racer), Kathy Schachel (Woman), and Ron Mackler (Special Recognition) -- a class Legend Bike Co's own Frank Post page also documents. The ceremony was held October 10, 2015.

Where Brian Blyther fits in the bigger story

Blyther, Mike Dominguez, and Eddie Fiola formed the visible face of Southern California vert and skatepark freestyle through the mid-to-late 1980s, all three cover regulars in the same magazines, all three friends and rivals from the same Pipeline-and-Vans-team generation before scattering across Haro, Hutch, Diamond Back, and GT. The bigger arc is in our History of BMX series.

Sources

Freestylin' — Generation F: 1984-1989, edited by Mark Lewman, Andy Jenkins, and Spike Jonze (Endo Publishing LLC / Nike SB, 2008) — Brian Blyther interview, pp. 72-75. Freestylin' II: The Book by Mark Lewman and Craig "Gork" Barrette (Wizard Publications, 1987) — Blyther's helicopter demonstration, printed pg. ~126-127. 23mag.com — "Brian Wayne Blyther" people archive, citing period issues of Freestylin', BMX Plus!, Super BMX, American Freestyler, Bicross Magazine, Invert, Go, and Freedom. DIG BMX, "The Brian Blyther Podcast" (DIG X Snakebite, October 27, 2015), quoting DIG 65, July/August 2008. Legend Bike Co's own Haro and Frank Post pages, cross-checked for consistency. oldschoolmags.com and bmxsociety.com were checked for independent coverage; no material beyond what's cited above was found there at the time of research.