Bubba Harris

Three Straight No. 1 Pro Titles, a UCI World Championship, and the Olympic Team He Never Got to Join

A Legend Bike Co. rider page · built from Bubba Harris's ABA and UCI record, period BMX press, and Bill Ryan's firsthand account

At a glance

Level AA Pro, Elite Men
Nationality American, born August 7, 1985
Team Redline Bicycles (1999–2008) → Answer BMX Products (2009–2010) → Supercross BMX (2010–2012) → Doublecross Bikes (2012) → Badd & Company → back to Supercross BMX today, as Factory Team Captain
Known for Three consecutive ABA No. 1 Pro titles (2004, 2005, 2006); 2005 UCI BMX World Champion; USA BMX Hall of Fame, Class of 2023

Bubba Harris won three straight national Pro titles before he was old enough to legally rent a car, and he did it racing the 20-inch class the hard way — no shortcuts, no easy years. He is also, by his own account and everyone else's, one of the people it's genuinely hard to find a bad word about in BMX. He never made an Olympic team, and the story of why is one of the tougher breaks in the sport's history.

Seven Years Old, a Huffy, and a Fast Start

Harris started racing on his seventh birthday, August 7, 1992, when his father took him to a local BMX track and he was hooked immediately on a Huffy. He picked up his first sponsor, AXO, within a year, moved to Answer Products as an amateur from 1994, and signed with Redline Bicycles in 1999 — the sponsor he'd turn pro with two years later. He turned professional in November 2001 at age 16, right after the ABA Grand Nationals, alongside Redline teammate Kim Hayashi. His first Senior Pro win came at the ABA Empire Nationals in Kingston, New York, on May 18, 2003.

Three in a Row

In 2004, at 18, Harris became the youngest rider ever to hold the ABA No. 1 Pro title in the 20-inch Senior Pro class. He then won it again in 2005 and again in 2006 — three consecutive national titles, tying a feat only one other rider, Terry Tenette, had managed before him in that class (Tenette did it in 1990–92 in the NBL). Along the way he added the 2005 UCI BMX World Championship in the Elite Men category and the 2005 ABA Race of Champions title. He was ABA BMXer magazine's Professional of the Year four times — 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2007 — and a BMX Plus! Pro of the Year in the same years.

The Ankle That Cost Him the Olympics

Harris was on track for a fourth straight No. 1 Pro title and a real shot at the first US Olympic BMX team when everything went sideways. On August 20, 2007 — exactly one year before BMX competition was set to begin at the Beijing Games — he dislocated his left ankle at the talus bone during a time trial run on the actual Olympic track in Beijing. Doctors nearly amputated the foot. He fought back through three months of recovery, sat out the 2007 Grands, and pushed through constant pain to keep racing into 2008, even winning an NBL Elite Men title in West Palm Beach that March while putting off the surgery he needed. Then, on June 12, 2008 — two days before the Olympic Trials — he broke his other ankle in a practice crash on the Trials track, a replica of the Beijing course at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista. He had to withdraw. On June 14, Harris stood in the crowd and cheered as his good friend Mike Day won the Trials and locked up a spot on the first US Olympic BMX team. A few days later, Harris had surgery to clean out the bone chips still floating in his other ankle from the injury the year before.

Redline, Then the Comeback

Redline released Harris from his contract on July 21, 2008, citing the toll his injuries had taken on his ability to fulfill it — a mutual, no-hard-feelings split after nearly nine years together, by Harris's own public statement at the time. He signed with Answer BMX Products in March 2009, the sponsor that had first brought him to national prominence as an amateur, and returned to racing at the ABA Winter Nationals in Phoenix that same month.

Joining Supercross

In 2010, after a year with Answer, Harris joined the Supercross BMX factory team, racing the Envy frameset. He stayed through April 2012, then moved to Doublecross Bikes for the remainder of that season. Per Bill Ryan, founder of Supercross BMX, Harris's path from there ran through a stint with Badd & Company before he made his way back to Supercross — the team he's with today, where he now serves as Factory Team Captain. He co-captains alongside fellow Supercross legend and Olympic-era contemporary Māris Štrombergs, who returned to the team in November 2024. Supercross's own SX450 frame line still carries his name — the SX450 Bubba Harris Edition — and Bill Ryan describes him as one of the people who raced cro-mo against an entire elite field on carbon and came within a whisker of winning it anyway, because he loved the bike.

Hall of Fame, and Home at Black Mountain

In 2023, Harris was inducted into the USA BMX Hall of Fame as a first-ballot nominee, honored as the Modern Day Racer inductee at a ceremony in Tulsa, Oklahoma that drew more than 200 BMX fans and riders. Today his home track is Black Mountain BMX in Phoenix, Arizona, where per Bill Ryan he coaches in front of hundreds of kids three times a week — the same low-key, high-value role Supercross has leaned on him for since he stopped racing full-time. He and Bill Ryan are close friends.

Where the public record runs thin

Harris's exact stint and dates with Badd & Company, and the precise timeline of his most recent return to Supercross BMX after Doublecross, are documented here through Bill Ryan's firsthand account. Independent period BMX press covering 2012 forward on Harris is thin in the sources checked for this page, and nothing beyond Bill Ryan's account was found to confirm those specific details.

Where Bubba Harris fits in the bigger story

Team: Supercross BMX, co-captained today with Māris Štrombergs. Founder: Bill Ryan. Friend and fellow 2008 Olympic Trials competitor: Mike Day. Sanctioning history: ABA, USA BMX. The bigger arc is in our History of BMX series.

Sources

Wikipedia, "Bubba Harris" — birth details, sponsor timeline, national title record, the 2007 and 2008 ankle injuries, and the Redline release statement. USA BMX, 2023 BMX Hall of Fame Inductees announcement (usabmx.com, July 14, 2023) and Bicycle Retailer & Industry News coverage of the same. Ride BMX, "Bubba Harris and Redline Will Be a Winning Combo Up to 2008" (January 3, 2006). Supercross BMX, "History of Supercross BMX," supercrossbmx.com — his description as part of the Supercross team family and the SX450 Bubba Harris Edition frame. Bill Ryan, founder of Supercross BMX — firsthand account of Harris's career arc after 2012, his coaching role at Black Mountain BMX, and their friendship, as published on his own Legend Bike Co. page.