Chris Moeller

Mad Dog, from Wizard Publications' Test Team to S&M Bikes (1987 to Today)

A Legend Bike Co. rider page · built from Freestylin' — Generation F: 1984–1989 (Wizard Publications material, Nike SB retrospective, Endo Publishing, 2008), 23mag.com's Chris Moeller archive, and Legend Bike Co.'s own S&M Bikes history

At a glance

Level Amateur/pro racer and freestyler, BMX Action test rider, brand founder
Scene Orange County, California, early-to-mid 1980s
Teams The Orange Y · Robinson Racing (1984) · Peddlepower (1986) · BMX Action Test Team (1986–87)
Known for Founding S&M Bikes in Santa Ana in 1987, and being one of the very few BMX brand founders still running his own company in the USA, almost forty years later

Chris "Mad Dog" Moeller was a teenager wrecking loaner bikes for a living before he ever built one of his own. Born September 7, 1970, he started racing in 1982 at 12 years old at the Orange Y, and grew up around the BMX industry almost by accident — he was friends with the Long family, who owned GT Bicycles, and was working in the business from age 12. By 16 he was one of the most recognizable faces in the pages of BMX Action. By 19 he owned a bike company outright. He's still running it.

Racing, wrestling, and a nickname he never liked

In 1984, at 14, Moeller worked in the office for Chuck Robinson and rode on the Robinson Racing support team. Two years later he was riding for Peddlepower, the National No. 1 bike shop team, and helping test forks and frames for Privateer Bicycles on the side.

The nickname came from high school wrestling, not BMX. "'Mad Dog' is one of the lamest nicknames ever," Moeller said years later. "Besides 'Flyin Brian,' 'Knarly Nick,' 'Insane Wayne,' and 'Radical Rick,' I can't think of anything I'd rather not be called." He got stuck with it on the wrestling mat, and it followed him into BMX media once Craig "Gork" Barrette — a nickname given, by Moeller's account, to people with long necks — started printing it.

Becoming a BMX Action test rider

Gork is also the reason Moeller ended up on BMX Action's test team. After a "Local Thrashin'" feature ran on the Lucky's trails in Huntington Beach in late 1986, Gork got Moeller's phone number from a friend: the magazine needed a medium-sized rider to wreck bikes for photos, and Moeller fit the job description. His first test bike was a Raleigh 777, ridden at trails in Santa Ana in late 1986 or early 1987. He was fifteen. "It was a lot of fun wrecking those bikes and I got paid," he said. "Plus I got my hands on a lot of parts that I could use or sell." He landed the cover of BMX Action in February 1987, no-foot one-hand, and another that June on Freestylin'.

Starting S&M

Moeller founded S&M Bikes in Santa Ana in 1987, a few months into his test-rider job, with a partner a little older than him who worked at a bike shop and had the connections to make it happen — Legend Bike Co.'s own S&M history names him as Greg "Scott" Swingrover, a fellow racer working the floor at South Coast Bike Shop with a frame jig and a TIG welder. The name took about five seconds: S for Scott, M for Moeller. The first frames were built by Cook Brothers before S&M brought production in-house. By the summer of 1990, Swingrover left to take a job at GT to support his young family, and the company became Moeller's alone — nineteen years old, no business school, no investors, just a catalog selling faster than it could be welded.

By 1989 Moeller's sponsor list read S&M, Airwalk, Life's a Beach, Dyno, GT, and ODI, and he was covering his own ABA entry fees by writing race reports for the association. He won the ABA's "King of Dirt" title in Oklahoma City in 1990, and worked a stretch as staff writer for GO: The Rider's Manual in 1991, the magazine Freestylin' folded into in late 1989.

Still on the bike, still running the shop

Moeller and S&M have never sold to a bigger company, never moved production overseas, and never handed the brand to anyone outside the sport — a run Legend Bike Co.'s own S&M history calls one of the rarest in BMX. He's appeared at BMX Hall of Fame and Museum events in Tulsa in recent years and is widely referred to in BMX media and podcasts as a Hall of Famer, though this page could not confirm a specific induction year from the sources checked — see below.

Where the public record runs thin

Chris Moeller's hometown and family background beyond his early Orange County racing scene are not documented in the sources checked for this page. References to him as a "BMX Hall of Famer" turn up repeatedly in BMX press and podcast descriptions, and he has appeared at BMX Hall of Fame and Museum functions in Tulsa, but no source checked here confirms a specific induction year or which hall — there is more than one BMX hall of fame. That detail is left open rather than guessed at.

Where Chris Moeller fits in the bigger story

Brands: S&M Bikes, GT Bicycles, Dyno. Publications: BMX Action, Freestylin'. People: Craig "gOrk" Barrette. Spots: The Orange Y. The bigger arc is in our History of BMX series.

Sources

23mag.com — Christopher Lawrence Moeller biography page (sourced there to Bicross magazine, ababmx.com, BMX Action, Ride BMX UK, BMX Plus!, Aggrorag, Cream, ridebmx.com, os-bmx.com, and thecomeupboard.com), including direct Moeller quotes on the "Mad Dog" nickname and his path onto the BMX Action test team. Legend Bike Co., S&M Bikes — The Rider-Owned Brand That Wouldn't Quit — the founding story, the Swingrover partnership and departure, and the company's continuous USA production. Freestylin' — Generation F: 1984–1989 (Wizard Publications material, Nike SB retrospective, Endo Publishing, 2008) — Moeller's teenage test-rider profile, pp. 38–39. Biltwell Inc., "Chris Moeller: BMX's King of American Metal" (biltwellinc.com). oldschoolmags.com and bmxsociety.com were checked for independent period coverage; general BMX archive material only turned up, disclosed accordingly.