BMX Racing History · Track File · Legend Bike Co

Corona Raceway: The Downhill That Scared the Fast Kids

Picture a ten-year-old grabbing a fistful of brake halfway down the start hill, eyes wide, because the ground just dropped out from under him. That was Corona. Most tracks back in the 70s were flat lots with a couple of berms scraped into the dirt — Corona was a mountain. The BMX track sat inside the Corona Raceway motorsports complex, and that start hill was so steep the fast kids would hit the first sweeper carrying more speed than anywhere else in the country. For a few short years in the late 70s, nothing in BMX rode like it.

The Mountain

The Corona Raceway complex opened in 1971 as a dirt-oval and motocross facility. The BMX downhill showed up late in 1975 — Bicycle Motocross News was "scoping out the new Corona downhill track" in its November 1975 issue. Rick Troy did the design. Period coverage ties the racing program to Steve and Nancy Rink out of their Peddlepower Bike Shop. And if that name rings a bell, it should. Steve Rink is the same guy who helped build the very first Torker prototype, then went on to found Powerlite, which GT bought in 1989. See the note below, though — who actually ran the program is more contested than that clean sentence suggests.

John Ker, who shot for BMX Plus! for years, called Corona only a few hundred yards long but famous for that steep opening straightaway, one of the most radical BMX courses anybody had seen in America. Talk to the riders who were there and the details come back fast. A dump truck hauling kids and bikes up the start hill about fifteen at a time. Racers spinning out their gears fifty feet past the gate, already out of teeth to push. A left-hand sweeper that pulled enough G-force to throw a first-timer clean up and over the berm.

The Races

The big one was the Big Mama. That was Corona's signature race, and it pulled enough weight that Bicycle Motocross News stuck Kevin McNeal on the cover for Big Mama part II in July 1977. McNeal was Torker's first real star and a Corona local — they called him the Corona Kid. The story goes he got clocked at over 50 mph coming down that start hill. Now, that one may have grown a little in the retelling, and we'll flag it as rider memory rather than gospel. The Norwalk Classic ran here in 1976. The California Gold Cup came that October. And on September 17, 1978 the ABA brought its Fall Nationals to Corona, which BMX Action wrote up as "Confrontation at Corona."

Corona's other mark on history hangs on every collector's wall. The first cover BMX Action ever printed, December 1976, was shot right here at Corona, Brian Lewis up in the air for the camera.

The Riders

Lee Medlin rode the first race of his life at Corona on January 12, 1977, thirteen years old, and went on to take NBA Grandnational titles in 1979 and 1980. Kevin McNeal carried the track's name onto the national stage on a Torker. And just about every fast kid in Riverside and Orange County who wanted to find out whether he was brave came to Corona to get his answer.

Who Actually Ran It

Steve and Nancy Rink's Peddlepower Bike Shop is where the operational record points, per the period coverage cited above — that's the throughline in Bicycle Motocross News and the recollections gathered from the era. But it isn't the only account. Craig Kundig's ABA Hall of Fame nomination material, covered in Legend Bike Co's RRS Racing chapter, credits Kundig himself with running Corona's BMX program around 1981, and says he was the one forced to shut it down when the property sold to homebuilders.

Legend Bike Co owner Bill Ryan raced at Corona as a kid, and his memory lines up with Kundig's account: Kundig running the track, the Rinks around the place, but — in Bill's recollection — there supporting their own company and team rather than running the operation. Bill's upfront that he was about twelve years old at the time and isn't claiming he had the full picture. Between the period coverage, Kundig's Hall of Fame record, and Bill's recollection, who actually ran Corona's BMX program is a genuinely open question. We're not picking a side here — we're showing you what each account says.

The End

The raceway land got sold off for housing in the mid-80s. Accounts differ on the year — some say 1984, some say 1985 — so we'll leave it there rather than pretend we know. The houses are still standing. The mountain is gone.