BMX Racing History · Track File · Legend Bike Co

Corona Raceway: The Downhill That Scared the Fast Kids

Most tracks of the 70s were flat lots with berms. Corona was a mountain. The BMX track at the Corona Raceway motorsports complex dropped riders down a start hill so steep that ten-year-olds remember grabbing brake halfway down, and the fast kids hit the first sweeper carrying more speed than any other track in America would give them. For a few years in the late 70s, this was the wildest ride in BMX.

The Mountain

The Corona Raceway complex opened in 1971 as a dirt-oval and motocross facility. The BMX downhill came in late 1975 — Bicycle Motocross News was "scoping out the new Corona downhill track" in its November 1975 issue. The track was designed primarily by Rick Troy, and the racing program was created and run by Steve and Nancy Rink of Peddlepower Bike Shop. If the name sounds familiar, it should: Steve Rink is the same man who helped build the first Torker prototype and later founded Powerlite, which GT bought in 1989.

John Ker, the longtime BMX Plus! photographer, described Corona as only a few hundred yards long but famous for its steep opening straightaway and a reputation as one of the most radical BMX courses in America. Riders remember a dump truck hauling kids and bikes up the start hill about fifteen at a time, riders spinning out their gears fifty feet past the gate, and a left-hand sweeper that generated enough G-force to carry a first-timer up and over the berm.

The Races

The big one was the Big Mama — Corona's signature race, big enough that Bicycle Motocross News put Kevin McNeal on the cover for Big Mama part II in July 1977. McNeal, Torker's first star and a Corona local they called the Corona Kid, is remembered — the story may have grown in the telling, and we flag it as rider memory — being clocked at over 50 mph down the start hill. The Norwalk Classic ran here in 1976, the California Gold Cup that October, and on September 17, 1978 the ABA brought its Fall Nationals to Corona — covered by BMX Action as "Confrontation at Corona."

Corona's other claim on history is printed on every collector's wall: the first-ever cover of BMX Action, December 1976, was shot at Corona, with Brian Lewis flying for the camera.

The Riders

Lee Medlin rode his first race ever at Corona on January 12, 1977, at age 13, and went on to win NBA Grandnational titles in 1979 and 1980. Kevin McNeal carried the track's name onto the national stage with Torker. And every fast kid in Riverside and Orange County who wanted to find out if they were brave came to Corona to learn the answer.

The End

The raceway property was sold off for housing development in the mid-1980s — accounts differ between 1984 and 1985, and we say so rather than pick. The houses are still there. The mountain is gone.