A BMX History Library chapter · United Kingdom section

Damon Parkinson

First UKBMX national he ever turned up to, he beat Raleigh's number one. Then he went Pro at an age when most riders are still in 16 Expert

Legend Bike Co · BMX heritage series

British BMX in the eighties kept its own scoreboard, and the scoreboard is unforgiving. A number one plate makes you a name. Everything else gets filed under also-there. That is how a rider can be quick enough to beat the reigning national number one on debut, quick enough to hold a Pro three plate against the best generation Britain ever produced, and still end up as somebody you have to go looking for.

Damon Parkinson never won a British number one. He beat plenty of people who did.

A Team Murray and a trophy dash

The first bike was not a race bike. It was an orange and black Team Murray off the shelf at Halfords in 1979, seventy-nine pounds and ninety-nine pence, and it took four more years before it turned into anything.

His first race was in 1983 at the Band Arena in Morecambe, and it was exactly one race. He did not make the final. He got into the trophy dash instead — the consolation event — and won that. Then he went home.

What changed it was a track being built. When the BMX track went in at the Pontins holiday camp he started racing properly, on a Raleigh Burner with steel skinny tires, which is about as ordinary a starting point as British BMX offered. In his own words: loved it.

The Pontins track mattered for another reason, and it is the single luckiest thing in this story. The two riders who lived there and ran the place were Mike Pardon and Andy Preston — the two men doing the freestyle segments on British Saturday morning television, and two of the best riders in the country. Pardon taught him to speed jump the big wooden tabletop. Pardon also held the fastest lap around Pontins, which gave a teenager something specific to chase. He eventually took it off him.

The other target was Jonathan Higginson, who raced for the family that published BMX Bi-Weekly out of Morecambe and was ferociously quick out of the gate. Parkinson set himself the job of beating him down the first straight, got stronger, and did.

Getting to races meant a Ford Transit. His father worked at the power station at Heysham and had access to one, and before Parkinson could drive it was both transport and, on the bad weekends, accommodation. He has described a lot of cold nights in that van. That is how most of British BMX traveled and almost none of it gets written down.

Slough, 1986

He raced the North West circuit — Wigan, Ribby Hall, Kendal, the old Chorley track down in the quarry, Preston. Wigan was the one he rated. His first national was at Birmingham Wheels, where by his account he mostly stood around being awed by Stu Diggens and did not remember his own result.

Then came 1986, and the race everybody who knows his name knows him for.

The UKBMX season opener at Slough was the first UKBMX national he had ever attended. He entered 16 Expert, one of the deepest classes in the country, and he won it — coming past Darren Wood, Raleigh's national number one, before the finish line.

The two surviving accounts of how differ in emphasis and agree on the fact. The British BMX Hall of Fame writes it as a pass on the number one before the line. Parkinson himself is blunter about it: he says he won because Wood slipped his pedals down the last straight. Both things can be true in the same fifty yards, and the fact that the man who won it tells the less flattering version of the two is worth noting.

Either way, a rider whose entire national experience to that point was one confused afternoon at Birmingham Wheels beat the number one plate on debut.

Straight through Superclass and into Pro

He did not stay in 16 Expert. He went Superclass, barely, and then turned Pro — by his own admission he cannot remember much about the Superclass period because it did not last long.

Pro in Britain in the late eighties meant lining up against Andy Ruffell, Tim March and Geth Shooter, which is the top of the sport in that country in that decade. His summary of it is characteristically level: he was small but a powerful rider, and he held his own.

He describes racing as a strength event rather than a sprint. He liked long tracks — Spalding is the one he names — because he came on toward the end of a lap. He trained for it by letting the gate drop at local races, deliberately hanging back, and then working his way through the pack. Not at pro meets, he is careful to add.

He ended up with a three plate: national number three, Pro, before the Pro class in Britain was shut down in 1988. He blames that on BMX politics and the loss of funding, and he is not the only rider in this library who says so.

His favorite tracks were Wigan in the north and Farnham in the south. The race he says he would rerun is the Farnham pro race, where he came closer to beating Geth Shooter than he ever did anywhere else. He looked up to Shooter, describes him as fast and skillful, and clearly enjoyed the times he took him.

The Torker cover

He was one of the riders BMX Bi-Weekly used as a test rider, which in a fortnightly with a bike test in nearly every issue meant regular pages. It also got him a front cover, dated to September or October 1985, riding for Torker.

Torker in Britain at that point was being run by Alans of Wigan, who had bought the stock at auction in February 1985 after the American company filed for bankruptcy, and who kept a British race team on the brand while the market fell away underneath it. Alan Woods, looking at that cover shot decades later, described Parkinson on it as looking full factory and admitted he could not tell from the angle whether the bike was a Torker 280 or a Pro-X, though he leaned toward the Pro-X.

Parkinson's own verdict on the bike is one line long and it is not a review any distributor would print: he did not get on with that Torker at all.

Both things are in the record and both belong on this page. A cover shot is a piece of history. So is a rider saying, forty years later, that he hated the bike.

Australia

The trip he calls the highlight came to him second-hand. An Australian event was run on the basis of the two best riders from each country, and Geth Shooter had left the NBMXA, so the seat went to Parkinson instead. He says openly that Shooter should really have gone, and wonders whether that is where any friction between them started.

What he got out of it was a fortnight of being treated like a visiting star, including riding wheelies around a television studio on a show he compares to Tiswas. The racing was another level: Gary Ellis, Todd Corbitt, Todd Blazer and Anthony Waye among them. He hit the gate in his semi-final and went out.

He went back afterward for four months, stayed with the Naumann family, and got picked up by Dean Crisp of Crisp Racing. He describes that spell as flying — and then he crashed badly, hurt himself, and decided on the spot to come home.

At his first national back in Britain, at Hounslow, the Crisp bike was stolen. That is where the Australian chapter ends.

The end, and what he took from it

The finish is soft-edged, the way most racing careers actually finish. He thinks his last race was a national at Chorley but will not swear to it, because by then he was twenty-two and a father and the whole period runs together.

The two pieces of advice he still quotes come from Tony Hoffman and from his own dad. Hoffman told him to firm up his handshake, which he reports having overcorrected. His father spotted something more useful: that his son had a mental block about Kim Carbutt, had decided Carbutt was simply better and was settling for sitting behind him. His dad told him he could beat the bloke. He beat him in the very next race.

Asked for the highlight of the whole thing, he lists beating Shooter now and again, Australia, America, and staying at a rider's house where Greg Hill turned up and he could not stop staring.

Then, at the end of a long interview about a career that ended more than thirty years earlier: he still misses all of it.

Where the record runs thin

Timeline

• 1979 — first bike, an orange and black Team Murray from Halfords, £79.99.
• 1983 — first race, a single meeting at the Band Arena, Morecambe. Misses the final, wins the trophy dash.
• Around 1984 — the Pontins track is built and he starts racing properly on a Raleigh Burner with steel skinny tires. Mike Pardon and Andy Preston, who live there and run the track, teach him to speed jump.
• Mid-1980s — rides for Bay Motors on a Puch Challenger Pro frame, then Coastline BMX, then Jonathan Higginson. First national at Birmingham Wheels.
• September or October 1985 — front cover of BMX Bi-Weekly on his Torker, while riding for the Alans-run British Torker team.
• 1986 — wins 16 Expert at the UKBMX season opener at Slough, the first UKBMX national he ever attended, passing Raleigh's national number one Darren Wood.
• Late 1980s — turns Superclass and then Pro, racing against Andy Ruffell, Tim March and Geth Shooter. Ends up with a national number three plate.
• Late 1980s — travels to Australia in Geth Shooter's place, races Gary Ellis, Todd Corbitt, Todd Blazer and Anthony Waye, and goes out in the semi-final after hitting the gate. Returns for four months with the Naumann family and rides for Dean Crisp.
• 1988 — the Pro class in Britain is wound up.
• Around 1990 to 1992 — last races, probably a national at Chorley. Sources differ on the closing year.
• 14 March 2025 — the British BMX Hall of Fame publishes his full interview, which is the backbone of this chapter.

Why he counts

Because the way British BMX remembers itself has a hole in it, and he sits in the hole.

The number one plates get the chapters. Everyone else gets a line in a results table, if the results table survived at all, and the eighties British BMX results tables mostly did not. What is left is what riders can remember and what somebody thought to print. Damon Parkinson's whole documented career is one Hall of Fame profile, one long interview, a handful of bike tests and a magazine cover.

And inside that, a rider who beat the national number one plate the first time he turned up to a UKBMX national, went Pro young enough that he skipped most of Superclass on the way, held a three plate against Ruffell, March and Shooter, and raced two continents before he was old enough to be settled anywhere.

He is also, for our purposes, the second half of a proof. The reason a previous search of the British racing record went looking for a freestyler named Julian Parkinson and returned Damon instead is that Damon is genuinely there, in the racing archive, under the right surname, on the right brand, in the right years. It was a good near-miss. It was still a miss. There were two of them.

Sources

British BMX Hall of Fame, "Interview — Damon Parkinson," britishbmxhalloffame.com, 14 March 2025 — the Team Murray from Halfords in 1979 at £79.99; the single 1983 race at the Band Arena, Morecambe and the trophy dash win; the Pontins track and the Raleigh Burner with steel skinnies; the North West circuit of Wigan, Ribby Hall, Kendal, the old Chorley quarry track and Preston; his father's Transit from the Heysham power station; Mike Pardon and Andy Preston living at and running Pontins, the speed jumping lessons and the Pontins lap record; Jonathan Higginson and the gate battles; Wigan and Farnham as favorite tracks; Spalding and the hold-back training method; the full team list of Bay Motors with the Puch Challenger Pro frame, Coastline BMX, Jonathan Higginson, Torker, Thruster Gee Tee Signs and Crisp Racing; racing from about 1984 to 1992; the first national at Birmingham Wheels and Stu Diggens; the 1986 win over Darren Wood; the BMX Bi-Weekly test riding and the Torker cover, and his verdict on the bike; the Kendal greenstick fracture and the slate trophy; Superclass into Pro and the gate with Ruffell, March and Shooter; the three plate; the Farnham pro race against Geth Shooter; the Australia trip in Shooter's place, the television studio, Gary Ellis, Todd Corbitt, Todd Blazer and Anthony Waye, the semi-final gate, the four-month return with the Naumann family and Dean Crisp, the crash, and the Crisp bike stolen at Hounslow; his view of the 1988 end of the Pro class; the last race at Chorley; and the advice from Tony Hoffman and his father about Kim Carbutt. British BMX Hall of Fame profile of Damon Parkinson, as quoted in full by Alans BMX — that he never won a National Number One plate in the UK; that the 1986 Slough win was the UKBMX season opener, in 16 Expert, on his first ever attended UKBMX national, passing Raleigh's number one Darren Wood before the line; that he turned Superclass and then Pro and became national number three before the demise of the Pro class in 1988; that he graced the pages of BMX Bi-Weekly regularly as a test rider and scored a cover dated September to October 1985 while riding for Torker; and that he went back to Superclass in the late eighties and early nineties, spent time racing in Australia, and called it a day in 1990. Alan Woods, Alans BMX, "Countdown to T-Day," alansbmx.com, entry dated 2 April 2024 — the cover photograph itself, the full factory description, the uncertainty over whether the bike is a Torker 280 or a Pro-X, and the context of Alans buying Torker stock at auction in February 1985 and supporting it with a race team while British BMX was on the wane.

Checked and unreachable at the time of research: bmxsociety.com and bmxmuseum.com. The British BMX Hall of Fame rankings document covering 1981 to 2005 was not reachable during this research and has not been used to verify plate numbers here.

If you have race reports, a scan of the BMX Bi-Weekly cover, or results from the 1986 Slough national, that is what this chapter is missing. It can be sent through the contact page.

Last reviewed: August 2026. This chapter will be updated as source material surfaces.