Legend Bike Co — BMX History Project · Riders & Builders

Dave Nourie

Dave Nourie signed with Haro Bikes in 1985 and rode the brand's very first summer tour that year, sharing the bill with team captain Ron Wilkerson and Brian "Flyin'" Blyther. Riding flatland, Nourie built a career on invention rather than raw contest wins — the Gumby, the trick that earned him his nickname, came together fifteen minutes before a routine and stuck around in flatland's vocabulary for the next four decades.

The rock-walk that started it (1981)

Nourie has told the story of how he got into freestyle more than once. At sixteen, in 1981, he saw another kid do a rock-walk on a BMX bike. "From that day on all I could think about was how I could play, ride and make up tricks on my 20-inch bike," he said. "I lived to ride — to the beach, around town, in jam circles — and to practice my new-found expression."

1984 — First contest, first magazine photo

Nourie won the 17-and-over novice class in flatland at an AFA contest in Huntington Beach in 1984, riding aggressive ground moves built on originality rather than a standard trick list. The photo that ran from that contest was his first magazine appearance — he bought the issue on his lunch break at a 7-Eleven two months after the event. The AFA contest series he was climbing through was Bob Morales's organization — Morales founded the AFA after running Dyno's freestyle side, and it's the AFA ladder, round by round, that carries Nourie's whole documented contest record from here forward.

1985 — Signing with Haro and inventing the Gumby

Nourie signed with Haro in 1985, riding the brand's Neon Green Master. The Gumby — a handstand that twisted underneath the bike, arm waving to the crowd — came together fifteen minutes before his run at the AFA Masters in San Diego that January (Round 1, January 26, 1985, per period AFA event records). By his own account, he built it off Robert Peterson's no-footer trick, the "Peterson," done while holding the front brake; Nourie had no front brake at the time, so he improvised. His mother was in the crowd taking photos, and she insisted he work the new move into his run. It became the first trick of his set that day.

At AFA Masters Round 2 in Pleasanton that year, Nourie won the pro ground competition without ever touching the ground. That same summer he rode Haro's first-ever summer tour with Ron Wilkerson as team captain and Brian Blyther alongside him, with Jon Peterson announcing. At AFA Masters Round 4 in Huntington Beach, he placed 3rd in pro flatland and 4th in pro ramp, and he appeared in BMX Plus!'s how-to video series entry "Freestyle Raddest Tricks."

The Nourie Stand — a second signature move

The Gumby wasn't the only trick that carries his name in flatland's vocabulary. Nourie is also credited with inventing the Nourie Stand, a second signature move that sits alongside the Gumby, the Funky Chicken, and the Fire Hydrant in the deep bag of moves that made him a standout performer through the mid-to-late 1980s. Unlike the Gumby, the Nourie Stand doesn't have a single documented origin story in the sources checked for this page — it's referenced by name in later career retrospectives without a dated first-performance account.

1986–1987 — Magazines and the AFA circuit

Nourie placed 8th in pro flatland at AFA Masters Round 4 in New York in September 1986, and that October, Freestylin' ran his trick page on "The Organ Grinder" in issue #17. In March 1987, at AFA Masters Round 2 in Portland, he rode what he later called the hottest routine of his life — including a Miami hopper peg spin — before falling at the very end. Freestylin' ran a full interview with him that July, American Freestyler published his how-tos that September, and Homeboy put him on the cover inset of its first issue that winter.

The long middle and the reunion years

Nourie appeared in Haro's Team Freestyle Video in 1989. He kept riding on and off through the 1990s — at a 1995 BS contest in Moreno Valley he entered pro and placed 12th, working through his 1987-style tricks including barhop nosewheelies and the Gumby, and he was back on the Worlds stage in Cologne, Germany, in 1996, doing all his old moves, Gumby included.

Nourie has stayed active in the old-school BMX reunion circuit since: Woodward West's Old School BMX Reunion in 2011, Worlds in Cologne again in 2012, a stop in Cavaillon, France, in 2013, and Avignon, France, in February 2019, where he entered the pro division of the Master of Creativity contest, placed 14th overall, and won the event's people's-choice title.

Life after the boom, and a 2025 return to the spotlight

Like most riders from freestyle's first wave, Nourie hit a stretch when the sponsorship money and the sold-out demos thinned out as the 1980s BMX boom cooled. By his own account, in a 2025 interview on Infanity TV's The Rick Thorne Show, he worked ordinary jobs through that period — delivering pizzas and working sales for the motocross apparel brand JT Racing — while never fully stepping away from riding. A BMX Society community forum thread on 2000s-era freestyle frames also lists a sample geometry spec'd specifically for Nourie, a small sign that brands were still building around his name and riding style well into the 2000s.

Nourie sat down with host Rick Thorne for that October 2025 interview at nearly 60 years old, running through the Haro years, the Gumby, and his current teaching work. As of that interview he was still riding, still performing the Gumby on demand, and treating flatland's foundational tricks as something to hand down rather than retire.

Where he is now

Nourie runs Nourie's Bike Academy, teaching flatland fundamentals to newer riders, and continues to post old-school flatland tutorials and history videos.

That teaching work is also documented under the name Dave Nourie Academy in more recent coverage, alongside an active social media presence — tutorials, throwback footage, and old-school flatland instruction — that keeps him connected to a new generation of riders learning the discipline he helped invent.

Where the record runs thin: Nourie's National BMX Hall of Fame status is inconsistent across sources — some later profiles call him an inductee, while at least one of his own professional profiles lists him as a nominee, so this page does not state it as confirmed either way. Details of his life and business activity outside BMX in recent years come from a single secondary profile and aren't independently corroborated here. The Nourie Stand's exact invention date and first-performance venue are not documented in any source checked for this page, unlike the precisely dated Gumby. The exact years and duration of his pizza-delivery and JT Racing sales work are not pinned down beyond his own general account in the 2025 Rick Thorne Show interview.
Related Legend Bike Co pages:
History of BMX · Haro · Bob Haro · Ron Wilkerson · Freestylin' Magazine · BMX Plus! · Bob Morales

Sources

23mag.com — Dave Nourie profile, sourced from BMX Plus!, Ride BMX UK, and Nourie's own Facebook posts (2012–2013), including the precise January 26, 1985 AFA Masters Round 1 San Diego date. SplendidBMX — "About Dave Nourie: Pro BMXer Profile, Biography and History" (2025). Chris Lynch, Ride BMX UK, June 1995 event report. Period AFA Masters and Worlds contest records via 23mag.com event archives. Alexis Ibarra, "The Living Legend of BMX: How Dave Nourie is Keeping the Old School Alive," InfanityTV, October 24, 2025 — source for the pizza-delivery and JT Racing sales jobs, the Nourie Stand trick credit, and the October 2025 Rick Thorne Show interview. bmxsociety.com community forum thread, "NEW SCHOOL BMX (2001 to present)" (site: search per Legend Bike Co's standing primary-source protocol; snippet only, disclosed) — reference to a 2000s-era frame spec'd for Nourie. Bob Morales chapter on this site, for the AFA founding context.