Dean Bradley

The Editor Who Put "Mountain Bike" in Print First

A Legend Bike Co. industry page · sources: Dean Bradley's own account published by Mountain Bike Action, Charlie Kelly of MountainBikes, BMXmuseum.com, and industry press

At a glance

Role Magazine contributor, editor, photographer, then bicycle product developer
Scene Southern California BMX magazine world, late 1970s–1980s; bicycle industry product design, 1990s onward
Magazines Minicycle/BMX Action, BMX Plus!, Skateboarder (Surfer Publications), Mountain Bike Action (founding editor)
Known for Writing the first magazine review of a production mountain bike in 1980, then a long run designing bicycle products for Haro, Schwinn, Giant, and Electra

Dean Bradley never lined up at a BMX gate for a living. His mark on BMX and mountain bike history was made with a typewriter, a camera, and later a drafting table — first as a magazine editor who put the words "Mountain Bike" into print before most of the country had heard the term, then as a product designer who spent decades building the bikes he used to write about.

From Contributor to Associate Editor

Bradley's magazine career started small, contributing photos and stories to BMX Plus! and Minicycle/BMX Action, the magazine Bob Osborn and Wizard Publications built into what riders of the era called the bible of BMX. That work turned into a full-time job as associate editor at BMX Action. From there he moved to Surfer Publications as contributing editor of Skateboarder, then came back to BMX Plus! — the job he held in early 1980, when he wrote the review that put him in cycling history for reasons that had nothing to do with BMX.

The First Magazine Review of a Mountain Bike

In the fall of 1979, Gary Fisher and Charlie Kelly started a company called MountainBikes, building frames with Tom Ritchey. One of the first nine bikes went to a Southern California rider named Monte Ward, whose friend happened to be Dean Bradley, then editor of BMX Plus!. According to Charlie Kelly's own account, published on his Fat Tire Flyer site, Bradley didn't even know how to spell Tom Ritchey's name, and the bike didn't have decals yet. None of that stopped him from writing the line that mattered: "This month's 26-inch test bike is called a Mountain Bike. Chances are you have never heard of it before, but believe me, you will be hearing a lot about this revolutionary bike in the future." That review ran in BMX Plus! in February 1980, alongside the first ad MountainBikes ever placed — and it's the piece of writing that brought the new sport to the attention of off-road riders across Southern California.

Founding Editor of Mountain Bike Action

Six years later, Hi-Torque Publishing — the company behind BMX Action and BMX Plus! — decided to test-market a one-off mountain bike special. Publisher Roland Hinz asked Bradley to build it. By Bradley's own account, published years later in an interview with Mountain Bike Action, he wrote nearly every article and shot nearly every photo in that first issue himself, on the understanding that he'd only agreed to do one. The issue, which hit newsstands in the summer of 1986, covered bike tests, racing, maintenance, and land access, plus lighter material Bradley wrote himself, including a photo of a pizza laid over a bike wheel captioned as an "edible aerodynamic Olympic wheel cover." The issue succeeded, Mountain Bike Action kept going without him, and Bradley moved on to other work, as he'd planned from the start.

From the Newsstand to the Product Line

After leaving Hi-Torque, Bradley stayed in the bike industry but moved from writing about bikes to designing them. He did advertising and copywriting work, then moved into bicycle product development for a run of well-known brands: Haro Designs, Schwinn, Giant, Electra, and Public Bikes. At Haro, he was part of the team behind the 1994 Haro Monocoque Series — a lightweight racing frame he described as good engineering rather than "rocket science," according to BMXmuseum.com's reference page on the model. He later became vice president of product development at Electra Bicycle Company, where industry press described him as the brand's resident retro expert, drawing on roughly three decades in the cycling business by that point.

Still Behind the Camera

Bradley never fully left the BMX photo archive behind. In 2018, under the byline DRB PhotoSports, he published a short reflection alongside a 1983 shot of rider Mickey Lundy at Parks BMX in Southern California — a photo he'd taken himself back when he was covering the sport for BMX Action. The piece wasn't about equipment or results. It was about why people rode BMX bikes in dirt lots in the first place, written by someone who had been photographing that exact thing since the 1970s and '80s.

Where the public record runs thin

Dean Bradley's birth details, hometown, and any competitive BMX racing history are not documented in the period magazine archives or databases checked for this page — the record instead shows him consistently on the editorial and product side of the sport, never as a rider. Exact dates for his individual stints at Schwinn, Giant, and Public Bikes are not confirmed beyond the general listing in his own account. Search results for "Dean Bradley" also turn up unrelated people who share the name, including an Australian BMX racer named Dean Crisp, a Bradley County BMX track in Tennessee, and other professionals with no connection to BMX or mountain biking — none of that material is included here.

Where Dean Bradley fits in the bigger story

People: Bob Osborn. Brands and magazines: BMX Plus! Magazine, BMX Action Magazine, Haro, Schwinn. The bigger arc is in our History of BMX series.

Sources

Dean Bradley, interviewed by Mountain Bike Action, "The Beginning of Mountain Bike Action Magazine," mbaction.com, Nov. 23, 2018 — first-person account of his magazine career and the founding of Mountain Bike Action (primary source, Hi-Torque Publishing, the parent company of BMX Action and BMX Plus!). Charlie Kelly, co-founder of MountainBikes, "BMX Plus! February 1980: The MountainBike," fattireflyer.com, June 16, 2023 — independent, first-hand account of Bradley's 1980 review and his role as BMX Plus! editor at the time. BMXmuseum.com, reference page for the 1994 Haro Monocoque, bmxmuseum.com/reference/3705 — Bradley's quote on the frame's design; page is JavaScript-rendered, content confirmed via cached search results. "Dean Bradley – The Why of Why We Do It," bmxweekly.com, July 11, 2018 — DRB PhotoSports byline and 1983 BMX Action-era photo. BikeRadar, "Electra introduce retro clothing," bikeradar.com — Bradley's role as Electra's vice president of product development. oldschoolmags.com and bmxsociety.com were checked directly for independent period coverage; both are JavaScript-heavy archive sites and returned only general magazine-archive material and incidental forum mentions, not a dedicated Dean Bradley profile.