BMX Freestyle History · Rider Profile · Legend Bike Co

Dennis McCoy — "The Real McCoy"

Kansas City. K-Mart bike. A cinder block and a board laid across it for a ramp, and a bunch of kids holding distance contests down the street to see who could jump the farthest. That's where this one starts. Not California. Not a factory. Missouri, on a department-store bike, years before anybody handed Dennis McCoy a sponsorship. He beat his big brother's wheelie record one summer and his brother quit bikes for good. That tells you something about the kid. He didn't stop.

Most riders get a few good years. McCoy got decades. He is, by a wide margin, the longest career freestyle ever produced — and he was a champion the whole way through.

Racing First, Then the Tricks Took Over

He started as a racer. First race was 1980, on a track with a rubber-band start. He got the holeshot, slid out in the first turn, and by his own telling got run over by the whole pack — and then a few of them turned around and ran over him again. Welcome to BMX.

But around Christmas of 1980 he saw some guys on TV riding a skatepark, doing rockwalks and tricks, and that was it. He and his friends spent the next days trying to copy what they'd seen. He kept racing for a while, freestyling on his race bikes — a P.K. Ripper, a Hutch Expert — until the tricks won. He got serious about freestyle sometime in 1984. That September he quit racing for good. His last race was his best one ever. He won the trophy dash and beat the guy who'd just won the pro class.

The Haro Photo That Started It

In March 1984 his friend John Hensley shot a photo of him doing a hip hanger on his Hutch Expert. BMX Action ran a photo contest. They placed second. The prize was a Haro frameset — and before the frame even showed up, Bob Haro called and offered him a sponsorship deal. He'd been freestyling on race bikes for years. His first real freestyle bike was that Haro. He signed with the team in November 1984. (The Haro company history on this site tells the other side of that same story — McCoy was one of the names that made that team the best in the sport.)

Then in March 1986, Bob Haro and Jim Ford told him it was time to turn pro. He'd won the AFA Flatland and Overall titles in 17-and-over Expert the year before — there was nothing left to prove as an amateur. He moved up a few days before the first contest of the season, won the Overall and took second in Flatland at that one, and went on to win the Overall and Flatland titles his rookie year. Number One Pro in 1986. He made a hundred dollars a month doing it.

The Style That Changed Flatland

What set him apart was speed. Where other flatlanders rolled through their tricks, McCoy attacked. He'd circle behind the ramps to build up as much speed as he could, then rip across the floor stringing tricks together — whiplashes, G-strings, boomerangs, footwork he'd borrowed from Ron Wilkerson and made his own. A writer at the time put it flat out: McCoy's riding style changed the face of freestyle. By 1987 the readers of BMX Plus! voted him freestyle rider of the year.

World Champion, 1988

July 1988, in the UK, he proved he was more than a hot American. He won the Pro Flatland and Overall Pro world titles — and a record $4,500 in prize money to go with them. He was leading both the AFA and ABA pro divisions back home at the same time. That was the peak of flatland McCoy, and he was untouchable.

One of the First 900s Ever Landed

Late July 1990, Indianapolis. McCoy dropped in on vert and spun a 900 — two and a half full rotations — and rode away from it. He said later it was the first time he'd ever tried it, that he basically did what Mat Hoffman told him, turned his head, held on for dear life, and couldn't see a thing the whole way around. It worked. He'd go on to pull 900s on a bike across a twenty-year span, which is its own kind of unbelievable.

Haro to Mongoose to Everywhere

After the 1987 season he left Haro. He rode a one-man Pro Freestyle Tour while he sorted out his next deal, then signed with Mongoose in 1989 and went on a tear of street and vert wins. Later came K2 Bikes in 1997, where he had a signature frame and a signature shoe with Airwalk and stayed deep into the 2000s. Through all of it he never settled into one discipline. He kept flatland in his blood, rode vert into his fifties, and threw street and dirt in for good measure.

Ten Overalls, Then the X Games Era

From the mid-80s into the mid-90s he stacked up overall titles — ten consecutive Overall championships across the AFA and BS series, by his own count, the last one at the 1995 BS finals in Daytona. Then the sport changed shape. ESPN launched the Extreme Games in 1995 in Rhode Island, and McCoy was there. He was there every single year after that, too. He is the only rider to have competed in every X Games from that first 1995 event all the way through 2018 in Minneapolis — more than twenty years on the biggest stage the sport ever had. His medals included gold in BMX Vert Doubles in 1998 and bronze in Vert as late as 2016, when he was nearly fifty years old.

Building the Events, Too

He didn't just ride. In 1999 he got a call about a new NBC event called the Gravity Games and ended up running the BMX side of it himself, with his wife Paridy, because he didn't want to see BMX misrepresented. They started a production company and ran events for years. He served as the athlete rep for BMX at the X Games and later did commentary. The man was woven into the sport at every level — rider, organizer, voice.

Hall of Fame, 2016

On June 11, 2016, Dennis McCoy was inducted into the USA BMX Hall of Fame, at a ceremony held at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, California. He went in alongside Dave Mirra. And here's the part that says it all: the year he turned fifty, the year he was inducted, he was still riding for Haro — the same brand that had handed a Kansas City kid a frameset more than thirty years before.

Timeline

• 1966 Born December 29 in Kansas City, Missouri.
• 1980 First BMX race. First glimpse of freestyle on TV the same year.
• 1984 Wins a Haro frameset in a BMX Action photo contest; signs with Haro in November. Quits racing in September.
• 1986 Turns pro for Haro in March. Wins AFA Pro Flatland and Overall titles his rookie year. Number One Pro.
• 1987 Voted BMX Plus! freestyle rider of the year. Leaves Haro after the season.
• 1988 Wins Pro Flatland and Overall World Championships in the UK.
• 1989 Signs with Mongoose as a one-man team.
• 1990 Lands one of the first 900s ever pulled on a BMX bike, Indianapolis.
• 1995 Wins his tenth consecutive Overall title. Competes in the first Extreme Games.
• 1997 Joins K2 Bikes. Wins X Games silver in Vert and Street.
• 1998 Wins X Games gold in BMX Vert Doubles with Dave Mirra.
• 1999 Takes over running the BMX side of the Gravity Games.
• 2014–16 Still medaling at the X Games — bronze in Vert in 2014 and 2016.
• 2016 Inducted into the USA BMX Hall of Fame, June 11, alongside Dave Mirra.
• 2018 Competes in his final X Games, in Minneapolis — every one from 1995 to 2018.