Denny Davidow

Late-1970s / early-1980s pro racer · Delta Racing → TW BMX → Skyway / TW → Redline Proline → Bassett (Mike Redman's version) · BMX Action March 1981 cover · Number 70X · 2003 National BMX Hall of Fame

A BMXRacingHistory.com preview · hosted on Legend Bike Co

At a glance

Name: Denny Davidow (also Dennis Davidow).
Era: Late 1970s through the early 1980s.
Race number: 70X.
Full career sponsor chain (per Bill Ryan, primary-source recollection):
1. Delta Racing Products (DRP) — 1978
2. TW BMX / TW Racing — around 1979 to 1980
3. Skyway Tuff Wheel co-sponsor — early 1980s, while still racing a TW frame underneath
4. Redline Proline — mid-career
5. Bassett Bikes (Mike Redman's version) — his final sponsor before retirement
Major print credits: Cover of BMX Action, March 1981 (Vol. 6, No. 3) · "Denny Davidow's Pro Training Methods" feature, BMX Action, December 1980 · Hot Shots, BMX Action, September 1980 · Bassett product test, Super BMX, January 1982.
Hall of Fame: National BMX Hall of Fame, 2003 (inducted alongside Darrell Young and Richard Hutchins).

The 2003 National BMX Hall of Fame

Denny was inducted into the National BMX Hall of Fame in 2003, alongside Darrell Young and Richard Hutchins. Late-1970s and early-1980s inductees don't always turn up in the current online USA BMX directory listing, but the 2003 class is on the record and Denny is part of it.

The thin record

Denny rode the right years on the right magazines, but the published rider profiles on him run thin next to a Stu Thomsen or a Greg Hill. I knew the sponsor chain firsthand from being in the sport those years, so the corrected sequence above is mine. What I can verify, I'm putting up. What's still open, I'm flagging.

Delta Racing Products (1978)

BMXmuseum.com still carries an entry for a 1978 Delta Racing Products Denny Davidow bike. Delta Racing Products — DRP — was a short-lived late-1970s brand, and that was Denny's first documented factory ride. The museum entry puts him on a sponsored frame by 1978. That dates his start to the first wave of California BMX, the same wave that produced Scot Breithaupt, Stu Thomsen, Perry Kramer, and the early SE Racing roster.

TW BMX (around 1979 to 1980)

TW BMX — TW Racing — is the brand Denny is tied to most strongly in the published record. The cleanest contemporaneous cite for the team sits in the Pete Loncarevich Wikipedia entry, which documents Pete on TW Racing from December 1979 to September 1980 and sources the team to a TW ad in Bicycle Motocross Action, January 1981, Volume 6, Number 1, page 74. That same entry notes TW was run by Pete's father's business partners.

Denny was Pete's teammate during that TW window. For more on TW itself, see the TW BMX history page.

The Skyway co-sponsorship — on a TW frame

Skyway, the Redding, California composite-wheel maker behind the Tuff Wheel, ran one of the most visible co-sponsorships in early BMX. Denny picked up Skyway in the early 1980s. Here's the part the published profiles get wrong: the bike under him through the Skyway period was still a TW frame. I watched it happen. Skyway brought the Tuff Wheels and the co-sponsor money; TW kept supplying the chassis. Skyway's own Skyway Tuff Wheels Facebook page has shared his ad from the very early 1980s.

Component-brand co-sponsorships paired with a frame-brand chassis were everywhere in the early 1980s. Skyway, ACS, Tioga, Oakley, a half-dozen others — they underwrote the top riders without taking the full-frame contract. Denny's Skyway-on-TW setup is about as clean an example of that structure as you'll find.

Redline Proline

After the TW and Skyway chapter, Denny moved to Redline's Proline program — Redline's pro-tier race frame line, built around that iconic Flight crank generation. The Proline years sit in the middle of his career, between the TW-era cover-rider spotlight and his last sponsor.

Bassett Bikes (Mike Redman's version) — the final chapter

Denny's last sponsor before he retired was Bassett Bikes — specifically Mike Redman's version of Bassett. The Bassett name went through several iterations in BMX, and Redman's was the one that ran late, in the stretch when Denny was winding his racing down. The Super BMX January 1982 issue carried a Bassett bike test with Denny as the test rider. That lines up with the Bassett era.

1980 to 1982: the magazine years

Hot Shots, BMX Action September 1980

The September 1980 issue ran a Hot Shots section with Brent Patterson's bunny-hop and a batch of rider images: Scott Ahart, Henderson, Lambert, Denny Davidow, and John Crews.

Pro Training Methods, BMX Action December 1980

The December 1980 issue — Stu Thomsen's first BMXA cover — ran a feature called "Denny Davidow's Pro Training Methods." Magazines didn't hand a training-methods story to a rider the editors didn't take seriously as a pro.

Cover, BMX Action March 1981

The headline credit. Denny Davidow was the cover rider of BMX Action, March 1981, Volume 6, Number 3. That same issue carried product analysis of the Laguna 101 and the Ultima Cinelli, race coverage of the ABA Mongoose Grand Nationals and the NBL Kuwahara Grand Nationals, an interview with Greg Hill, and a piece on the factory pros.

Bassett test, Super BMX January 1982

The January 1982 issue of Super BMX ran a Bassett bike test with Denny as the test rider, fitting the Bassett era of his career.

What we have not been able to verify against primary sources

  • Exact dates for the Redline Proline and Bassett Bikes chapters. My recollection nails the sequence; the year-by-year breakdown is still open. Anyone with a dated magazine ad or race-coverage page from those chapters is invited to send it in.
  • GT Bicycles sponsorship in 1980. Wikipedia's GT entry and a Stead Cycles GT history both state GT began sponsoring riders including Lee Medlin and Denny Davidow in 1980. No contemporaneous GT ad or BMX press cite showing Davidow in GT colors turned up in our search. Reported, not confirmed — and not part of my recollection of Davidow's career chain.
  • Brian Scura mentorship. Multiple forum-era recaps list Davidow among the riders Brian Scura mentored, alongside Greg Hill, Billy Griggs, Woody Itson, Martin Aparijo, Pete Loncarevich, and Dave Voelker.
  • 1980 Australia tour. One summary placed Davidow on the American tour Down Under with Scot Breithaupt and Bobby Encinas. The Australian BMX Museum 1980 history page does not name him in the material we could see.

Where he fits

Denny Davidow sits in the early-pro generation that put BMX on magazine covers before there was a real living in it. He raced when the NBA, NBL, and ABA were still separate sanctioning bodies, before the eventual USA BMX consolidation. He ran Skyway Tuff Wheels when Tuff Wheels were the BMX wheel. He rode for TW BMX in the window when small California garage brands were still launching alongside the eventual majors. He picked up a Redline Proline ride at the brand's peak. And he closed out on Mike Redman's Bassett, right as the first BMX boom was giving way to the rebuild. The National BMX Hall of Fame recognized all of it in 2003.

Sources

  • Bill Ryan, founder of Supercross BMX — first-hand recollection of Davidow's full sponsor chain (Delta Racing → TW → Skyway-on-TW → Redline Proline → Mike Redman's Bassett) and confirmation of the 2003 National BMX Hall of Fame induction alongside Darrell Young and Richard Hutchins. Primary source for the corrected sequence and the HOF year.
  • 23mag.com, BMX Action index 1980 — Hot Shots Sept 1980; "Denny Davidow's Pro Training Methods," Dec 1980.
  • 23mag.com, BMX Action index 1981 — Denny Davidow as cover rider, March 1981, Vol. 6 No. 3.
  • BMXmuseum.com, 1978 Delta Racing Products Denny Davidow bike profile.
  • Wikipedia, "Pete Loncarevich" — establishes TW Racing as Pete's Dec 1979 to Sept 1980 sponsor, places Davidow as a TW teammate in that window.
  • Skyway Tuff Wheels official Facebook page — share of the Denny Davidow Skyway ad.
  • Super BMX, January 1982 — Bassett product test with Denny Davidow as test rider.
  • NBA BMX Society history group (Facebook) — race photo of Davidow on plate 70X, April 1980.
  • Wikipedia, "GT Bicycles," and Stead Cycles, "The History of GT Bikes" — both report GT 1980 sponsorship of Lee Medlin and Denny Davidow. Reported here as unconfirmed against a primary BMX press cite and not part of Bill Ryan's recollection of Davidow's career chain.

About this page. See also: The History of BMX, TW BMX, Skyway, Redline, S&S Performance, Centurion Cycles, LRV, Pete Loncarevich, Bassett Bikes, Mike Redman, USA BMX.