Eddie Fiola was the first BMX freestyle superstar. By the time most of the sport's stars of the 1990s and 2000s were even riding bikes, Fiola had already won the King of the Skateparks five times, invented the first generation of pool and ramp tricks, co-designed the best-selling freestyle bike of the decade, and performed the stunts for one of the most beloved BMX movies ever made. He was, as one longtime editor put it, "BMX's first super star."

Four decades later, he's still riding, still doing stunts, and still showing up for the sport that made him.

Early life and coming up

Edward Lynn Fiola was born September 28, 1964 in Bellflower, California. He started on a skateboard around age 10, in 1974, riding at Skatopia and Lakewood in Southern California. He drew inspiration from the skateboarders of the era — Stacy Peralta, Ray "Bones" Rodriguez — and started carrying their moves over to a bike because the bike was easier to get around on than a skateboard.

He didn't have money. He famously rode his BMX bike for miles from his parents' house to the dumpster behind the SE Racing shop in Paramount to dig out broken frames and parts he could rebuild into something rideable. The story runs through his own book, When I Was King: The Eddie Fiola Story (co-written with Billy Henrickle): Fiola was a 14-year-old kid without a pro bike, trying to piece together something good enough to get a photo published, running home and back when he didn't have his bike with him at the park because Bob Osborn was shooting and this might be his one chance. That grit shows up in his riding, and it's the reason he ended up where he did.

His first sponsor, around 1980, was Premier Helmets. Fred Blood (SE Racing, later General) introduced him to Premier's Denise Barter and a racer named Harry Leary, who'd later become production manager at Diamond Back. Torker was also an early equipment supporter. By 1981, people in the Southern California skatepark scene were swapping stories about this 16-year-old kid from Lakewood who was riding concrete bowls like nobody else had ever ridden them.

The King of the Skateparks years

In 1981, Bob Morales co-founded the Amateur Skatepark Association (ASPA) with the goal of giving freestyle BMX a proper competition structure. The ASPA's signature event was the King of the Skateparks — a series of contests held at the major Southern California parks (Upland, Lakewood, Skatopia, and others) where riders were scored on style, trick difficulty, and flow. ASPA later renamed itself the AFA (American Freestyle Association).

Fiola won the first 16-plus Expert class in 1982. In 1983, he won the 17-plus Expert class. Then the pro class was created and he won that too, in 1984 — becoming the first ever Pro King of the Skateparks. He also became the first member of the renamed AFA that year. In 1985, he took the title again. In 1986, he won it for the fifth and final time, as the series ended that year. Across the decade he won King of the Skateparks five times total, plus four Freestylin' magazine NORA Cups (Number One Rider Award), including the very first NORA Cup ever awarded in 1985. He was also named BMX Plus! Freestyler of the Year multiple times, including 1985 and 1986.

His style was what set him apart. Fiola had the smoothest flow of any rider of the era. Where some freestylers were technicians and others were showmen, Fiola was both: tricks like the opposite one-hander and the lookback one-hander became his signatures, and his ability to link tricks together in bowls and on quarterpipes set the bar for everybody else. His rivalry with Mike Dominguez — Dominguez on vert, Fiola in the bowls and parks — defined the competitive freestyle scene in the mid-80s.

Haro, Kuwahara, and the E.T. bike

Fiola turned pro in 1982 at 18. Bob Morales, who was already on Haro Bikes, helped broker Fiola's first major sponsorship deal with Haro that year. The partnership was short. By the end of 1982 both Fiola and Morales had left Haro to sign a one-year deal with Kuwahara, where they helped design and promote the company's first freestyle bike — the same year Kuwahara was becoming world-famous for supplying the BMX bike Elliott rides in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

GT Bicycles and the Performer

When the Kuwahara deal ended in 1983, Fiola and Morales both moved to GT Bicycles. That move turned out to be one of the most consequential brand-and-rider pairings in BMX history. At GT, Fiola and Morales co-designed a new frame specifically for freestyle riding. It was released as the GT Pro Performer in 1984, and it became the best-selling freestyle BMX of the entire decade. Nearly every freestyle kid in America in the mid-80s either owned a Pro Performer or wanted one.

1983 was the year everything took off. Fiola performed a freestyle show with Morales at the Super Bowl of Motocross at Anaheim Stadium in front of 40,000 people. He judged the World Amateur Championships. He won the 17-plus Expert class at King of the Skateparks. In 1984 he won the GT-BMX summer freestyle championship in Venice Beach. He visited the UK for the televised Kellogg's freestyle BMX competition and won — the commentator nicknamed him "the flying banana" because of his all-yellow bike and apparel, with "TRIX R 4 KIDZ" printed across the back of his pants.

In 1985, GT sent Fiola and fellow GT rider Dave Breed on a 15-country world tour over three months: Saudi Arabia, Japan, Australia, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, West Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the U.S. including Hawaii. By the mid-80s, Fiola was reportedly earning around $100,000 a year from riding — a number that sounds small now but was enormous for an action sports athlete in the mid-80s.

RAD, 1986

In 1986, legendary stuntman-turned-director Hal Needham was making RAD, the first feature-length BMX movie. Bill Allen was cast as the lead, Cru Jones. Fiola was hired as technical advisor and the primary stunt rider for Cru's on-bike scenes. Allen had to dye his hair to match Fiola's because the cuts between the two were so close. Both the scripted story and the stunt choreography were built around what Fiola could actually do on a bike.

Fiola's book and multiple interviews have confirmed what the rumor always was: the film was loosely based on his life. A kid from a small-ish town, not much money, fighting his way up through a freestyle competition against better-funded rivals — that was Fiola's own 1979–1984. The Helltrack stunts, the flatland sequences, and most of the hero shots in RAD are Fiola. He also rides extensively in RAD TV: The Sequel, the promotional video that followed.

The same year, Fiola won the 1986 IBMXF Freestyle World Championships in Vancouver. The judging was controversial — he lost the pro ramps scoring because he didn't wear a mouthguard, but the overall-Pro scoring still went his way and the title was his. He took the AFA Masters Series runner-up spot, won his second NORA Cup and his second BMX Plus! Freestyler of the Year, and took the final pro-class King of the Skateparks.

The crash and reinvention

By 1987, BMX was collapsing. The crash that took down Torker, Mongoose, most of the freestyle brands, BMX Action magazine, and the factory teams didn't spare Fiola. GT dropped its freestyle program. Fiola signed a short-lived deal to promote Citicat bikes, which never fully materialized. He spent 1987 and 1988 as a BMX Plus! test rider. By 1990 he was riding for Vans and Bully, touring with Josh White and Scotty Freeman. In 1992 he was still doing shows with residual support from GT and Vans.

The transition that came next turned out to be the second act of his career. In the early 1990s, Fiola started auditioning for commercials in Los Angeles. The BMX skills that had made him a champion translated directly into stunt work. He was good at falling, good at hitting marks, good at making complex physical choreography look easy. He started getting booked.

Over the next 25 years, Fiola built a second career as one of Hollywood's go-to stunt riders and stunt coordinators. His IMDB-credited work includes Superman II and III, The Dukes of Hazzard (2005), The Italian Job (2003), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), The Hangover, The Bourne Legacy (2012), Independence Day, and Gamer. He's worked with Harrison Ford, Will Smith, and most of the A-list action stars of the last two decades. One of his most-remembered commercial spots was a Mountain Dew ad where he chases and tackles a cheetah that stole his can — a spot that ran heavily in Australia.

The return to BMX

Fiola never really left BMX. In 2004 he connected with Redline. In 2005 he was interviewed for Joe Kid on a Stingray, the documentary that became the canonical filmed history of the sport. In 2006 he did a July 4 show with Todd Anderson in Orange County. In 2008 he was honored at the OS-BMX gathering with a tribute white GT Pro Performer.

In 2009, the American Bicycle Association inducted Fiola into the BMX Hall of Fame as a Freestyle Pioneer.

In 2013, Fiola launched the EF Proformer — a limited-edition signature frame, fork, and handlebar set, 250 units, U.S.-made, built as a direct homage to his original GT Pro Performer designs. Collectors bought them out.

Through the 2010s and into the 2020s, Fiola has continued selective stunt work, including a 2025 America's Got Talent commercial spot and ongoing BMX demonstrations at events like the GT BMX Freestyle World Tour and Woodward West half-pipe sessions. He launched his own YouTube channel covering both his riding and his stunt career. A feature documentary, Effortless: The Eddie Fiola Story, was released in 2026.

Legacy

What Fiola did for freestyle in the 1980s is what Scot Breithaupt did for BMX as a sport in the 1970s: he defined what it looked like to be the best. Before Fiola, freestyle was a thing riders did between races. After Fiola, it was its own sport with its own contests, its own magazines, its own world champion, and its own hero. Every vert rider, every park rider, every flatland rider who came after him was riding in ground he'd helped break — and a lot of them were riding frames that traced directly back to the GT Pro Performer he co-designed in 1983.

He's also one of the few BMX riders of his generation to build a second full career outside the sport without ever leaving it. The stunt work didn't replace BMX for him. It ran alongside it.