Fred Blood

The ramp showman who got his own signature bike

Legend Bike Co · BMX heritage series

Some riders are remembered for a trick. Fred Blood is remembered for the fact that people watched. He came out of the early 1980s with a performer's instinct, worked the ramp as much as he rode it, and turned that into the rarest currency in freestyle: a complete bike with his name on the down tube. Forty years on, he is still trading under that name.

The Skater Who Showed Up on a Bike

Blood is American, and the published rider profiles agree on one detail that sets him apart from almost everyone else in this library: before the bike, he competed as a professional vertical roller skater. That is a secondary account rather than something we can pull from a period magazine, so treat it as reported rather than proven. It does square with what the footage shows. A skater who has spent years reading a transition brings a particular kind of balance and air sense to a quarterpipe, and Blood arrived in freestyle already comfortable upside of the coping at a moment when most riders were still working out what a ramp was for.

He landed in freestyle in the early 1980s, which is to say he landed at the beginning. There was no template. The riders who defined the discipline were also inventing the job description, and Blood took the part of it that involved a crowd more seriously than most.

SE Racing, and the Road

His first well-documented backer was SE Racing. Period footage that circulates online, dated by the person who posted it to May 1985, shows him riding for SE on a trip to Taiwan — a reminder that by the mid-1980s the freestyle circuit was already an export business, and that the riders were the sales force. Published profiles put him on SE's Quadangle Freestyler and on a prototype the company was working through at the time. Those bike-by-bike details come from secondary write-ups, not from a catalog page we could verify, so they sit here with that caveat attached.

What is not in doubt is that he was on the road. Riders who lived through 1985 describe him as one of the friendliest and most talkative people on the tour circuit, the guy who would talk to anyone in the parking lot after the show. That is not a small thing in a discipline that ran on demos at bike shops and shopping centers. Blood also organized and hosted freestyle shows, and the accounts credit him with work at venues as large as Madison Square Garden.

The Blood Pro, 1987

General Bicycles is where his name got stamped into the record. In 1987 the company put out the Blood Pro, a freestyle complete built as Fred Blood's team bike. The catalog specs are documented: a 4130 chrome-moly tri-moly frame with a matching 4130 fork, one-piece chrome-moly cranks at 175mm, and a choice of finishes — red and chrome came with six-spoke plastic mag wheels, while black and chrome and blue and chrome came with 48-hole alloy rims on alloy hubs. His name also turns up on a 1987 General Hustler signature build, which shows up regularly in the collector market alongside the Blood Pro.

A signature complete is the clearest measure of a freestyle rider's standing in that era. Very few got one. It meant a brand had decided the rider's name would move bikes off a shop floor in towns where nobody had ever seen him ride in person, and General made that bet on Blood at the peak of the boom.

The Show Was the Point

Blood turns up in the video record of the decade too, including road-trip style tapes shot alongside other riders of the period. Published profiles also place him in Vision Street Wear advertising, part of the short window when action sports footwear and apparel money flowed into BMX the way it flowed into skateboarding. Again — that comes from a secondary profile, and we have not seen the ad itself.

The consistent thread in every account is that he was a performer first. He was not the most technically dialed rider in a field that included Mat Hoffman, Ron Wilkerson and Brian Blyther, and the write-ups do not pretend otherwise. What he had was command of a crowd. In a discipline whose whole business model was the demo — get the kids to the shop, get them on the bikes, get them to the register — that was worth real money to the companies paying the bills.

Coaching, and the Company With His Name On It

After the boom ended, Blood stayed in it. The accounts describe him as one of the earliest BMX coaches at Woodward, the Pennsylvania camp that became the place American riders went to learn on real ramps in a season rather than a decade. We could not pin a year to that from a hard source, so it sits in the box below.

Today he runs Fred Blood Sports out of Idaho Falls, Idaho — a business under his own name that puts out vintage footage, merchandise and updates, and keeps him connected to both the BMX and skating worlds. He still turns up at events, sometimes with a microphone in his hand rather than a bike between his legs, which is more or less where he started. Sources checked as recently as 2025 describe him as active and riding. Nothing in any source consulted suggests otherwise, and no death record appears anywhere in the material we checked.

What the Contest Record Actually Says

Here is where honesty matters more than a good story. We could not find a verified contest results ledger for Fred Blood — no confirmed AFA finals placings, no confirmed King of Vert results, no national title we can point to and source. The archives that carry that kind of data for his era are either offline, paywalled, or blocked to the tools available for this research. Rather than assign him a result he may or may not have earned, this page says what the accessible record says: he was a sponsored professional freestyle rider through the boom, with a signature complete to prove a brand's confidence in him, and his competition placings are not documented in the sources we were able to reach.

Timeline

• Before BMXCompetes as a professional vertical roller skater, per published rider profiles.
• Early 1980sMoves into freestyle BMX as the discipline is still forming, bringing a skater's feel for transitions.
• May 1985Filmed riding for SE Racing on a trip to Taiwan; the footage circulates online, dated by its uploader.
• 1985On the tour circuit, remembered by other riders as one of the most approachable people on the road.
• 1987General Bicycles releases the Blood Pro, his signature freestyle complete. His name also appears on a General Hustler build the same year.
• Late 1980sOrganizes and hosts freestyle shows, including dates at major arenas.
• After the boomCoaches BMX at Woodward; year not documented.
• Present dayRuns Fred Blood Sports from Idaho Falls, Idaho, still riding, hosting and posting.

Where Fred Blood fits in the bigger story

Riders of the ramp era: Mat Hoffman, Ron Wilkerson, Brian Blyther, Billy Harrison. Brands that built the boom: SE Racing, Haro, GT Bicycles, Hutch, Redline, Torker, Mongoose, Powerlite, Schwinn, Vans. The press that carried him: Freestylin', BMX Action, Wizard Publications, Spike Jonze, Craig "gOrk" Barrette. The full arc lives in our History of BMX series.

Sources

bmx-catalogue.com, 1987 General Blood Pro catalog recreation — frame material, fork, crank length, rim and wheel options, and color variants, drawn from the original General catalog pages. Period sale and auction listings for the 1987 General Blood Pro and the 1987 General Hustler Fred Blood signature complete — corroboration that both models carried his name. SplendidBMX.com rider profile, "About Fred Blood" (August 2025) — his roller skating background, riding style, SE Racing bikes, Vision Street Wear advertising, video appearances, show hosting, coaching at Woodward, and his current work. This is a secondary write-up and everything sourced only to it is flagged as reported on this page. Archive video footage dated by its uploader to May 1985 showing him riding for SE Racing in Taiwan. Fred Blood Sports — his current company, based in Idaho Falls, Idaho, with an active website and social media presence. Not reachable during research: bmxsociety.com was down throughout, and bmxmuseum.com blocks automated access, so its rider reference entry and forum threads on Blood could not be read directly.