Gary Ellis

"The Lumberjack," Four-Time ABA National No. 1 Pro and GT's Longest-Running Champion

A Legend Bike Co. rider page · researched from Wikipedia's sourced rider record (citing period BMX Plus!, BMX Action, and American BMXer coverage), the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame, and Legend Bike Co.'s own History of BMX hub

At a glance

Full name Gary Leo Ellis Jr.
Born March 21, 1966, Tacoma, Washington
Nickname "The Lumberjack"
Career 1977–1998
Teams Robinson Racing Products (1979–1981) · Kuwahara Cycles (1982–1984) · Huffy Corporation (1984–1986) · GT Bicycles/WD-40 (1986–1998)
Known for Four ABA National No. 1 Pro titles, four IBMXF/UCI Pro World Championships, and twelve years as the face of the GT race program

Gary Ellis raced BMX for 21 years and retired on exactly the terms he set for himself. He won his last race — a clean sweep of all three mains at his final NBL national — then walked away and never lined up again, not even for fun. In between, he built one of the longest, steadiest championship careers the sport has ever produced: four ABA National No. 1 Pro titles, four world titles, and twelve years riding for a single team, GT, that he turned into the defining sponsorship of his career.

A Track Operator's Son from Tacoma

Ellis started racing in 1977 at eleven years old after seeing a BMX display at a car show and asking his father if he could give it a try. His father, Gary Leo Ellis Sr., is himself a 1987 ABA Hall of Fame inductee, recognized as the operator of the longest continuously running BMX track in the country. His first race bike was a Schwinn Sting-Ray, his first result a fourth place at the Tacoma Jaycees track, and his first sanctioning body the short-lived regional Northwest Bicycle Motocross Association.

The nickname came later, and it wasn't about attitude. BMX national announcers started calling him "the Lumberjack" because by sixteen he had grown a thick beard and mustache and already stood 6 feet 2 inches at 190 pounds — eventually 6 feet 3 — an imposing look that intimidated competitors half his age. His hometown, in Washington's lumber country, only reinforced it; there's also an often-repeated, unverified story that he sawed down a tree blocking a practice track he was building in his front yard.

Robinson, Kuwahara, and Turning Pro

Ellis's first sponsor was Pedal Pushers Bike Shop in 1979, which grew into a co-sponsorship with Robinson Racing Products that ran through December 1981. He moved to Kuwahara Cycles in January 1982 and turned pro on that team in December 1983 at seventeen, taking first place in Junior "A" Pro at a joint ABA/Canadian American BMX Championships pre-race in Monroe, Washington. He left Kuwahara in a salary dispute a week after the September 1984 NBL Grand National.

Huffy — the Crowded 1985 Roster

After a brief interim sponsorship with a bike shop called Flying W, Ellis signed with Huffy Corporation on September 23, 1984, and stayed through March 20, 1986. It put him on one of the more talked-about rosters of the era, alongside Mike King and Brent Romero — the same Huffy lineup covered from Romero's and King's sides on their own Legend Bike Co. pages. When Huffy dropped him in 1986, Ellis went more than a month without a sponsor before GT picked him up.

Twelve Years on GT

Gary Turner Racing and GT Bicycles/WD-40 signed Ellis on April 27, 1986, and it became the sponsorship that defined him — twelve and a half years, through his retirement in November 1998. It's worth being precise here: GT, not Team CW, was Ellis's team through his entire championship prime. Charles Townsend, a CW-affiliated racer, shows up alongside Ellis often in period magazine photo composites simply because they were both fixtures of the same top-pro class through the late 1980s and early 1990s — the two riders are easy to conflate in old race coverage, but they raced for different teams.

The Championships

Ellis's title run stacked up across more than a decade. In 1989 he became the first ABA pro national No. 1 in the sanction's history to come from outside California. He won the ABA National No. 1 Pro title in 1989, 1990, 1994, and 1995 — though the 1995 title carries an asterisk worth stating plainly: Frenchman Christophe Lévêque actually won the season's points race that year, but an ABA rule at the time required the No. 1 Pro titleholder to be a U.S. citizen, and the rule couldn't be changed mid-season. Lévêque was allowed to race and collect points but not receive the title or its prize; Ellis, as the top American finisher, was awarded it instead. The rule changed the following season.

Internationally, Ellis won the IBMXF (later UCI) Pro World Championship in 1985, 1987, 1988, and 1993, plus a silver medal in the 20-inch Superclass at the 1995 Worlds. He also collected NBL "A" Pro Grand National titles in 1984, 1987, and 1988, and a run of ABA "AA" Pro Grand National titles across the late 1980s and mid-1990s. BMX Plus! named him its Racer of the Year in 1990, 1991, 1995, and 1996; ABA's own BMXer magazine gave him the same honor in 1994 and 1996. He won the NORA Cup — BMX's top racer-of-the-year award, voted by the sport's own press — in 1990, the last year it was given out before a six-year hiatus, and again in 1998, the first year the award came back under Snap BMX Magazine. He appeared on the cover of 48 different BMX magazines between 1982 and 1995.

Built to Last

What set Ellis apart as much as any title was how long he lasted. Across a 21-year career he had only three notable injuries: a hand injury that sidelined him for the 1995 ABA Winternationals, a toe injury when a starting gate fell on it during practice at the 1996 UCI World Championships in Brighton, England — an injury serious enough to require overnight hospitalization and five months of recovery — and little else. Racers half his age were breaking down around him for the whole of his career. He was also famously flat about it: described in period coverage as emotionless at races, giving competitors nothing to read.

Retiring on His Own Terms

Ellis retired in November 1998, right after the ABA Grand Nationals, at 32. His actual last race, the 1998 NBL Grand National that September in Louisville, Kentucky, ended with a perfect 1-1-1 sweep of all three pro main motos — the capstone, by reputation, of a career built on performing best when it mattered most. He told BMX Plus! flatly that year that he had no plans to come back, "even just for fun," unlike plenty of his peers who kept racing Veteran or Masters classes long after retiring. He kept that word. As of the most recent record checked here, Ellis never raced BMX again after 1998. He did stay in the sport off the bike, becoming the non-racing team manager of the Nirve BMX Team in June 1999.

Two Halls of Fame

Gary Ellis was inducted into the ABA Hall of Fame in 1998, the same year he retired, and into the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame in 2010. The USBHOF's own biography counts him among only five riders ever to win a UCI World Championship, an ABA Pro title, and an NBL title across a career.

Where Gary Ellis fits in the bigger story

Teammates: Mike King, Brent Romero. Brands: Robinson Racing, GT Bicycles. Sanctions: ABA, NBL, IBMXF. The bigger arc is in our History of BMX series, where Ellis is named among the top pros of the 1988–1995 racing era.

Sources

Wikipedia, "Gary Ellis" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Ellis) — a heavily footnoted rider record citing period BMX Plus!, BMX Action, American BMXer, and Bicycles and Dirt coverage from 1982 through 1999; used here for the sponsor timeline, national and world titles, the 1995 title controversy, injuries, and the retirement account. United States Bicycling Hall of Fame — "Gary Ellis" (usbhof.org/inductee/gary-ellis), 2010 induction biography. oldschoolmags.com — NORA Cup archive page, confirming Ellis's November 1998 ABA Grand Nationals retirement. bmxsociety.com — searched directly; forum references to Ellis's GT and Redline/Torker-era bikes found, no independent biographical material. Legend Bike Co.'s own History of BMX hub, Mike King, and Brent Romero pages, cross-checked for the 1985 Huffy teammate detail.

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