George Esser — Founder of the NBL, Co-Founder of the IBMXF
George Esser
Founder of the National Bicycle League (NBL), co-founder of the International BMX Federation (IBMXF). USA BMX Hall of Fame, 2013, Industry.
A Legend Bike Co. founder history page. Sourced from George Esser's official USA BMX Hall of Fame entry, Gerrit Does's firsthand 2006 tribute on universityofbmx.com, Does's year-by-year BMX history archive, MCS Bicycles' own company history, the Wikipedia National Bicycle League article, and bmxsociety.com community references.
A motorcycle promoter with two sons who wanted a track
George Edward Esser promoted motorcycle motocross races. By the early 1970s he'd been at it for over thirty years, running the National Motorcycle League (NML) out of Florida. His sons Bryan and Greg raced bicycles around the neighborhood, the way kids everywhere were starting to, and pushed their dad to let them race on an actual track. Esser did what a promoter does when he sees a gap: he built a bicycle division inside the NML.
It's the same move Scot Breithaupt had already made in Long Beach with BUMS in 1970, and the same move Ernie Alexander made a year before Esser with the National Bicycle Association. Three motorsports promoters in three different states, all looking at the same thing — kids racing bikes with no rules and no plate — and all landing on the same answer.
January 26, 1974 — the first sanctioned race
The NML's new Bicycle Division ran its first sanctioned event at Miami-Hollywood Speedway Park on January 26, 1974. Greg Esser won the 14-and-over class. He'd go on to become the NBL's first official pro Number One in 1979.
February 1976 — the NBL becomes its own sanction
In February 1976, Esser split the bicycle division off from the NML and made it a stand-alone organization: the National Bicycle League. Where exactly the office sat in those early years is one of the few things sources don't fully agree on — see "What we don't know" below.
Esser set the NBL up as a non-profit, with a governance body called the Competition Congress where member tracks could actually vote on the rules. That single decision is the reason the NBL survived pressures that killed the private-business NBA, and it's the same decision that mattered twenty years later when USA Cycling went looking for a BMX partner to carry the sport toward the Olympics. Full detail on how that structure played out is on the NBL history page.
MCS Bicycles — the frame side of the business
In 1976, the same year the NBL stood up on its own, Esser co-started a frame company, MCS Bicycles, with Rick Connery, out of a motorcycle shop in Pompano Beach, Florida. Both Esser sons rode for the team. By 1980, with the NBL taking more of his time, Esser sold his stake in MCS to Ron Cann and Norman Livin so he could focus on running the sanction.
1981 — co-founding the IBMXF
By the late 1970s, BMX had grown past being an American-only sport, and Dutch promoter Gerrit Does had been running races in the Netherlands since 1975. During the 1979 Jag BMX World Championships in Indianapolis, promoter Renny Roker set aside a meeting room, and Esser, Does, and Tadashi Inoue of Japan sat down and started sketching out what a real international BMX body would look like.
The talks ran about a year and a half. On April 3, 1981, the International BMX Federation (IBMXF) was formally registered out of the Netherlands, with Esser bringing the sanctioning experience he'd already built running the NBL. The first IBMXF World Championships ran in Dayton, Ohio in 1982, and Greg Hill won the Pro 20-inch class to become the first official BMX World Champion. Full detail on the IBMXF's twelve-year run and how it fed directly into BMX racing's 2008 Olympic debut is on the IBMXF history page.
1983 — handing the NBL to Bob Tedesco
In April 1983, Esser handed the day-to-day running of the NBL to Bob Tedesco, who'd been with the sanction since 1977. Tedesco held the job for twenty-five years, the longest run at the top of any BMX sanction, and carried the NBL through the President's Cup, the ESPN television years, and the international push that ended with BMX racing added to the Olympic program in 2003.
Later years
Esser stayed close to the sport through his family. With his son Greg, he later owned and operated Fab-Weld of Pompano Beach, Florida, a shop that manufactured frames and other products for a number of BMX brands. He is remembered as the father of five sons. His first wife, Mary Esser, who by all accounts played a real role inside the NBL during its early years, predeceased him; his wife Marcia Esser was with him at the end.
2013 — USA BMX Hall of Fame
George Esser was inducted into the USA BMX Hall of Fame in 2013, in the Industry category, as part of a five-person class announced that June. The induction ceremony ran September 28, 2013. USA BMX's own entry credits him plainly: he gave BMX its major boost on the East Coast, then teamed up with Gerrit Does to build the sport's first international governing body.
What we don't know
George Esser's date of birth isn't reliably sourced. One unsourced reference puts it at September 17, 1925, but no primary source backs that up, so we're leaving it out rather than repeating a number we can't confirm. Sources also disagree on where the NBL's early office sat — our own NBL history page and Wikipedia's infobox say Deerfield Beach, Florida, while Gerrit Does, writing as someone who worked with Esser directly, places the NBL office in Pompano Beach (where the MCS shop also sat). The two Broward County cities are neighbors, and this may reflect an early move, or Does may be recalling the MCS address instead of the NBL's. We haven't found a source that settles it. And his younger son's name appears two ways across sources — Bryan (Wikipedia) and Brian (MCS's own company history, where the son rode for the team) — we're not picking a winner on that spelling either.
Sources
USA BMX Hall of Fame — George Esser, Class of 2013, Industry (usabmx.com/site/postings/1101 and the June 2013 Hall of Fame class announcement, corroborated by Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, June 14, 2013). Gerrit Does — "2006, BMX pioneer George E. Esser, NBL-USA did pass away August 31st," a firsthand tribute published on universityofbmx.com (also archived on fatbmx.com), and Does's year-by-year BMX history pages on universityofbmx.com. MCS Bicycles — official company history (mcsbmxracing.com/pages/history). Wikipedia — National Bicycle League article. bmxsociety.com community references to the Esser family as NBL BMX founding figures in Florida. Full detail on the sanction itself and the international federation lives on our own NBL and IBMXF pages, both researched separately.
George Esser and Legend Bike Co.
Esser isn't a Legend Bike Co. co-founder, and he never built a bike brand the way the riders and builders on this site did. But every rider who's ever pinned on an NBL or USA BMX number plate on the East Coast is racing inside a structure Esser built in 1974 — and every BMX athlete who's ever stood on an Olympic podium is standing on a road that runs straight through the international body he co-founded in 1981. Pull those two decisions out of BMX history and the sport looks completely different today.
Related pages
Sanctions: NBL (the sanction Esser founded) · IBMXF (the federation he co-founded) · NBA · ABA · USA BMX · Bicycles Today / BMX Today (the NBL's member magazine)
Peer founders: Ernie Alexander · Scot Breithaupt
Riders who raced under the sanctions Esser built: Greg Hill (first official BMX World Champion, IBMXF 1982) · Stu Thomsen (NBL pro Number One, 1981-1982) · Pete Loncarevich (NBL pro Number One, 1986-1987)