Gerrit Does — The Godfather of European BMX, Co-Founder of the IBMXF
Gerrit Does
The godfather of European BMX. Founder of BMX in the Netherlands, 1978. Co-founder of the International BMX Federation (IBMXF), 1981. Founder of University of BMX.
A Legend Bike Co. founder history page. Sourced primarily from Gerrit Does's own year-by-year history and biography on universityofbmx.com, his three-part 2019 interview with BMX Weekly, USA BMX's George Esser Hall of Fame materials, and Legend Bike Co.'s own IBMXF and George Esser chapters, cross-referenced for consistency.
A motocross coach who found BMX at a Kansas City Yamaha dealer
Gerrit Does was born in 1945 in the Netherlands and grew up in Hilversum, home of the country's national radio and television industry. He raced motocross competitively from 1963 into the early 1970s — a three-time national vice-champion in the 250cc class in Holland, and a top-five finisher in the West-European 250cc Championship in 1967 and 1968 — before stepping back from racing to focus on coaching and training other riders, including his brother-in-law Toon Karsmakers, a three-time Dutch 500cc national champion.
Does first traveled to the United States in September 1974, bringing two Dutch motocross riders over on an exchange program with an American promoter. It was at a Yamaha dealership in Kansas City — Independence Yamaha — that he saw BMX bikes for the first time. The idea hit him immediately: BMX could work as a training school for future motocross racers, teaching young kids balance, race craft, and how to pass in traffic, years before they were old enough for a motorcycle.
1978 — bringing BMX to the Netherlands
Does's brother-in-law Pierre Karsmakers, a Dutch-born rider competing as a factory Yamaha and Honda motocross racer in the United States through the 1970s, began importing American BMX bikes and parts into the Netherlands starting around 1976-77, including bikes from Webco and other early American brands. That gave Does the equipment to work with. In early 1978 he introduced BMX at an international motocross event in Valkenswaard, Netherlands, with a demonstration by a handful of local kids on borrowed bikes. In October 1978 he formally founded the Stichting Fietscross Nederland (S.F.N.) — the Dutch Bicycle Motocross Foundation — as the country's first BMX governing body, with a press conference for roughly 15 regional and national reporters and a Dutch national television crew.
The S.F.N. ran on three people in its earliest days: Does as founder and chairman, his motocross friend Louis Vrijdag as secretary (Vrijdag later served as UCI-BMX president through 1999), and Does's wife Mieke Does-Karsmakers handling administration out of their own kitchen. Early sponsors included Wrangler, Milky Way, Tivoli, and Protec Helmets. The first S.F.N.-organized BMX races ran in the Netherlands in 1979, and by the end of that year a Dutch national broadcaster, AVRO, had begun televising BMX events — a broadcast deal that ran for roughly six years and helped push Dutch BMX licenses from about 110 in 1979 to well over 5,000 by 1985.
1979 — the idea for an international federation
In December 1979, Does brought a group of about eight Dutch S.F.N. riders to the Jag BMX World Championships II in Indianapolis — the first time he'd brought European racers to compete in the United States. It was there that Does, George Esser of the American National Bicycle League, and Tadashi Inoue of the Japan Bicycle Association first discussed forming a real international governing body for BMX, one built around national BMX federations rather than run by a single promoter the way the Jag Worlds were. Does's argument was that BMX needed the same qualifying structure other Olympic sports already used, if it was ever going to grow past being an American promotional event.
1981 — founding the IBMXF
The talks continued through 1980, and on April 3, 1981 the International BMX Federation (IBMXF) was formally founded in Pompano Beach, Florida, with eight founding countries. Does became General Secretary — the role he'd hold for roughly five years — and because he spoke four languages, he ended up the organization's main point of international contact. Full detail on the federation's twelve-year run lives on Legend Bike Co.'s own IBMXF history page and George Esser's page; this page focuses on Does's own part in it.
In 1981, the S.F.N. also merged into the KNWU (the Royal Dutch Cycling Federation), with Does becoming a KNWU board member and chairman of its new BMX committee — a move he'd proposed himself, arguing that a country with two or three competing bicycle organizations was worse off than one strong one, and that folding into a KNWU already affiliated with the International Olympic Committee would speed up any future Olympic push.
The first IBMXF World Championships ran in Dayton, Ohio in 1982. In 1983, the first IBMXF Worlds held outside the United States ran at Ponypark Slagharen in the Netherlands — organized by Does, on a track and TV production deal he built through his contacts at the Dutch broadcaster AVRO. Does went on to run ten European Challenge Cup (ECC) events at Ponypark Slagharen between 1984 and 1993, drawing entries as high as 1,900 riders from at least fifteen countries, including a steady stream of American pros.
Building the Dutch national teams
Does was also a hands-on team manager for most of the 1980s and 1990s — Team Mongoose in 1983, a combined Motobecane/Mongoose team in 1984, and, starting in 1986, the Dutch national BMX selection sponsored by the insurance company AMEV, which he calls the first professionally organized BMX team in Europe, complete with its own doctor, mechanic, and written rider contracts. Later teams included Blue Thunder (1989), MCS Team Europe (1990-91, which won the World Championship Manufacturer Teams title in France in 1990), and the GT Euro Team (1992-96, which won World and European Manufacturer Team titles multiple times, including the 1994 Worlds — held in the United States).
Does's sons, Nico and Pieter Does, both raced for him through this period. Nico went on to found the WEBCO bicycle brand in the Netherlands in 1991, and Does later served as a coach for the WEBCO-Mentos European team through the late 1990s.
University of BMX and the road to the Olympics
Starting in 1990, Does organized what he called University of BMX training trips — bringing groups of European riders to Orlando, Florida for training camps, then on to the NBL's Christmas Classic national in Columbus, Ohio. He ran five or six of these trips through 1996, and among the European riders who came through the program were Dale Holmes, Jamie Staff, and Christophe Leveque — all of whom went on to build racing careers in the United States.
From 1994 through 1997, Does worked as Project Manager for the UCI BMX World Cup Series, implementing a proposal he'd written called "The New Concept" — a plan to professionalize BMX racing with dedicated Elite and Junior classes, transponder timing, and a genuine international calendar, aimed squarely at building the case for BMX's eventual Olympic inclusion. The IBMXF itself merged into the UCI in the mid-1990s, and the first official UCI BMX World Championship ran in Brighton, England in 1996. BMX racing was added to the Olympic program in 2003 and made its Olympic debut at the 2008 Beijing Games — a debut Does had actually planned to attend in person, as one of the sport's original international founders, before a bout of meningitis kept him in the hospital instead.
In 2001, Does founded the website that carries his nickname today, universityofbmx.com, where he has published a detailed year-by-year history of international BMX alongside his own biography and archive of teams, results, and events.
Honors
Does received the KNWU Silver Wheel in December 1986 for his pioneer-era work building Dutch BMX. He was named a Life Founder Member of the IBMXF in 1985. On November 25, 1998, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he was inducted into the ABA BMX Hall of Fame. In 2003 the Latvian Olympic Committee gave him an Appreciation Award for helping introduce and develop BMX in Latvia. On April 25, 2008, the Dutch government made him a Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau — a royal honor presented by the mayor of his hometown of Waalre, in the name of the Queen, for his decades of work building the sport nationally and internationally. In 2013, at the UCI Congress in Florence, Italy, Does received the UCI Merit award alongside the two other original Life Founder Members of the IBMXF, George Esser and Tadashi Inoue — Esser's sons accepted on their late father's behalf.
What we don't know
Does's own accounts of his early Dutch career don't always agree with each other on exact dates. His 2019 interview with BMX Weekly says he introduced BMX in the Netherlands "during an international motocross early April" 1978; his own year-by-year history on universityofbmx.com instead dates the same introduction to "the February International Moto-cross held in Valkenswaard." Both accounts come from Does himself, and we haven't found a way to resolve which month is correct. There's a similar small gap on when the IBMXF formally merged into the UCI — Does's 2019 interview says "ending 1995," while his own credits page on universityofbmx.com credits the merge to 1996. And as noted on Legend Bike Co.'s own George Esser page, Does places the NBL's early office in Pompano Beach, Florida, while Wikipedia and our own NBL history page say Deerfield Beach — a discrepancy that remains unresolved between sources.
Sources
Gerrit Does — "Sir Gerrit Does — Editor & Professor," full year-by-year biography and sports career history published on universityofbmx.com, the primary and firsthand source for this page. BMX Weekly — "Interview: The Godfather of European BMX, Gerrit Does," a three-part interview published October 2019, direct quotes from Does on the founding of BMX in the Netherlands, the IBMXF, and the UCI World Cup Series. Legend Bike Co. — George Esser and IBMXF chapters, researched separately and cross-checked here for consistency. Wikipedia — National Bicycle League article, cross-referenced for the NBL office-location discrepancy noted above.
Gerrit Does and Legend Bike Co.
Does never built a bike brand the way the riders and builders elsewhere on this site did, and he raced motocross, not BMX. But every European BMX racer who has ever lined up at a World Championship gate is racing inside a structure Does helped build starting in a Dutch kitchen in 1978 — and the Olympic path that structure eventually opened runs straight through the federation he co-founded with George Esser in 1981. That is a bigger footprint on the sport than most brand names on this site can claim.
Related pages
Sanctions and federations: IBMXF (the federation Does co-founded) · NBL · USA BMX
Peer founders: George Esser (co-founder of the IBMXF)