Where It All Started

Before any of this — before GT, before Supercross, before Legend — there was a place called the Pit in Torrance. That was where BMX Action magazine was based, and it was where Bill Ryan spent his time riding. Bill was a latch-key kid who needed somewhere to be, and the Pit was it.

That's where he got to know Scot Breithaupt, the man who founded SE Racing and who most people in this sport consider the godfather of BMX. Scot was called the OM — Old Man — not because he was actually old, but because he was doing things way beyond his age while everyone else around him was still a teenager. He organized the first BMX race ever in 1970 in Long Beach when he was thirteen years old. By the time Bill was coming up, Scot had already built something real.

Bill also got to know the Emrich brothers at the Pit — they were test riders for BMX Action — and Donny Jones, another well-known BMX Action test rider who was a name in the scene. Scot could see that Bill loved the sport and needed a place to channel it. He gave him a job at the SE building on Paramount Boulevard in Paramount, CA. After school, Bill would come in and sweep the floors, pack orders, sticker frames. That was how he got his start in the industry.

I grew up in Lakewood, not far away. I had a ramp in front of my house and I rode it every chance I got. I got my start doing freestyle at the Lakewood skatepark, riding an SE Quad. In the spring of 1981, I got my first Hot Shot in BMX Action Magazine — shot on that SE Quad with Webco Mags. Bill was already at SE by then and would see me at the shop or out at the ramp in front of the house. Two kids in the same part of Southern California, living for bikes. That friendship never went away.

Bill's roots in BMX go even further back than SE. He'd known Turnell Henry — Tuni — since he was ten years old. Tuni ran BMX clinics at Harbor BMX Track in San Pedro and later owned La Palma Cycle Center. Bill was one of his kids from those early clinic days. That relationship shaped a lot of what came after.

Gary Turner, Rich Long, and the Performer

Before GT I'd been on Kuwahara, then a Torker. I almost ended up on Haro — Bob Haro called me up, gave me the full kit, I did a six-page shoot with John Ker at BMX Plus. Next day he called and said he needed the bike back. I ended up on the cover of BMX Action in full Haro gear riding a Torker. That's just how it went.

Then GT came to me. Gary Turner and Rich Long could see where freestyle was going before most people did. They wanted to build a real freestyle frame — not a race bike with stickers on it. The GT Performer was built from scratch for freestyle: shorter chainstays, geometry that was made to spin and rotate, chromoly when most other brands were still running cheaper tubing. You threw a tailwhip and the frame was already halfway through it.

The best thing about riding for GT back then was that nothing was calculated. You needed something, you got it. Gary and Rich took care of their riders. I'd back my camo lifted Toyota pickup up to the warehouse and Bill — over at GT doing customer service and sales — would come out and help me load that truck up. Rich Long would come out shaking his head. "How many bikes did he take? What the hell?" That was just the culture. It was a family. It was the GT I loved.

Bill's Road from GT to Supercross

When GT went corporate the whole culture changed. Bill and Tommy Brackens left at the same time. Bill helped Tommy get Brackens Bikes going at La Palma Cycle Center — Tuni's shop, where Bill had been a kid coming up. That's also where Bill got to know Brian "Bogi" Givens. When Tommy landed an investor from Germany named Hartwig, the business had its footing and Bill moved on.

Bill opened Power Plus Cycles in Stanton, CA — not far from where I was in Lakewood, not far from where GT was in Huntington Beach. He was making TECH racing pants out of that shop. Redline, Haro, S&M, and Cyclecraft were all running his gear. He was also managing the Vans Freestyle Promotion Team: me, Todd Anderson who was Bill's own roommate, and Danny Hubbard. The ramp and truck for that team were stored at Bill's house and always parked out front of Power Plus Cycles.

The TECH Team needed bikes and couldn't get a sponsor. So in 1989, Bill started Supercross BMX to put his own riders on something worth riding. That first roster tells you who Bill is and where he came from.

I stayed at GT for several more years after Bill left. But we stayed friends the whole time. That never changed.

Pro Former. Former Pro. Same Thing.

GT stopped making the Performer. Nothing they were building even looked like it anymore. So I went to Bill — by then running Supercross BMX for over twenty years — and told him I wanted to build a frame like the Performer. Call it the Pro Former, change the name just enough. Bill said two weeks. Two weeks turned into six months with nothing. So I went somewhere else.

I found Johnny at True Torch down in Santa Ana, right where GT first started. Johnny had actually welded Performers together when he was at GT. My bike was more GT than anything GT was producing at that point. We did 250 frames. Johnny did great work early on, but when I pushed on schedules the quality started to slip. My name was going on these frames. That wasn't going to work. That run ended.

Right then, Bill's Supercross prototype showed up on my doorstep. It was unbelievable. Now we were doing this together, the right way.

Then I got a cease and desist from GT. Pro Former sounds too much like Performer. The bike looks too much like the one they don't make anymore. Bill called them and told them where to go. We cut it and swapped the sides. Pro Former became Former Pro. They couldn't do a thing about it — because I am a former pro. It still means exactly the same thing.

Chromoly. Quality welds. Geometry that goes back to what Gary Turner and I were thinking about in 1984. The Former Pro is not a throwback product. It is a bike built by two people who have been doing this since the early 1980s and won't put their names on anything that isn't right.

If you rode a GT Performer, you know exactly what this is. If you didn't, you are about to find out what you missed.

The Timeline