Jeff Bottema
Racer, Fork Designer, and BMX Hall of Famer — 1960–2025
A BMXRacingHistory.com preview · hosted on Legend Bike Co
At a glance
Born April 14, 1960, Norwalk, California · Died September 19, 2025, age 65 · Nickname "Battling"
Pro teams D.G. Performance Specialist (1977–79) · Raleigh Cycle Company (1979–81) · Mountain Dew exhibition team (1981) · Murray of Ohio (1981–83)
Known for Designer of the Bottema Bullet Fork · Murray BMX road team manager · ABA BMX Hall of Fame, 1990
Most racers get one shot at being remembered. Jeff Bottema got two. He rode for the brands that built BMX's first commercial wave — DG, Raleigh, Mountain Dew, Murray — and made the finals through all of them. Then he built something that outran his whole racing career: the Bottema Bullet Fork. He was one of the first Americans to ride exhibitions in Europe. And he was one of the rare few who took a product idea out of his own head and turned it into a name people still know. He died in September 2025. He was 65.
Coming up — Two Wheeler's, Webco, and DG
He started racing in mid-1974, fourteen years old, running NBA District X. Two Wheeler's BMX signed him that same year. By May 1975 he had moved to Webco, and when Webco folded its team in March 1976, he landed at D.G. Performance Specialist a month later. DG — named for founders Dan Hangsleben and Gary Harlow — ran a BMX team and the manufacturing arm that built frames under the Green Duck name. Green Duck also built the SE Basher and the SE OM Flyer in that same window; the full story is over on the SE Racing page.
His first national win landed at the NPSA Eastern Nationals in Atlanta on September 7, 1975. After that he climbed fast. The 1975 NBA 14 & Over Intermediate Grandnational. The 1976 NML/Schwinn Gold Cup Class F, run at halftime of a Dolphins / Vikings preseason game in the Orange Bowl. The 1977 16 Expert NBA / Mongoose halftime exhibition at the LA Coliseum.
Turning pro — DG, 1977
He turned pro in 1977. Around the same time he became a founding member of the Professional Racing Organization, the short-lived racers' guild built to give the pros a voice with the sanctioning bodies. He stayed with DG through July 1979.
Raleigh — July 1979 to January 1981
The door opened through Chuck Robinson — the same Robinson behind Robinson Racing — who had reached out to Raleigh Cycle Company of America. Raleigh wanted a U.S. BMX program, and Robinson put Bottema and Henderson forward. Raleigh signed them both. This was Bottema's most visible stretch as a pro: NBA pro finals across the circuit, a Jeff Bottema signature-series frame in the catalog, and the November 1979 and December 1981 BMX Action covers. Then in 1980, Bottema and Henderson became two of the first Americans invited over to Europe to promote and demonstrate BMX racing.
Raleigh shut the BMX team down in mid-January 1981. It would restart the program about a year later.
Mountain Dew — 1981
Through the spring and summer of 1981, Bottema toured the country on the Mountain Dew BMX exhibition team — race demos, freestyle shows, safety clinics — riding alongside Stu Thomsen, Perry Kramer, Harry Leary, Brent Patterson, Bob Haro, and R.L. Osborn.
Murray of Ohio — August 1981 to December 1983
Bottema signed with Murray in August 1981 and stayed there the rest of his competitive career. In May 1982 he took on the road-team-manager role at Murray while still racing. His last two racing years were mostly in the 24" Cruiser class. That September 1982 Total BMX cover — Bottema in an ABC television camera-equipped helmet at the 1982 Murray World Cup I — came out of this run.
The off-track injury, March 1984
On March 16, 1984, traveling with the Murray Bicycle road racing team in Dallas, Texas, Bottema was abducted and stabbed multiple times during a robbery. Two surgeries. Multiple blood transfusions. Critical condition at Parkland Memorial Hospital. By September the press reported him virtually fully recovered.
The 1987 Masters race — the comeback that started a class
On January 18, 1987, at the ABA Supernationals in San Bernardino, Scot Breithaupt staged what got billed as the 1st Annual Masters Series. The rules were strict — no frame newer than 1978, vintage uniforms and helmets. Bottema rolled out his old DG frame in his complete vintage DG kit and won the thing. It was meant to be a one-off. Instead it became the seed of the Veterans and Masters classes the ABA and NBL formalized in the early 1990s — classes still on today's USA BMX schedule.
The Bottema Bullet Fork
Bottema designed the original fork in 1978 and brought it to market in 1979 under his own company. The full brand story lives here: Bottema Forks — the history of the Bullet Fork.
The first model was the M-1 Bullet Fork — a tubular chromoly unicrown built around two ideas most race forks of the era never put together. Thicker tubing, at .065 inches. And longer leg tubes that extended roughly an inch below the dropouts. Put together, that cut flex and gave the fork a profile nothing else on the market shared. He tested it with Toby Henderson before he sold a single one. Once it shipped, the M-1 found its biggest following in an audience he never designed it for: freestyle skatepark bowl riders. Jeff Watson and Eddie Fiola are the names most often tied to running M-1s.
A C-1 cruiser model followed in 1979. In early 1981 he released the lighter M-2 racing model. Then in October 2020, Montreal-based American BMX Company signed a long-term licensing deal with Bottema to bring the fork back.
After racing
Bottema retired at the end of 1983 and moved to Nashville, taking an office position with Murray as Race Team coordinator and in-house BMX specialist. He left Murray in 1985, joined Lee World, then moved to Mor Distributing, the outfit behind the Scootster scooter line. The fork company kept running through all of it.
Hall of Fame and legacy
The ABA inducted Bottema into the BMX Hall of Fame in 1990, for the racing and the fork both. What he left BMX sits in two ledgers. A finals-grade pro across three factory programs in the sport's most competitive years. And one of the two or three most recognizable forks in BMX history — built by a working pro who ran his own company on the side.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Jeff Bottema." BMXmuseum.com, "Jeff 'Battling' Bottema" reference page. Rose Hills Memorial — Jeffery Bottema obituary (September 2025). Bicycle Motocross Action — February 1982. BMX Plus! — October 1982, May 1984, July 1984, December 1984. BMX Action — August 1982, May 1984, October 1986, December 1986, May 1987. Bicycle Motocross News — 1975 and 1976 issues. BMX Weekly — October 1976. Super BMX-Freestyle — May 1987. Bicycle Retailer and Industry News — "Race Inc.'s new owner plans to bring back the Bottema fork" (October 2020). USA BMX / ABA BMX Hall of Fame — Bottema 1990 inductee record. BMXmuseum.com Forums — "Jeff Bottema, the legend, RIP!!" memorial thread (September 2025).