A Legend Bike Co. rider page · primary sources: Bill Ryan and Supercross BMX company history, Kevin Hull's own published account, and period BMX press

Kevin Hull

GT Factory Pro, Brackens Bikes' First Rider, and RAD's Real BMX Voice

At a glance

Nickname Sheepdog
Scene Southern California, mid-1980s
Teams GT Bicycles (factory, through 1986) → Brackens Bikes (first factory rider, 1988)
Also La Palma Cycle Center crew, alongside Bill Ryan, Turnell "Tuni" Henry, and Tommy Brackens
Known for Former GT hotshoe and BMX Action cover rider; one of more than 25 real BMX pros hired to work on RAD in 1985

Everybody who raced with Kevin Hull in the mid-1980s just called him Sheepdog. He rode GT Bicycles' factory team at the height of the brand's run, worked a Hollywood movie set as one of the real BMX pros hired to make Hell Track look believable, and then, when GT's roster broke up at the end of 1986, became the first rider two friends signed to a brand they were building from scratch. Forty years on, he is still one of the most recognizable faces from that era of the sport, in large part because the movie he worked on turned into a cult classic.

GT Bicycles, and a cover on BMX Action

Hull rode for GT Bicycles during the brand's mid-1980s factory years, the same era that had Tommy Brackens on the racing side and Eddie Fiola running freestyle. He was well known enough in the GT camp that the team printed ballot stickers with his name on them for the 1987 BMX Action NORA Cup vote, and he landed a cover of BMX Action himself during his GT run — the kind of exposure that only came to a handful of riders on any given factory team.

Bill Ryan, who managed GT's Robinson Division as a team manager during part of this same period, remembers Hull leaving GT at the same point Tommy Brackens did, at the end of 1986, when Brackens turned down a reduced contract offer and walked. Hull went with him.

Hell Track, for real

In 1985, GT Bicycles answered a call sent out to real BMX teams for riders willing to work on a Hollywood BMX film then titled Hell Track — the movie that became RAD. Kevin Hull was one of the GT riders who signed on, part of a group of more than 25 of the era's top BMX names hired to make the film's riding look real. His own account of arriving on location has been published directly: "When I got there they were still finishing the track. I could not believe what I was seeing. The starting hill was huge and steep." He also described how the crew filmed the Hell Track sequence in pieces — "Everything was shot in sections starting with the first turn and working around the track" — and how nobody wanted to be the first rider down the course's 25-foot starting wall: "Every day we were there filming we would try to figure out the best way down the start and who was going to try it first."

Hull kept his own photo record from the shoot, including a shot of himself racing as car number two in the film's qualifying-race scene, and he has stayed connected to the RAD fan community ever since — showing up at 25th-anniversary autograph sessions in Cochrane, Alberta, in 2011, and stopping by the BMXmuseum.com offices in 2013 with scrapbooks from the production.

A note on the record. A production history of RAD cites interview material from "GT Bikes crew member Kevin Hull." That is the same Kevin Hull on this page, not a different person who happened to share the name — his own blog, his own photos from the set, and an independent BMX fan site's description of him as "former GT hotshoe... Kevin 'Sheepdog' Hull" all point to the same rider. The word "crew" in that one citation is describing his role working the production, not a claim that he was something other than a GT factory racer.

Brackens Bikes' first rider

When Tommy Brackens left GT at the end of 1986, Bill Ryan left the same team not long after, and the two of them built Brackens Bikes together — Bill hand-drew the original logo, and the company ran out of Turnell "Tuni" Henry's La Palma Cycle Center. Kevin Hull, who had just come over from GT at the same time, became the first rider Brackens Bikes factory-sponsored. He was there from the beginning of the brand, not a name attached to it later — that distinction belongs to Eric Carter, who signed with Brackens further into the company's run and went on to a much bigger career across BMX, mountain biking, and dual slalom.

Bill Ryan remembers a color, double-page feature of Hull riding his Brackens frame that ran in BMX Action during this stretch, with Hull wearing TECH racing sweatpants — the apparel line Bill had started a few years earlier (source: Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026). That specific issue has not been located in the magazine archives checked for this page; it is included here as Bill's own recollection, not as an independently confirmed citation.

La Palma Cycle Center

Outside of racing and the movie set, Hull was part of the crew working the counter at La Palma Cycle Center, the shop Tuni Henry owned and where Bill Ryan went to work after leaving GT. It was a small, tight group — Bill Ryan, Tuni Henry, Tommy Brackens, Kevin Hull, and, for a stretch, a young Sean McKinney, who was hired on as a young teenager and later put that same story on the record in his own words: "I got hired at a bike shop where I worked with Turnell Henry, Tommy Brackens, Kevin Hull and Bill Ryan." That shop-counter connection between four pros and one teenage freestyle grunt is one of the more unusual footnotes of the era — a bike shop that, for a few years, had that much talent stocking shelves and running the register at the same time.

Where he is today

Hull has stayed visible in the BMX and RAD communities well past his racing years. He has appeared on the Dirty Knobs Podcast and the Houston BMX Show, and in 2016, Cruiser Revolution documented him back on the track in the cruiser class, riding with support from his old sponsor Gary Turner — the "GT" from GT Bicycles, and by then well into his own retirement, still willing to help an old rider get back on a bike.

Where the public record runs thin

Kevin Hull's birth date and hometown are not documented in the sources checked for this page. His exact GT signing date, his National number or ranking during his racing years, and his activity through 1987 — the gap between leaving GT and Brackens Bikes' July 1988 founding — are not confirmed in the archives available to us. The BMX Action cover referenced by multiple secondary sources has not been pinned to a specific issue date here. None of that changes the well-corroborated facts: the GT years, the RAD production work, and the Brackens Bikes connection all check out across multiple independent sources.

Where Kevin Hull fits in the bigger story

Riders: Tommy Brackens, Turnell "Tuni" Henry, Sean McKinney, Eric Carter, Bill Ryan. Brands: GT Bicycles, TECH BMX Products. Culture: RAD (1986), BMX Action Magazine. The bigger arc is in our History of BMX series.

Sources

Bill Ryan, founder of Supercross BMX and Legend Bike Co — firsthand account of the La Palma Cycle Center crew, the founding of Brackens Bikes, and Kevin Hull as its first factory rider, as published on our Tommy Brackens and Bill Ryan pages. Kevin Hull's own published account, kevinhullbmx.blogspot.com — on-set photos and captions from the RAD production. Morbidly Beautiful, "Video Rewind: Rad (1986)" by Jason McFiggins (2021) — direct quotes from Kevin Hull describing the Hell Track shoot. Cruiser Revolution, "Sheepdog still snappin' gates" (2016) — GT background and 2016 comeback. BMXmuseum.com forums, "RAD movie star! Kevin Hull just stopped by the bmxmuseum" (2013). BMX Society community forums, "Please Welcome Our Newest Member Sheepdog." Wikipedia, "Tommy Brackens" — confirms Hull as a Brackens Racing Products rider. oldschoolmags.com and bmxsociety.com were checked for independent period race-result coverage of Hull; neither returned results beyond the GT and Brackens-era material already cited above.