Kevin McNeal

Riverside, California · "The Corona Kid" · 1981 ABA National No. 1 Pro · NBA Mongoose Grand Nationals winner · California State Champion · First sponsored Torker racer · USA BMX National BMX Hall of Fame, Class of 2004

A BMXRacingHistory.com preview · hosted on Legend Bike Co

At a glance

Riverside roots and the Corona downhill

McNeal came up in Riverside, California in the mid-1970s. The Inland Empire — Riverside, Corona, and the surrounding towns — was the densest concentration of top BMX talent in the country at the time, and McNeal was at the front of it.

The track that made his name was Corona BMX, home to one of the most infamous downhill straights in BMX history. The USA BMX Hall of Fame entry describes McNeal as "practically unbeatable for 2 straight years" on Corona's downhill, and credits the run for the nickname that followed him for the rest of his career: The Corona Kid. Period accounts on FatBMX and bmxsociety community threads put his speed down the Corona drop at over 50 mph, running chains around his mag wheels for extra weight.

The first Torker MX rider, BMX Action 1977

Torker built its first 20" race frame, the MX, in 1976. The man who debuted it in print was Kevin McNeal. Per Torker Racing's official rider page, McNeal was one of Torker's first sponsored racers and the rider responsible for putting the Torker MX in front of the world in the pages of BMX Action Magazine in 1977 — the moment that took Torker from a small Fullerton operation to a national race brand.

The original MX was sized for him. McNeal was a bigger, harder-riding kid than the standard 1976 BMX bike was built for, and Torker scaled the frame to fit. Today's Torker MX26 and MX29 — and the 2026 50-Year Anniversary Big Bike — are named in his honor.

NBA Mongoose Grand Nationals, California State Champion

The two race wins that anchor McNeal's Torker chapter are the NBA Mongoose Grand Nationals victory and the California State BMX Championship. The NBA Grand Nationals win on the original 1976 Torker MX is the result that did more than any other to establish Torker as a legitimate factory race brand among racers, tracks, and bike shops nationwide.

1981 ABA National No. 1 Pro

By 1981, McNeal was racing pro. He took the ABA National No. 1 Pro title that year — and did it in a way that forced the sanctioning body to redraw its rules.

The USA BMX Hall of Fame entry calls it out directly: McNeal was "the first Pro to wrap up the #1 Pro title before The Grands." His season was so far ahead that the title was locked before the Grand National ever ran, which made the Grands themselves a non-factor for the championship. The ABA discarded the prior points system after that year.

For winning the 1981 ABA No. 1 Pro plate, McNeal received a 1982 Pontiac Trans Am — the ABA's headline prize for its top-ranked pro at the time.

Pro-Neck, video review, and "the first Bad Boy"

McNeal's longest pro stretch was on Pro-Neck. The Hall of Fame entry frames his pro career in two ways that both stand up as firsts.

The first was on the bike. After what the USA BMX entry calls "some overly aggressive riding," McNeal drew suspension time from the ABA — the entry labels him "the first controversial 'Bad Boy' of BMX." The 1981 ABA Summernationals incident with Frank Post in Amarillo is part of that record.

The second was off the bike, and it was ahead of its time. McNeal was the first pro to use portable video to study his own racing. He had a friend tape every moto, then watched the footage back between rounds in slow motion to find and fix mistakes before the next round.

After racing

After his run on Pro-Neck, McNeal stepped back from full-time racing. Community accounts on bmxmuseum and Facebook BMX Legend pages place him in Riverside running tracks of his own in the years that followed. The 2005 FatBMX item "May 2005: The Corona Kid in bad shape" notes a health setback that pulled the BMX community around him.

Where he fits

Kevin McNeal is one of the foundation racers of the American BMX scene. He debuted the bike that put Torker on the map, dominated the gnarliest downhill track in the sport, took the 1981 ABA No. 1 Pro plate in a way that broke the points system, and pioneered the off-the-bike habits (video review) that the rest of the sport caught up to twenty years later.

He raced under ABA and NBA rules in the era before the USA BMX consolidation, alongside the NBL and the international IBMXF. The brand he is most associated with is documented at the Torker Racing history chapter; the bike-shop scene he came up in is in The History of BMX.

Sources

USA BMX National BMX Hall of Fame, "Kevin McNeal" — official entry, Class of 2004 (Racer): usabmx.com/about/hall-of-fame/812. Torker Racing, "Kevin McNeal — The First Torker MX | USA BMX HOF 2004": torkerracing.com/pages/kevin-mcneal. Torker Racing, "The #1 BMX Factory Team in America: Complete Torker Racing History (1977-Present)." BMX Action, "To the Max: The History of Torker 1975-1984" at bmxaction.org. FatBMX, "May 2005: The Corona Kid in bad shape." BMX Society community forum thread on downhill tracks. BMXmuseum.com community threads — "Kevin McNeal, info?" and "Kevin McNeal's 203mm Profile cranks." Bill Ryan supplied the Torker-era context.

Spelling note. The correct spelling is Kevin McNeal. The variant "McNeil" appears occasionally in older posts and search engines; the USA BMX Hall of Fame directory, the Torker Racing official rider page, and the FatBMX news archive all use McNeal.