Legend Bike Co — BMX History Project · Riders & Builders

Martin Aparijo

Martin Aparijo, known across the sport as "The Chairman," is one of the foundational riders of BMX flatland freestyle. He came up in the Southern California scene of the early 1980s, rode for the Torker factory team in 1984, designed the 1984 Torker Freestylist frame, and spent the heart of his pro career as a factory rider for GT Bicycles. He won the 1987 AFA Masters Finals in flatland, did most of the stunt riding for Lori Loughlin's character in the 1986 film RAD, and was inducted into the National BMX Hall of Fame in 2014.

Coming up in Southern California

Aparijo grew up in Southern California — the geographic center of BMX in its first decade. His first taste of organized competition came in 1982 at the Redline World Almanac Skills competition, where he set the long-distance jump record. The World Almanac Skills events of that period awarded Redline bikes only to riders who actually set a world record on the day; a kid couldn't buy one off a shop floor. Aparijo earned his.

His mentor and riding partner in those early years was Woody Itson — one of only two top-level pros, alongside Aparijo himself, who focused on flatland as the sport was being invented in real time. Most of the riders working the pavement in 1982 and 1983 were race pros who'd picked up trick riding as a sideline. Aparijo and Itson treated flatland as the thing itself.

1984 — The Torker factory year and the Freestylist frame

By 1984, freestyle BMX had moved from a curiosity at the back of race meets to a sport with its own magazines, its own touring teams, and its own equipment race. Aparijo had become visible enough as a flatland specialist to land a factory spot at Torker — the Southern California company that had already manufactured the world's first purpose-built freestyle frame on its own production line.

The frame Aparijo designed for Torker in 1984 was called the Torker Freestylist. It was the first frame Torker built specifically for Torker-branded freestyle riding. The Freestylist never had a chance to find its audience. In November 1984, Torker filed for bankruptcy, and production was cut short almost immediately after launch. Very few were built. Today an original 1984 Torker Freestylist is among the most sought-after old-school freestyle frames in the world.

GT Bicycles — the long factory run

With Torker out of the freestyle business, Aparijo moved to GT Bicycles, the Huntington Beach company founded by Gary Turner and Rich Long. GT was building one of the most ambitious freestyle programs in the sport — the GT Pro Freestyle Tour and GT Pro World Tour bikes, a touring team that played all 50 states and traveled internationally.

Aparijo became the flatland anchor of that program and stayed with GT through the heart of the 1980s. He was a fixture in the magazines in his GT factory uniform — BMX Plus!, FREESTYLIN', Super BMX. The January 1987 BMX Plus! cover put Aparijo's GT bike front and center.

The USA BMX Hall of Fame describes Aparijo as a "longtime GT freestyler" and that framing is the right one. Other riders cycled through GT's freestyle program. Aparijo stayed. The nickname "The Chairman" came out of that period — recognition that he had become the senior figure of the flatland scene.

The trick vocabulary

The Hall of Fame citation credits Aparijo with creating three flatland tricks by name: the Cherry Picker, the Lawnmower, and the Grasshopper. Each of those entered the flatland vocabulary in the mid-1980s and stayed there.

Steve Emig, who covered the era as a contest reporter for FREESTYLIN' and rode alongside Aparijo at AFA Masters contests, wrote that Aparijo and Woody Itson together "invented a ton of the foundational flatland tricks all of us guys around the country started learning" through 1984, 1985, and 1986. Emig's description of a single 1986 Aparijo contest run lists framestands, decades, tailwhips and double tailwhips, surfers, backwards wheelies, Switzerland squeakers, grasshoppers, and the bar ride — the bar ride being a brand-new trick at the time.

One detail that mattered: Aparijo was the top flatlander known for riding a freewheel at a time when the dominant advice in BMX print was still "put a coaster brake on your race bike, that's your freestyle bike." That single equipment choice shifted how a generation of flatlanders set up their bikes.

1987 — The AFA Masters Finals win

The AFA (American Freestyle Association) Masters series was the highest level of organized freestyle competition in the United States in the mid-1980s. In 1987 Aparijo won the AFA Masters Finals in flatland — the championship of the discipline he had helped invent. It is the headline competition result of his career.

RAD, Quicksilver, and the show-tour years

Aparijo's reach extended past the contest circuit. In 1986 he appeared as himself in the BMX film RAD, directed by Hal Needham, and did most of the stunt riding for the female lead — Christian Holly, played by Lori Loughlin. The gymnasium dance scene where Cru and Christian ride to "Send Me an Angel" is one of the most-cited single sequences in BMX-on-film history; the riding behind the actress in that scene is Aparijo in a wig.

The same year, he appeared in Quicksilver, the Kevin Bacon bike-messenger film, performing both on-screen acting and stunt riding alongside Woody Itson.

National BMX Hall of Fame, 2014

Aparijo was inducted into the National BMX Hall of Fame in 2014 in the Freestyle category. The official citation describes him as "a pure showman from the moment he arrived on the fresh freestyle scene of the mid-80's" and credits him as one of the first riders to specialize in flatland, the inventor of the Cherry Picker, Lawnmower, and Grasshopper, the 1987 AFA Masters Finals winner, and the rider behind the stunt work in RAD and Quicksilver.

Where he is now

Aparijo lives in Huntington Beach, California, and is still riding. He continues to appear at old-school jams up and down the West Coast — the One Love Jam in Newport Beach, BMX reunion events, and demos at long-running shops.

Why Aparijo matters to BMX

Two reasons. The first is the trick vocabulary. The Cherry Picker, the Lawnmower, the Grasshopper, the bar ride, the no-handed Miami hop — pieces of the flatland lexicon that every rider in the discipline still works through — were either invented by Aparijo or shaped to the point that his version became the version everyone learned.

The second is the equipment and brand work. The 1984 Torker Freestylist is one of the rarest and most historically significant freestyle frames ever made, and Aparijo designed it. The GT Pro Freestyle Tour bikes he rode through the mid-1980s carried his color schemes onto magazine covers and into the films that defined how freestyle looked to outsiders.

Sources

USA BMX / National BMX Hall of Fame — Martin Aparijo induction page (2014, Freestyle). Torker Racing — "The History of Freestyle BMX — How It Started on a Torker." Steve Emig — "Martin Aparijo: The Chairman of Flatland," October 16, 2019. SplendidBMX — "About Martin Aparijo." BMX Museum — 1984 Torker Freestylist Martin Aparijo entry. Flat Matters Online — "Old School Sundays with Martin Aparijo." Bicycle Retailer and Industry News — "BMX Hall of Fame announces 2014 inductees." IMDb — Martin Aparijo filmography. FatBMX — Martin Aparijo tag archive.