Legend Bike Co — BMX History Project · Riders & Builders

Martin Aparijo

They called him "The Chairman," and the name stuck because it fit. Martin Aparijo is one of the riders flatland freestyle was built on. He came up in the Southern California scene of the early 1980s, rode for the Torker factory team in 1984, and drew up the 1984 Torker Freestylist frame himself. The heart of his pro career he spent as a factory rider for GT Bicycles. He won the 1987 AFA Masters Finals in flatland. He did most of the stunt riding for Lori Loughlin's character in the 1986 film RAD. And in 2014 they put him in the National BMX Hall of Fame.

Coming up in Southern California

Aparijo grew up in Southern California, which in BMX's first decade was the center of everything. His first real shot at organized competition came in 1982 at the Redline World Almanac Skills competition. He set the long-distance jump record there. And here's the thing about those World Almanac Skills events — they only handed Redline bikes to riders who actually set a world record on the day. You couldn't walk into a shop and buy one. Aparijo earned his.

His mentor and riding partner in those early years was Woody Itson. The two of them were just about the only top-level pros focused on flatland while the sport was still being figured out, day by day. Most of the guys working the pavement in 1982 and 1983 were race pros who'd picked up trick riding on the side. Aparijo and Itson treated flatland as the whole point.

1984 — The Torker factory year and the Freestylist frame

By 1984 freestyle BMX wasn't a curiosity at the back of the race meets anymore. It had its own magazines, its own touring teams, its own equipment race. Aparijo had made enough of a name as a flatland specialist to land a factory spot at Torker — the Southern California company that had already built the world's first purpose-made freestyle frame on its own production line.

The frame Aparijo drew up for Torker that year was the Torker Freestylist. First frame Torker ever built specifically for Torker-branded freestyle riding. It never got the chance to find its people. In November 1984 Torker filed for bankruptcy, and production stopped almost the moment it started. Very few got made. An original 1984 Torker Freestylist today is one of the most sought-after old-school freestyle frames anywhere in the world.

GT Bicycles — the long factory run

With Torker out of the freestyle business, Aparijo moved over to GT Bicycles, the Huntington Beach company Gary Turner and Rich Long had started. GT was putting together 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 went overseas.

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

The USA BMX Hall of Fame calls Aparijo a "longtime GT freestyler," and that's the right way to put it. Plenty of riders passed through GT's freestyle program. Aparijo stayed. The nickname "The Chairman" came out of those years — everybody's way of saying he'd become the senior man of the flatland scene.

The trick vocabulary

The Hall of Fame citation credits Aparijo with naming three flatland tricks of his own: the Cherry Picker, the Lawnmower, and the Grasshopper. Every one of them landed in the flatland vocabulary in the mid-1980s and never left.

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 account of a single 1986 Aparijo contest run runs through framestands, decades, tailwhips and double tailwhips, surfers, backwards wheelies, Switzerland squeakers, grasshoppers, and the bar ride — and the bar ride was brand-new at the time.

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

1987 — The AFA Masters Finals win

The AFA (American Freestyle Association) Masters series was the top 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'd helped invent. It's the headline result of his whole career.

RAD, Quicksilver, and the show-tour years

Aparijo's reach went well past the contest circuit. In 1986 he showed up 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. That 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? That's Aparijo in a wig.

That same year he turned up in Quicksilver, the Kevin Bacon bike-messenger film, doing both on-screen acting and stunt riding alongside Woody Itson.

National BMX Hall of Fame, 2014

Aparijo went into the National BMX Hall of Fame in 2014 in the Freestyle category. The official citation calls him "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 he's still riding. He keeps showing up at old-school jams up and down the West Coast — the One Love Jam in Newport Beach, BMX reunion events, demos at long-running shops.

Why Aparijo matters to BMX

Two reasons. 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 every rider in the discipline still works through — were either invented by Aparijo or shaped to the point where his version became the version everybody learned.

Second is the equipment and the brand work. The 1984 Torker Freestylist is one of the rarest and most historically important 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 shaped how freestyle looked to everybody outside the sport.

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.