Thom Lund

An early rider, by his own account

Thom Lund says he first saw a BMX bike in 1970, in Santa Monica, and raced from 1970 to 1976 — which puts him squarely in the first wave of riders the Ernie Alexander chapter calls the "first NBA generation," alongside names like John George and Byron Friday. Lund rode for Rick's Bike Shop, on a Webco frame with Moto mags for at least part of that run, and he raced side hacks — three-wheeled sidecar-style BMX rigs — through most of his career. Later on he rode a Wayne King Bicycles Monoshock, a 50-plus-pound machine so associated with him that Wayne King's own catalog listed it as the "Thom Lund model."

Lund's own list of the tracks that tested him reads like a tour of the gnarliest downhills of the era: Solidad Sands, Upper and Lower Yarnell, Randall Ranch, Saddleback, Corona, Poway, and Merritt College up in the Bay Area. At the 1974 Yamaha Gold Cup final at the LA Coliseum, Lund posted the fastest qualifying lap riding for Rick's, then went down in a pileup with rider John Palfreyman in the main.

The Saddleback dispute

The one race Thom Lund's name is most tied to is one he says he doesn't actually remember winning. In 1975, Scot Breithaupt promoted what he's called the first-ever BMX pro race, at Saddleback Park — five dollars to enter, a $200 purse to the winner, real money in a sport that had until then paid in trophies. Breithaupt has said Lund, riding for Rick's Bike Shop, won it.

Lund's own account, given in a 2003 interview, tells it differently: "Scott keeps telling me I won the 1st Pro race at Saddelback, he promoted it but I don't remember. As the story goes Dave Clinton broke his Kawasaki frame flying down Bonzai hill. I crashed down Bonzai and they restarted the race. So the top guys are busting frames and getting totaled, where's Scott? Announcing."

Two firsthand accounts, the same race, two different memories of who actually won it. We're not resolving that here — the full framing of the dispute lives on the Saddleback Park chapter, and we're carrying it forward the same way on this page: Breithaupt has been consistent that Lund won, and that's the version that made it into the record, but Lund's own uncertainty is real and worth knowing.

An early claim on freestyle

Lund also says that around 1975 he was riding tricks that predate the freestyle most histories credit to Bob Haro a few years later — he describes "flying down Bonzai over Bob Phillips doing a one hander," and says his riding partner John Palfreyman was riding pools at the Key Hole around the same time, both "documented with pictures" in his telling. We haven't independently verified the photos, but it's Lund's own claim and it's consistent with how loosely defined the line between racing and trick riding was in BMX's first half-decade.

Leaving BMX for motorcycles

Lund's racing career didn't end with BMX. He and John Palfreyman moved into sidecar motorcycle racing — International and World Championship Grand Prix competition in Europe — and Lund lived in Holland for a stretch, including a 1980 exhibition appearance in Amsterdam. It's a common enough path for a rider who came up racing dirt as a kid in the early 1970s: BMX was still brand new, and motorcycle racing was the sport it had always been trying to imitate.

Where Thom Lund fits in the bigger story

Lund raced in the years before BMX had national sanctions worth the name, on tracks that no longer exist, against riders whose names mostly didn't survive the record the way his did — and the reason his did is a single disputed race result. That's worth sitting with. A lot of BMX's earliest history rests on exactly this kind of thing: one promoter's memory against one rider's, with no fourth-place finisher or timing sheet to settle it. Read the fuller Saddleback story, and the era it came out of, in The History of BMX.

Frequently asked questions

Did Thom Lund win the first BMX pro race at Saddleback Park?

It's disputed. Scot Breithaupt, who promoted the 1975 race, has said Lund won it. Lund's own 2003 interview says he doesn't remember winning and describes a chaotic, restarted race. Both accounts are part of the record.

What team did Thom Lund race for?

Rick's Bike Shop, on a Webco frame, during the early-to-mid 1970s.

What did Thom Lund do after BMX?

He moved into sidecar motorcycle road racing in Europe, competing at International and World Championship Grand Prix level with longtime racing partner John Palfreyman.