Todd Steen

Early-1990s A Pro racer · Supercross BMX factory team, 1992 to 1993 · Original Strongarm crank test rider

A BMXRacingHistory.com preview · hosted on Legend Bike Co

At a glance

Name: Todd Steen.
Era: Early 1990s.
Discipline: BMX racing, A Pro class.
Documented sponsor: Supercross BMX, A Pro, 1992 and 1993.
Product credit: One of five riders given a set of the original hand-built Supercross Strongarm cro-mo cranks, around 1990. Bill Ryan describes Steen as "one of the most honest and reliable test riders the brand ever had."
Hall of Fame: No USA BMX National BMX Hall of Fame listing found on a quick directory check.

Why this page exists

Todd Steen is one of those riders whose name shows up on a factory roster, on a product test list, and in the institutional memory of a brand — but not in a long string of national mains or magazine covers. The record is real and specific, just narrow.

Which Todd this is — and which Todds this is not

BMX has had more than one Todd worth knowing. Before going further, the disambiguation:

• Todd Steen — A Pro racer for Supercross BMX, 1992 and 1993. The subject of this page.
• Todd Anderson — Haro freestyler, Freestylin' magazine cover rider. Not the same person.
• Todd Lyons — World Champion BMX racer and later GT factory rider. Different rider, different era.

The Supercross years — 1992 and 1993

The clearest cite on Todd Steen comes from the published Supercross BMX history as written by founder Bill Ryan. Steen was signed during the period when John "WFO" Sevrin had taken over frame manufacturing for Supercross. Steen and Kevin Gentry came on board together.

From Bill's written history: "We also signed Todd Steen and Kevin Gentry, and the team was building momentum." And on the early-1990s team era: "The team during this era included standouts like Todd Steen (who Bill describes as one of the most honest and reliable test riders the brand ever had), Kevin Gentry, the Luscombe brothers, and a rotating cast of some of the most colorful characters in BMX history."

Steen rode A Pro during the SX125 / SX250 production era — the chromoly race frame generation that became Supercross's backbone through the first half of the 1990s.

The Strongarm test ride — around 1990

The product-development credit is the part of the Steen record that is most worth pulling out, because it sits at the start of a product line that is still in production at Supercross today.

Around 1990, Supercross built its first cranks: five sets of hand-built cro-mo Supercross Strongarms, bent-arm design, inspired by a conversation Bill Ryan had years earlier with Pete Loncarevich at the Orange Y track about gate-acceleration physics and the longer-lever shape of Pete's LRP cranks. The five sets went to a tight test group. Todd Steen got one. BMX Plus! got a set for testing. Ken Cools — older brother of future Olympian Samantha Cools and now the Canadian national BMX coach — got a set too.

Steen's report, per the Supercross written history: he "swore by his set except for the occasional snapped spindle." That is real test-rider feedback. The cranks were shelved while the welder focused on frames and forks, then came back later in 7075 billet aluminum with a 1-inch diameter spindle. The current Strongarm line traces back to those first five hand-built sets and the riders who tested them. Todd Steen is one of the five.

What the team era was

The 1992 to 1993 window of Supercross BMX was a small, fast, scrappy operation. Bill Ryan and the team were running out of Southern California with WFO Sevrin building frames behind Bush Polishing. The factory racing roster ran through Pro riders like Parnell Haley and James Prichard, amateur and A Pro riders like Ray and Ryan Luscombe, and the working A Pros — Steen and Gentry — who put the bikes in the gate every weekend.

This was BMX racing under the still-separate ABA and NBL sanctioning bodies. The BUMS and NBA eras were already in the rearview, and the eventual USA BMX consolidation was still a decade or more away.

Where he fits

Todd Steen is not a Hall of Fame name. He is a real-team, real-bike, real-test-rider name — the kind of rider that small BMX brands have always been built on.

Sources

Bill Ryan, "The History of Supercross BMX," supercrossbmx.com. "The History of the Supercross BMX Race Team," supercrossbmx.com. USA BMX National BMX Hall of Fame directory. BMXmuseum.com. Oldschoolmags.com.

About this page. A preview of the forthcoming BMXRacingHistory.com. See also: History of BMX, SE Racing, Torker, Redline, GT, Haro, Mongoose, Hutch.