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
Some riders never stack up a row of national mains or magazine covers. Todd is one of them. His name shows up on my factory roster, on a product test list, and in the part of my memory that holds the people who actually built this brand. The record is narrow. It is also real, and every word of it checks out.
Which Todd this is — and which Todds this is not
BMX has had more than one Todd worth knowing. So before going further, let me clear the air:
- 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 record on Todd comes straight out of the Supercross BMX history I wrote myself. I signed him during the stretch when John "WFO" Sevrin had taken over frame manufacturing for us. Todd and Kevin Gentry came on board together.
Here is how I put it in that written history: "We also signed Todd Steen and Kevin Gentry, and the team was building momentum." And on that early-1990s team: "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."
Todd rode A Pro during the SX125 and SX250 production era — the chromoly race frame generation that carried Supercross through the first half of the 1990s.
The Strongarm test ride — around 1990
This is the part of Todd's story I most want pulled out into the open, because it sits right at the start of a product line we still build at Supercross today.
Around 1990, we made our first cranks. Five sets of hand-built cro-mo Supercross Strongarms, bent-arm design. The shape came out of a conversation I had years earlier with Pete Loncarevich over at the Orange Y track, talking about gate-acceleration physics and the longer-lever shape of Pete's LRP cranks. Those five sets went to a tight little test group. Todd got one. BMX Plus! got a set for testing. So did Ken Cools — older brother of future Olympian Samantha Cools, and now the Canadian national BMX coach.
Todd's report, per that same written history: he "swore by his set except for the occasional snapped spindle." That is real test-rider feedback, the honest kind. We shelved the cranks while the welder stayed buried in frames and forks, then brought them back later in 7075 billet aluminum with a 1-inch diameter spindle. The Strongarm line you see now traces straight back to those first five hand-built sets and the riders who put them through it. Todd is one of the five.
What the team era was
The 1992 to 1993 window of Supercross BMX was small, fast, and scrappy. We ran out of Southern California with WFO Sevrin building frames behind Bush Polishing. The factory roster carried Pro riders like Parnell Haley and James Prichard, amateur and A Pro riders like Ray and Ryan Luscombe, and the working A Pros — Todd and Gentry — who put the bikes in the gate every single 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 USA BMX consolidation that came later was still a decade or more down the road.
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 small BMX brands have always been built on. I should know. I built one on riders like him.
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.