USA BMX

The Sanction Born from the ABA / NBL Merger — 2011 to Today

A BMXRacingHistory.com preview · hosted on Legend Bike Co

We're telling this story neutrally. No brand gets elevated. No rider gets shorted. Where the record is contested, we say so.

Where it started — the two sanctions that became one

For most of my time in this sport, if you wanted to be the best in the country, you had to win two number-one plates, not one. There were two governing bodies running American BMX at the same time, and they'd been doing it for more than thirty years. USA BMX is what you got when those two finally became one. It didn't fall out of the sky in 2011. It's the two of them welded together.

The first was the American Bicycle Association, started October 13, 1977 in Chandler, Arizona by Merl Mennenga and Gene Roden. The Chandler track became ABA Track 001. The ABA's first national ran in Azusa, California in February 1978. Then in March 1985, Mennenga sold the ABA to Bernie Anderson and Jamie Vargas for $250,000. Anderson ran it from there, and eventually moved the company to Gilbert, Arizona.

The second was the National Bicycle League, started in 1974 by George Edward Esser. First NBL-sanctioned race went off January 26, 1974 at Miami-Hollywood Speedway Park. Here's the part most people miss. Unlike the ABA and the older NBA, the NBL was a non-profit, with a Competition Congress where member tracks actually voted on the rules. That setup is the whole reason the NBL — not the ABA — was the one that joined USA Cycling in 1997 when our sport started reaching for the Olympics.

So for about thirty-five years the two of them ran side by side. Two points systems. Two sets of national plates. Two Grandnationals. Different tracks. If you wanted to call yourself the best, you had to do it twice.

The 2011 merger

On May 17, 2011, the NBL's Board of Directors signed off on a letter of agreement to merge with the ABA. The final papers were signed June 18, 2011. That was the first day in more than thirty-five years that BMX racing in North America ran under one roof.

Get this part right, because people muddle it. The ABA acquired the NBL. USA BMX is the legal and operational continuation of the American Bicycle Association — the ABA's leadership, its Arizona office, its rulebook, its transfer-system race format all carried straight through. What came across from the NBL was the non-profit status, the USA Cycling membership, and all the international Olympic-pathway plumbing it had built up since 1997.

The day it merged, USA BMX inherited more than 350 sanctioned tracks and roughly 70,000 members. The combined sanction was led by Bernie Anderson's son, B.A. Anderson II, as CEO. Bernie Anderson Sr. — the man who'd bought the ABA out of Chandler back in 1985 — stayed on in an emeritus role. He passed away in October 2025 at 93.

From Gilbert, Arizona to Tulsa, Oklahoma

For the first ten years, USA BMX ran out of Gilbert, Arizona — the same office that had run the ABA going all the way back to the Mennenga days.

That ended in February 2022. After a few years of planning, USA BMX picked up and moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma. The new complex opened February 15, 2022 in front of more than 500 people. It sits in Tulsa's Greenwood District, and it's got a 25,000-square-foot headquarters, a permanent home for the National BMX Hall of Fame and Museum at 4,000 square feet, and a real race track next door — the Hardesty National BMX Stadium, with an Olympic-spec eight-meter starting hill.

The ABA had been an Arizona outfit from the day it was born in 1977. Forty-five years in one state, then a clean jump to a purpose-built place two states over.

The Hall of Fame

USA BMX runs the official National BMX Hall of Fame, which goes back to 1985. By 2025, more than 190 riders, builders, industry people, and track operators have been inducted.

Read the list of names and it's basically a roll call of who built this sport. On the racing side you've got Scot Breithaupt, Stu Thomsen, Greg Hill, Perry Kramer. From freestyle, Eddie Fiola went in with the Class of 2009 in the Freestyle category. And Pete Loncarevich, four-time ABA #1 Pro. Ryan Nyquist joined the Hall with the Class of 2023, on the strength of an X Games medal count rather than a national plate.

The Grandnationals

The yearly Grandnationals — billed as "The Greatest Race on Earth" — is the big one on the USA BMX calendar. The whole format comes straight out of the ABA's 1978 tradition.

These days it runs at the SageNet Center at Tulsa's Expo Square over Thanksgiving weekend. It pulls in more than 3,500 athletes from all 50 states and roughly two dozen foreign countries, every November, in Tulsa. And it's free to get in.

The number-one plate system

USA BMX hands out a #1 plate every year in every class — the amateur age classes, Pro, Vet Pro, Pro Women, Elite Pro Women. You earn it on points piled up at sanctioned nationals through the season plus how you finish at the Grandnationals.

That plate means something. Recent National #1 Pros on the men's side include Joris Daudet of France and the American Barry Nobles. On the women's side, Alise Willoughby has held the #1 Pro Women plate more than once — nine USA BMX Pro titles by 2020.

The Olympic pathway — USA BMX and USA Cycling

BMX racing has been an Olympic sport since Beijing 2008. The road from a USA BMX track to the Olympic gate runs through USA Cycling, the UCI-recognized national federation for cycling here in the States.

And this is exactly why the NBL's 1997 move to join USA Cycling mattered as much as it did. USA Cycling needed a non-profit BMX partner. The NBL was the non-profit. So when the ABA pulled the NBL in back in 2011, that USA Cycling tie came along in the same deal.

BMX's Olympic debut at Beijing 2008 went, on the men's side, to Māris Štrombergs of Latvia. Štrombergs defended it at London 2012, which makes him the only rider to win Olympic BMX gold twice.

Then came Rio 2016. Connor Fields won the United States' first-ever Olympic gold in BMX racing. Same Games, Alise Willoughby took silver — the first American woman to medal in Olympic BMX. Mariana Pajón of Colombia won the women's gold.

At Tokyo 2020 (run in 2021), Fields came back to defend and got carried off on a stretcher after a hard semifinal crash. Bethany Shriever of Great Britain won the women's gold. Niek Kimmann of the Netherlands won the men's.

For Paris 2024, the U.S. sent a five-rider team: Alise Willoughby — her fourth Games — plus Daleny Vaughn and Felicia Stancil on the women's side, with Cameron Wood and Kamren Larsen on the men's.

The modern factory team era

The USA BMX national circuit is where today's factory teams prove it. The factories putting the top riders on the gate right now include Supercross BMX, Crupi, GT, Box Components, Daylight, Meybo, Chase, Inspyre, and a handful of others.

And that model didn't come out of nowhere. It runs in a straight line from the ABA / NBL days. GT, Redline, Mongoose, Haro, SE — those brands that built BMX in the '70s and '80s all ran factory teams on the ABA and NBL nationals.

USA BMX Canada

When the two merged in 2011, USA BMX took in the Canadian side of both old sanctions. Today USA BMX Canada runs as a regional division of the parent — its own districts, its own #1 plates, its own Canadian Grand Nationals.

What's the same. What's different.

Same as the ABA days: the transfer system. The yearly Grandnationals. The earned-not-bought #1 plate. The traveling national series. The factory teams. The Hall of Fame.

What's different: one rulebook instead of two. One set of plates. One USA Cycling relationship. A purpose-built Tulsa facility with an Olympic-spec start hill. A combined membership north of 70,000. And one clean Olympic-pathway story instead of a tangled one.

Where USA BMX stands today

USA BMX is the living continuation of a line that runs from BUMS in 1970, through the NBA in 1973, the NBL in 1974, and the ABA in 1977. Its tracks cover the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico. The Hall of Fame and the year-end Grandnationals both run out of Tulsa. And the Olympic pipeline runs through USA Cycling and into every Summer Games since Beijing 2008.

Sources

Wikipedia: USA BMX, American Bicycle Association, National Bicycle League, BMX racing, Connor Fields, Māris Štrombergs. USA BMX official history; USA BMX Hall of Fame inductee records; USA BMX Grands event page. Bicycle Retailer and Industry News — "ABA, NBL Join Forces for BMX Racing" (June 25, 2011); "USA BMX Celebrates One Year at the Tulsa Headquarters" (May 8, 2023). ESPN — "Connor Fields wins first BMX gold medal for U.S." (Rio 2016). Tulsa World — "With Vision in the bag, USA BMX announces move of headquarters." Olympics.com — Cycling BMX Racing results pages for Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020, and Paris 2024.

Where sources conflict — most often on the exact size of the 2011 transaction, or on attendance figures for the Grandnationals — we have used the most-cited figure and noted the range when relevant.

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