Found this over at racerxill.com on this weeks racerhead.

http://www.genesbmx.com/history-time-line-challenged.html

http://www.navada.net/univofbmx/univofbmx/...mx_families.htm

Wow I'd seen that cover before but not the sidehack picture!

From everything I have read yes it looks like it did begin in Holland . I have heard some storys of old time board racing here in the states on the east shore of NJ . The motor bikes got banned due to deaths and from what I heard they had bike races on the tracks with some wooden jumps . If that is true it would out date the holland racing by about 10-20 years .

I'll have to agree with this one. Any chance we can get a re-edited Joe Kidd to include this ?

b.

I can probably come up with pictures of kids on ballon bikes from the 30s that were emulating motorcycles. While it's great to see our Dutch cousins take credit for something that had probably been happening throughout Europe and the US, fact is that it never materialized as a sport until RT, OM, Ernie Alexander et al took off and ran with it

In the forthcoming "History of BMX Timeline" in the August BMXer, I put it this way:

4/30/1956:
As part of a “Queensday” celebration in St. Anthonis,
Holland, local kids ride in a “fietscross” (bicycle
cross). Held on dirt, with primitive berms and
pie plates with numbers to ID the riders. Many
Europeans argue that this was the true founding
event of BMX racing, though critics in the US point
to the fact that it did not give rise to an organized
sport and is, therefore, unrelated to California BMX of the 1960s,
from which the sport, as we know it, took root.

The first time a steam powered motor bike showed up to race it was at a bicycle board race track & that was 1896 . The dude got killed , his front wheel came off . Until some serious research is done to find out if any tracks had jumps or not, would be one thing to check . Also some of the cyclo-cross style races back then were short sprints off road . Most indoor tracks were about 1/3 mile in late 1800's . There is so much history in bike racing it would take along time to figure out who was the first to race off road over jumps . I agree that OM & thoughs guys were the first to organize it . I think most of us from that era did it well before we ever made it to a track . One day it might be who can jump the furthest .The next who could win racing to school through the woods on the trail. Next week it was who could do the best skid in the dirt . BMX is in the heart not just the track or in the books .


Ps; Isnt that where the Quad name used by OM (SE) came from . The first racing bike built was a Quad Stay Eagle track bike built for velodrome racing in 1899 . If you look up bike racing the history is all there .

Check that sidehack photo, that could constitute as a 'jump' and certainly a man-made track with an obstacle.

I'm sure BUMS is safe as the first regularly sanctioned BMX races..but those photos from Holland sure look like early BMX!

Was BMX like racing invented in Holland? I would say yes. Those races from the 1950 look pretty organized to me, comparable to some shots I have seen from say 1972. No uniforms, no helmets almost no number plates, a rough hewn course with rudimentary jumps on a defined track and a large curious crowd of on lookers. Give the guys long hair and put them in white or colored T-Shirts and the girls in jean pants and in tight fitting tops and it could be 1973. The question is was there any official organization behind it like their was with Ronald Mackler in Palms Park in 1969 or Scot Breithaupt in Long Beach in 1970? It looked like their was. It certainly didn't look like a ad-hoc gathering to me.

I look at it this way: The Vikings discovered America in the year A.D. 1000. They even built settlements in what is now Canada. However after a few years they left because of the hardships and the native population, some because they were hostile, some because they refused to learn from them. For what ever reason, they couldn't make it stick.

It was Christopher Columbus's Expeditions and his running into the Western Hemisphere in 1492 that made the difference. It was Columbus's backers-sponsor if you will-the Spanish and their competitors the Portuguese, Dutch, French and British who followed up. The same with BMX. The Dutch may have invented BMX but they didn't make it stick. It took Mackler and Breithaupt and those who followed up, Ernie Alexander, Robert Krokker, George Esser and Merle Mennenga, that made it stick.

To use one more historical example: The light bulb was NOT invented by Thomas Edison (or Joseph Swan). People came up with the idea before him. He, with dogged trial and error tenacity, just made it practical. We remember him for it. Unfortunately we don't really remember the guy(s) who came up with the idea itself

Oldtimer1980s

When I was young I had a stoney/crey canadian indian girl friend who had storys of a great viking downhill with a sea lion water gap jump in the first turn .Second straight was a cave wall ride with torches lighting the way . Third straight was a rythum ride on the bones of whales . Finish line had you pop out of a giant sharks grill . She said the track was closed though due to the fact that there were 2 sanctions (tribes) that kept fighting over rights to the track & racers

Thank you Gary... I re-named the STR-1 (Stu Thomsen Replica-1) the Quadangle because of my four triangle frame design.. I also wanted a name as unique and memorable as the frame design itself.. simple as that...
C-Ya..
OM

I think that 1899 bike was named for the quad rear chainstays , 2 on top 2 on bottom just like modern bikes . We need to get a hold of Reid Rowland (ex owner of wooden wheels) . He would have hundreds of old 26 in racing pics .My first 26 was a CW . I remember racing indoors and having to buy our indoor tires at Sears .