(photo courtesy for this image by www.mkbmx.com)
BMX Racing
BMX Stands for Bicycle Moto-Cross. BMX racing is a type of off-road bicycle racing. The format of BMX was derived from motocross racing. BMX bicycle races are sprint races on purpose-built off-road single-lap race tracks. The track usually consists of a starting gate for up to eight racers, a groomed, serpentine, dirt race course made of various jumps, and a finish line. The course is banked and has flat corners.
The sport of BMX racing is facilitated by a number of regional and international sanctioning bodies. They provide rules for governing the conduct of the races, specify age-group and skill-level classifications among the racers, and maintain some kind of points-accumulation system over the racing season. The sport is largely participant-driven, where the average age is 18 to 21.
A BMX "Class" bike is a strong, quick-handling, lightweight derivative of the standard 20-inch-wheel, single-speed youth bicycle. Variations include a larger 24-inch-wheel "cruiser" class.While BMX racing is an individual sport, teams are often formed from racers in different classifications for camaraderie and often for business exposure of a sponsoring organization or company. BMX racing rewards strength, quickness, and bike handling. Many successful BMX racers have gone on to leverage their skills in other forms of bicycle and motorcycle competitions. BMX racing will become a medal sport at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing under the UCI sanctioning body. Sanctioning bodies in the United States are the American Bicycle Association (ABA) and the National Bicycle League (NBL). The NBL is certified under the UCI (International Cycling Union), which is recognized by the Olympic Committee.
National Bicycle League (NBL)
In the United States today, there are two major national sanctioning bodies for BMX racing. One is the National Bicycle League (NBL) a non-profit organization started in 1974 by George Edward Esser (September 17, 1925-August 31, 2006). It was originally based in Pompano Beach, Florida in the U.S. but now its headquarters is located in Hilliard, Ohio. George Esser was exposed to BMX by his within the sport famous son Greg Esser, on of the sport's earliest superstars and first professionals. Like Ernie Alexander and Scot Breithaupt before him, he was a promoter who created the NBL as the BMX auxiliary to the National Motorcycle League (NML), now defunct when he became dissatisfied with how the races were run.
The NBL started in Florida and while it expanded rapidly on the East Coast of the United States and for most of its early history it had only a few tracks west of the Mississippi River That changed in 1982 when it inherited the membership and tracks of the defunct National Bicycle Association (NBA) when it ceased sanctioning its own races and went into partnership with the NBL. The NBL acquired all the NBA tracks in the nation including all those west of the Mississippi. It as a result became a physically nation spanning governing body like the ABA.
In 1997 the NBL joined USA Cycling, a sanctioning body that has long supported Road Race, Mountain Biking and other cycling disciplines in the United States, tracing its roots back to 1920. This is the National Federated body that represents Cycling in the United States. USA Cycling is in its turn part of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) also known as UCI Cycling, the Switzerland based international governing body that oversees virtually all aspects of Cycling around the world (see International Sanctioning bodies below). The NBL had a previous association with the UCI when through its previous affiliations with the now defunct NBL sister international organization the International Bicycle Motocross Federation (IBMXF) which was also in part founded by Mr. Esser, which the UCI absorbed in 1993 through its amateur cycling division Fédération Internationale Amateur de Cyclisme (FIAC) which in the prior five years held joint World Championships for BMX with the IBMXF (See International Sanctioning bodies below).
The UCI deals with USA Cycling at the national level along with the other 172 similar sanctioning bodies to USA Cycling in 172 other nations. UCI in its turn functions as a go-between for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the individual 173 National Cycling Federations that are part of UCI, including USA Cycling.
Through the efforts of USA Cycling and the UCI, BMX racing will be part of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.
The NBL is still operates generally under its own rules under separate management while being operated by USA Cycling although some rule changes and terms like "Masters" and "Elite" are used for their versions for Veteran/"A" Pro and "AA" pro respectively has propagated down through USA Cycling from UCI.
American Bicycle Association (ABA)
The second current national sanctioning body is the American Bicycle Association (ABA), created by Gene Roden and Merle Mennenga in 1977 out of Chandler, Arizona USA. Mr. Mennenga thought at the time that the kids and their families were being cheated by unscrupulous promoters (not the aforementioned above). As the NBA was declining the ABA inherited many of its tracks and members making the ABA within two short years the largest albeit youngest and the first truly nation spanning sanctioning body. It was the ABA which created racing districts, invented the Direct Transfer System that shortened the duration of race events. The ABA also started the Team Trophy concept to award trophies and prizes to the Bicycle Shop and factory teams with the best race results over a season. It was also the first to install electronic gates for its starting line with a signal light to ensure fairer starts. It also started the BMX Hall of Fame, recognizing the pioneers and stars of the sport.
Today it is currently the largest sanctioning body in the world (a position it won as early as 1979 when it passed the NBL and the old NBA) with 60,000 members and 232 affiliated tracks in the United States, Mexico and Canada, making it technically an international organization, but does not bill itself as one following its mandate to grow BMX in the United States, unlike the predecessor the International Bicycle Motocross Association (IBMX) and its chief early rival, the NBA, both of which had international aspirations.