In 1984, the year BMX freestyle broke from the underground as a weird little sport, a construction worker from Arizona that we'd never heard of changed EVERYTHING. If you're an old school freestyler like me, you remember the cover of a guy upside down on a BMX bike, all dressed in red, white, and blue. That was Jose Yanez, and to be honest, the BMX world wasn't ready for what he added to the mix. Now his story is being told in a feature-length documentary by longtime, talented filmmaker Jason Ryan. They're crowdfunding the project. Here's your chance to help a huge part of our collective history come to life. You can help fund the movie Out of the Loop HERE, or there's a link at the end of the teaser above.
I dig into my own memories in this blog, you guys all know that. 1984 was the year I graduated from Boise High School. BMX had become my thing a couple years earlier, and I spent all my graduation money buying a Skyway T/A, my first quality BMX bike. After a year of racing, I found the emerging sport of BMX freestyle was much more interesting to me. Like the small number of BMX freestylers scattered across the country then, I would run to the TV when I heard this Mountain Dew commercial came on that summer. Yeah, the riding in this little commercial blew my mind, freestylers R.L. Osborn, Eddie Fiola, Ron Wilkerson, and stuntman Pat Romano were the first BMX guys I saw on a TV screen doing tricks. There was no internet back then. I didn't have any BMX freestyle videos. My family didn't even have a VCR then. Magazines were the thing then, they were the portal to the freestyle world for guys like me. Rockwalks, curb endos, aerials on ramps, those were tricks we learned from the magazines back then. The magazine photos amazed me, and sent me outside to try and learn the easier tricks. I joined Boise local Jay Bickel then, reforming his trick team to do shows in the area. That was my life, outside of running rides at a small local amusement park called The Fun Spot.
Then I saw this magazine with some guy totally upside down, in the fucking AIR! That wasn't possible. I'd never even dreamed of anyone doing a backflip on a bike. But there was some guy I never heard of, Jose Yanez, on the magazine cover when I walked into a 7-11. MIND freakin' BLOWN!. We, every BMX racer and rider I knew at the time, seriously thought that if you tried a backflip, and missed, you'd end up breaking your neck and being paralyzed for life. That was the mindset back then. It's not like seeing a quad flip now, because we all knew that would com eventually after the triple backflip. Seeing that Jose Yanez flip on the cover would be like seeing somebody ride off the roof of a 20 story building on a bike, drop 200 feet, land it, and ride away. That was how impossible a backflip seemed to us back then. But there it was.
Jose was so far ahead of the fledgling BMX world, that nobody else landed one until 1990, SIX YEARS later. Nobody even tried. By that time, Jose had already done double backflips into a lake, and a year later he landed the first motorcycle backflip... and nobody knew.
BMX freestyle, and all the action sports, are about progression. We all know that now. But back then, we were mostly just teenage guys trying to learn tricks to impress girls and get laid. Even the concept of progression wasn't put into words then. Jose's backflip was a slingshot into the future, a future no one in BMX was ready for. Now it's time that he gets his due credit, and we all hear thefull story of how it came to be.
But first, here's a brief history of BMX backflips:
March 1984- Jose Yanez gets the cover of BMX Plus! with a ramp to ramp backflip on a BMX bike. The photo is in the clip above.
Mid-1980's- Freestyler Martin Aparijo, a top flatland freestyler, tells of landing a single front flip on his bike into really soft dirt. There are no photos or video. He told me this himself years later, I take his word on that one. He also said he never intended to try it again.
1987- Jose Yanez pulls the first BMX double backflip into water that was caught on video. He was doing flips in the Ringling Bros. Circus at the time. The BMX freestyle world still had no interest in even trying a single flip.
1989-1990?- Newly turned pro, vert legend Mat Hoffman, learns backflips to fakie on a vert ramp.
1990- In a comp. in Mansfield, England, Mat Hoffman pulls the first backflip to 180/backflip air, or "Flair." By that point, we had come to expect seeing Mat pull off new things in contests, after learning them in secrecy in his Oklahoma warehouse. But NOBODY saw the flair coming. In August, Mat landed the first flair on American soil, in Indianapolis, at a 2-Hip King of Vert contest.
October 1990- Jeff Cotter, who was not a top pro, but known as a solid SoCal flatlander tells me he learned backflips into water while working with Jose Yanez in the Ringling Bros. Circus in Japan. Jeff was the first serious BMX freestyler to learn ramp to ramp backflips. I shoot footage of him and edited it into the final segment (at 44:10) of The Ultimate Weekend, my 1990, self-produced freestyle video. While shooting, I asked Jeff if he had ever tried a one hander or anything. He hadn't, but he did a one-hander, at 45:16, and tried a little no-hander, at 45:36. Those are the first limbless variations of a backflip to show up in a BMX video.
As I was editing the video, a couple weeks after I stopped shooting footage, Jeff called me up and said he learned to do flips ramp to ramp. I had paid for my editing time, and I decided NOT to go shoot video of him. Yeah, I'm a 'tard for that decision.
Spring 1991- Mat Hoffman tries twice to pull a backflip over a dirt double jump, and crashed both times. That contest, Mission Trails 2-Hip King of Dirt, was an epic day. Later in the clip, Dennis McCoy tries a half-hearted backflip attempt huck and bails. This is my footage (at 2:15), and Eddie Roman shot it, too, and it went into his epic Mat Hoffman video Headfirst, the single most influential BMX freestyle video EVER.
1991- Jose Yanez lands a motorcycle backflip ramp to ramp, on his second attempt. WTF? And he tells no one. The video is in the Out of the Loop teaser above. There was also a rumor that vert rider Bob Kohl also tried a motorcycle backflip that year, into water, I think. Meanwhile, BMX racers and freestylers are just starting to try single backflips on a BMX bike.
Spring 1991- While working in the office for the '91 monster truck and supercross TV series produced by G.R.B. Motorsports, I logged footage of a stuntman who did a motorcycle backflip... sort of, into a big tank of water. The take off ramp was near vertical, he went almost straight up, maybe 30 feet, nosed it over backwards, and dove headfirst into the water. I saw this footage myself, it was a stunt for a monster truck show that year, but I can't remember who it was riding or where. It wasn't near as amazing as Jose's ramp to ramp flip, but it did happen. I thought the guy was insane, but then, we used stunts by guys like Brian Carson and other in our shows, and those guys were ALL insane.
1992-1994- As street riding turned into its own genre in BMX, it brought pro racers and freestylers together, and riding became more of a mash-up. This is when riders in both camps started throwing backflips. Besides Mat Hoffman, Bob Kohl and Jay Miron learned backflips around then, as did racers Todd Lyons and Dave Clymer, among others. Nearly a decade after Jose's first ramp to ramp backflip, they finally became solid part of the more traditional BMX world.
1997- Jay Miron, the Canadain Beast, lands the first BMX ramp to ramp double backflip on Canadian TV. So no one sees it, except John Ritter and the small studio audience. Rumors float around the BMX world that Jay landed a double back, but the video never makes the rounds. It's a full 13 years after Jose's flip magazine cover, and a decade after Jose did double backflips into water.
1997-1998- Dirt Jumper Cory Nastazio become known as the first jumper who could do a backflip in the first double jump of a rhythm section (series of jumps), land smooth, and jump the rest. Like the rest of these, that seemed impossible at the time.
Late Summer 1999- BMX dirt jumper Cory Nastazio nearly lands a double backflip on dirt at the Core Tour contest in Huntington Beach, California, but knocks himself unconscious. Since no one in the BMX world realized Jay Miron had already done it, there was a "battle to be first" all summer that year, and into 2000.
Late 1999- Dave Mirra lands the first BMX double backflip on American soil, at a CFB contest put on by Mat Hoffman. Word gets out to the BMX world, but not mainstream America or the world.
Summer 2000- Dave Mirra lands the BMX double backflip heard round the world in X-Games 6. Many BMXers still think this is the first double backflip pulled on a BMX bike. It was amazing, but it was 13 years after Jose's double back into water, and 3 years after Jay Miron's ramp to ramp double back. R.I.P. Dave. #goldpedals
Summer 2001- Freestyle motocrosser Cary Hart, at X-Games 7, does a backflip on his motorcycle, lands tires down, and then gets bucked and bails. To the entire FSMX world, he just did the "first motorcycle backflip ever." Except that he didn't ride away... and it was 9 years after Jose Yanez rode away from one.
After that, backflips on BMX bikes, motorcycles, snowmobiles, and other things went apeshit. The progression continues...
The story of Jose Yanez needs to be told. If you haven't already, go their crowdfunding page and help out however you can. As of right now as I publish this post, they've just started, with $828 of a goal of $43,433 raised.
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