This is my recent Sharpie Scribble Style drawing of Martin Aparijo doing a no-footed can-can on his CR 125 in late 1986 or early 1987. The original photo was in the February 1987 issue of BMX Plus! magazine. Sean Ewing commissioned me to do this drawing, and he always finds really unique photos for me to do in my weird, Sharpie style. Thanks Sean. He also posted the photos from the original photo shoot on Facebook that I'm using below.
If you've been around BMX a while, or have watched Mark Eaton's Joe Kid on a Stingray documentary, you know BMX started in 1970, and was inspired by motocross racing. Back then motocross bikes had a couple inches of travel, and only got really big air when guys like Evel Knievel or the other distance jumpers flew ramp to ramp. The first big BMX jumping variation, the classic tabletop, came from BMXers imitating motocross riders.
But then BMX took off, bikes improved, and jumping evolved. By 1983-1984, BMX freestyle, trick riding, was becoming an actual sport, and BMX air tricks evolved well past what motocross free riders were doing at the time. So the guys at BMX Plus! decided to do a photo shoot with some BMX guys doing tricks on motocross bikes.
So in this article, published in the February 1987 issue of BMX Plus!, we have Martin Aparijo documented doing a nothing and a no-footed can-can on his motorcycle. Then we have Martin, Brian, and Eddie all doing no-handers on motocross bikes. In addition they're doing a surfer, a framestand, and a "riding body varial," climbing in a complete 360 around the bike while riding.
Here's the cool part, freestyle motocross wasn't "invented" for about 7 or 8 more years. Even better, Martin was best known as a flatland freestyler, though he had been an avid jumper, rode pools, and did the first front flip jump (no photos or video) on a BMX bike. I believe Matt Berringer was the first guy to land a BMX front flip on video, around 2000. You can see him doing a blackflip followed by a front flip, over doubles, at 10:27 in this video.
So we have Martin Aparijo, Brian Blyther, and Eddie Fiola doing freestyle motocross tricks, 6-8 years before freestyle motocross was invented. Now, there were, in 1987, and have always been, off road motorcycle "free riders." I don't know what tricks they were doing in 1987, and couldn't find any clips on YouTube of tricks from that era.
Motorcycles were invented in the late 1800's, and there were races by the late 1890's. Motorcycle "scrambles" in Europe go back to the 1940's or 1950's. Motocross had been happening in the US. since the 1950's. Then there was Evel Knievel, Gary Wells, and a few other motorcycle jumpers performing in shows in the late 1960's and 1970's. That was when motorcycle distance jumping first blew up in popularity, thanks to Evel. Then there was kind of a lull in motorcycle jumping during the 1980's. By 1989, and into the early 1990's, daredevil Johnny Airtime was doing super technical jumps, like this jump, over two moving semi trucks, in 1991. Robbie Knievel was also jumping again, beginning in 1989, even doing no handed distance jumps later on, in the 1990's.
In the free riding world, motocross racers Jeff Emig, Phil Lawrence, and Ryan Hughes were three of the top free riders, known for jumping big on natural terrain, in the early 1990's. Then the first Crusty Demons of Dirt video, in 1994, sparked the free riding explosion, and ultimately leading to the birth of freestyle motocross, or FSMX, as a competitive sport.
Taking it back to the BMX Plus! article above. When Martin, Brian, and Eddie did that photo shoot with Scott Towne in late 1986, Jeff Emig* was about 17 years old, Phil Lawrence was about 16, Brian Deegan and Seth Enslow were about 11 or 12, and Travis Pastrana was 2 1/2 years old. So Martin, Eddie, and Brian were way ahead of the curve of motocross tricks at that time. At this photo shoot, all three guys got photos doing no handers on motorcycles, three of the first documented no handers. I can't confirm they were the first no handers ever, but they were definitely three of the first no-handed jumps documented on motorcycles. Then we have Martin busting out both a nothing and a no-footed can-can, which was originally done on a BMX bike by Mike Dominguez, a few years earlier. It looks like Martin Aparijo may have invented both of those tricks on a motorcycle. The next documented no-footed can-can I could find was Larry Linkogle, on the cover of Racer X newspaper, in 1994. So BMX freestylers Martin Aparijo, Brian Blyther, and Eddie Fiola all have a spot in the roots of freestyle motocross, for the tricks they pulled at this BMX Plus! photo shoot above.
When it comes to variations that were invented on BMX bikes, and then went to motocross, we have to look at Mike Dominguez, Eddie Fiola, and Mat Hoffman. Either Dominguez or Fiola invented the can-can, and Mike invented the no footed can-can. Fiola invented the opposite one hand one footer, to the best of my knowledge, and the "over and out," the can-can to one footer. Then, in the late 1980's and early 1990's, we have Mat Hoffman, seen here in Aggroman in 1989. Mat stands as the single most innovative vert BMX rider ever. He invented dozens of variations, among them, the Indian air, and Superman seat grab on vert, which later became standard FSMX tricks. So several basic, early, FSMX tricks were invented by BMX freestylers, and no handers, no footed can-cans, and nothings, were actually done on motorcycles by BMXers, years before freestyle motocross began.
Like the late night infomercial guy, here's my "But wait! That's not all!" part. The crew at BMX Plus! did another odd article featuring an MX cycle in the 1980's. Here's the cover of the September 1988 issue of BMX Plus! Notice anything unusual?
Yep, you're seeing that right. There's a guy on a motorcycle doing an air, on a huge quarterpipe, in 1988.
In this 1988 issue of BMX Plus!, a guy named Kerry Day is doing airs on a specially designed, 15 foot high quarterpipe, on an 80cc motorcycle. That issue came out 29 years before Moto X Quarterpipe high air first appeared in the X-Games in 2017 (with an 18 foot ramp to dirt landing). Kerry Day did actually air out of this ramp on his motorcycle, and landed back on the ramp.
I'm not done, there's still more. Many of you Old School BMX freestylers know this one already, but most freestyle motocrossers and young BMxers are not aware of this. Not one, but two BMX guys did backflips on motorcycles long before Cary Hart made his famous, if sketchy, "first" MX backflip in 2000. What Cary Hart, and pretty much no one else knew, is that both Jose Yanez and BMX vert rider Bob Kohl had both landed backflips on motorcycles several years earlier. I'm not dissing Cary Hart, no one in the stadium in 2000 knew backflips had already been done on motorcycles, and it took a lot of balls to try that backflip. Here's the video.
Thanks to Jan from Frez Productions for compiling this all into a 5 1/2 minute video. This shows the actual story of motocross backflips in a few minutes.
Gymnast Jose Yanez decided in the 1980's to learn to do a backflip on a BMX bike, after seeing some freestylers ride in San Diego. In 1984, he became the first guy to do a backflip on a BMX bike, which landed him a magazine cover. Jose wound up going off and joining Ringling Brothers circus, doing the BMX backflip in their show, for several years. It would be six years before another BMX freestyler learned to flip a BMX bike. Southern California freestyler Jeff Cotter learned it next, and several other riders, like Mat Hoffman (2:13 in this clip), Dave Clymer (5:14 in this clip), Todd Lyons, and Bob Kohl, learned the flip in the next couple of years. By that time, Jose had already done double backflips into water, in 1987. Another few years later, Canadian vert rider Jay Miron became the first BMXer to land a double backflip ramp to ramp, in 1997, followed by Dave Mirra landing his first double backflip in 1999, then doing it in the X-Games in 2000.
As I said at the start, BMX racing was an offshoot of motocross racing, and it began in 1970. But in the years since, BMXers have created new variations that were later taken to motocross bikes. In some cases, BMXers actually landed tricks on motorcycles before freestyle motocrossers did. And then we have Kerry Day, decades before it became a competitive event, taking the BMX quarterpipe into the world of motorcycle riding. I've tried to compile all these photos and videos in one blog post, so all the BMXers and FSMXers who aren't aware of these events can check them out all in one place. I can't verify the Aparijo, Fiola, and Blyther did the very first no handers on motorcycles, or that Martin invented the no footed can-can and nothing on motorcycles, but as I've showed, they were the first I know of to have those tricks documented. If you have any more information or photos and videos to add, check out my Facebook page, where I'm sure the discussion will continue on all these events and tricks after I publish this post.
I'll end this post with a link to a cool documentary I found about the Crusty Demons of Dirt video series, and the birth of freestyle motocross as a competitive sport.
Blogger's note: 9/9/2023- I just retitled this post, after watching the freestyle motocross documentary below. Early freestyle motocross included several BMX variations, like the Indian air, Superman seat grab, the nothing, and others, but the early riders that built the sport and lifestyle of freestyle motocross didn't know about the things I wrote about above, in this blog post. Those events were already kind of lost to history, just as guys doing 25 foot jumps and backflips on bicycles in the 1910's and 1920's were unknown when us Gen X BMX freestylers first did tricks on our bikes.
So I retitled the post, because these things above, tricks done by Martin Aparijo, Eddie Fiola, Brian Blyther, Kerry Day, Jose' Yanez, and Bob Kohl were foreshadowing things that would happen later, when the right group of crazy guys (and some gals) came along to take motocross riding to a new, highly creative, highly progressive level. I wrote this post to bring these two BMX photo shoots, and the early MX flips of Jose' and Bob, into one place, for anyone interested learning about them. Below is the real documentary about the birth of freestyle motocross. Check it out.
I'm doing a lot of my writing now, as of the late summer of 2023, on Substack, a platform designed specifically for writers. Check it out!
* Yes, my name is Steve Emig, and I might be related to Jeff Emig, but I'm not sure. Randy Lawrence tried to introduce us at a Supercross race once, in 1991, where Jeff was racing, and I was working as a TV production assistant. But we kept missing each other. I never ended up meeting him. Someone in my family said my dad and Jeff's dad were cousins, but no one ever verified that for sure. So Jeff and I might be distantly related cousins, or we might not, I honestly don't know. I have no idea if either of us is related to Matt Emig, either, but he's badass, just like Jeff.
No comments:
Post a Comment