Here is Andy Ruffel, doing a 360 off a jump, on a BMX bike in 1981, for a British TV show. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first BMX 360 jump caught on video or film, and it happened 43 Years ago.
In late 2021, I had a crazy idea for a blog post. "What if I search YouTube for all the earliest, 'first on video' clips of BMX 360's and variations of 360's?" I wondered just how far back the basic 360 jump on a bike went. When I was first reading the BMX magazines every month, in 1983, I remembered a story saying that Eddie Fiola did a 360 over doubles in a race, at the Orange YMCA BMX track, I believe. That was where I started my search, looking for the first 360 on video. At the time, Mike Varga had just landed the first 1260 air, a few months earlier, at the X-Games in Riverside, California. It seemed a good time to dig into the video archives of BMX spinning tricks.
This basic search for the first BMX 360 on video opened a huge can of worms, and I wound up spending something like three weeks watching dozens and dozens of BMX videos, looking for 360's, 540's, 720's, 900's, and other variations. The blog post was epic, with links to dozens of "first on video" clips of BMX spinning tricks. Here's that post from November 2021:
In my research, this clip of Andy Ruffel had the earliest BMX 360's I could find, both 360 bunnyhops (also called a "360 whip floater" then), and a 360 over a small jump. At about 25:20 in that clip, you see Andy Ruffel, in front of a moving airplane, do some 360 bunnyhops, among other tricks. He also does a 360 off a mellow jump at 26:04. Three years ago, that was the earliest 360 jump I could find, Andy Ruffel, in the U.K., in 1983. Today, when I looked it up, the short video clip embedded above came up, again with Andy Ruffell, predating this clip by two years. So now, it looks like the clip above, Andy Ruffell in 1981, is the very first 360 jump on a BMX bike that's out there. That means we've now had 43 years of BMX 360 jumps on video, and that called for a blog post. You can check that Spinaroonie blog post for dozens more "first on video" BMX spinning variations. But here's a few more of the early ones.
Hugo Gonzales- Big 360 out of the halfpipe and over the fence at Del Mar Skate Ranch- 1984? - :43 in this clip
Eddie Fiola- First 540 air on video- Pipeline Skatepark- Summer of 1985- 2:16 in this clip.
Craig Campbell- first 720 jump on video- Ozone TV segment- Calabassas jumps- San Jose, CA- 1989- 1:49 in this clip.
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