Mat Hoffman

Mat Hoffman is an American BMX rider from the Oklahoma City area who is considered the most influential vert rider in the sport's history. Nicknamed The Condor for the height of his airs, he landed the first 900 on a bike, is credited with the first flair, and set height records on oversized ramps. He also founded Hoffman Bikes and organised contests that kept freestyle alive through the lean years of the early 1990s.

Early life and background

Hoffman was born in 1972 and grew up in Edmond, on the edge of Oklahoma City. He started riding BMX as a child and was drawn to ramps early, building his own in the family's backyard. By his early teens he was riding vert and entering amateur contests during the freestyle boom of the 1980s.

He turned professional as a teenager in the late 1980s, which was unusually young at the time. In those early years he rode for established brands, including a spell with Haro.

Career

Hoffman's competitive peak ran from the late 1980s through the 1990s. In 1989 he landed the first 900 (two and a half rotations) on a BMX bike, a trick that would not become common for another decade. Around the same period he began working on the flair, a backflip with a 180 turn that lands back in the ramp, and he is credited with the first one done in competition in the early 1990s.

When the 1980s boom collapsed, sponsors left and the contest circuit shrank. Hoffman responded by starting his own company. Hoffman Bikes was founded in 1991 in Oklahoma, making frames built for the abuse of vert and ramp riding. He also launched a promotions company and in 1992 started the Bicycle Stunt (BS) contest series, which gave riders somewhere to compete when little else existed. The BS series showed that a pro vert contest circuit could still work, and when ESPN held the first X Games (then the Extreme Games) in mid 1995, Hoffman and many riders from the BS circuit competed in its BMX events. By Hoffman's own account, ESPN asked him to organise its BMX events after the final BS contest in November 1995, and his organisation ran BMX events for ESPN for years.

As a competitor, he won X Games vert gold at the first two events, in 1995 and 1996, and kept collecting medals into the early 2000s. In 2002 he landed the first no-handed 900 at the X Games, earning silver, more than a decade after his first 900.

Height was his other obsession. In the early 1990s he built a quarterpipe over 20 feet tall and used a motorcycle tow-in to reach airs far above anything a normal ramp allowed. In 2001 he repeated the experiment on a 24-foot quarterpipe, towed in by a motorcycle, and reached 26.5 feet above the coping, a world record at the time. These sessions came at a cost: he has had dozens of surgeries over his career, including for a ruptured spleen and serious knee and shoulder injuries.

Beyond riding, Hoffman became a mainstream face for BMX. He produced and hosted television programmes about freestyle, released the video game Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX in 2001 (with a sequel in 2002), and published an autobiography, The Ride of My Life, in 2002. In 2010 his story was told in the ESPN documentary The Birth of Big Air.

Riding style

Hoffman rode vert the way a racer attacks a track: fast, high and committed. His airs were taller than his peers' by a wide margin, and he used that height to make room for tricks such as 540s, flips and the flair. He was less about dense, technical lip trick combinations and more about amplitude and new, hard tricks that nobody else was trying.

His approach was also experimental. He built ramps to answer questions nobody else was asking, such as how high a rider could go with enough speed, and he treated crashes as part of the process rather than a reason to stop. That attitude defined 1990s vert and influenced the big-air events that followed.

Video parts and notable moments

Hoffman's career was documented in the magazines and videos of the era, including contest coverage in Props Video Magazine, and in his own company's releases. Notable moments include:

• The first 900 on a bike in 1989.
• The first flair in competition in the early 1990s.
• Tow-in high air sessions in the early 1990s and again in 2001, the latter reaching 26.5 feet above a 24-foot quarterpipe.
• X Games vert gold medals in 1995 and 1996.
• A no-handed 900 at the 2002 X Games.
• The Birth of Big Air (2010), an ESPN documentary covering his career and injuries.

Legacy and influence

Hoffman's influence runs in two directions. As a rider, he pushed vert harder than anyone before him, and tricks he pioneered are now standard in park and vert contests. Riders such as Dave Mirra and Jamie Bestwick built on the foundation he set.

As an organiser and businessman, he arguably kept freestyle alive. The BS series gave the sport a contest structure in the early 1990s when the industry had largely abandoned it, and it showed ESPN what a pro vert contest could look like, with a ready pool of riders, when the X Games began. Hoffman Bikes was one of the first rider-owned companies, a model that most of the sport's core brands later followed.

He has been recognised repeatedly by the NORA Cup awards and is a fixture at events as a mentor and ambassador. The nickname The Condor is now shorthand for the era he defined.

Related

• Hoffman Bikes
• Vert
• Flair
• X Games
• BMX in the 1990s
• Dave Mirra
• Jamie Bestwick
• Bob Haro