BMX Rider
Nigel Sylvester
Nigel Sylvester is a BMX street rider from Queens, New York, known for the GO video series, Nike and Jordan Brand collaborations and mainstream crossover.
Updated 4 min read843 words
Nigel Sylvester is an American BMX street rider from Queens, New York. He came up through the New York street scene with Animal Bikes and later built one of the most visible careers in BMX by working outside the sport's traditional structure. His GO video series and collaborations with Nike and Jordan Brand made him one of the few BMX riders known to a mainstream audience.
Early life and background
Sylvester was born in 1987 and grew up in Queens. He started riding BMX as a child and came up in a New York scene that was built almost entirely on street riding. The city's ledges, banks, hubbas and traffic gave New York riders a distinct fast, raw style, and Sylvester absorbed it early.
He was picked up by Animal Bikes, the New York parts brand that was the centre of the city's street scene, and became one of its best known riders during the late 2000s. Animal's videos and the wider New York scene, including riders such as Edwin Delarosa, shaped his early reputation. He also became associated with Nike during this period, a link that would define much of his later career.
Career
Sylvester's early career followed the usual path for a street professional: video parts, web edits and a place on a respected team. By the early 2010s he had become one of the most recognisable New York riders.
He then took a path that set him apart. Rather than following the usual route of contest results and team videos, he positioned himself as an athlete and personality in his own right, working directly with mainstream brands and producing his own content. At the time this was unusual in BMX, where almost every professional built a career around a frame or parts company.
The GO series became the centrepiece of that approach. Starting in the mid 2010s with an episode set in New York, each GO film follows Sylvester riding through a city from a first-person view, mixing BMX with music, fashion and street culture. Later episodes took the format to Los Angeles, Dubai, London and other cities. The films were watched widely outside BMX and gave the sport a presence in culture and fashion media that it rarely had.
His relationship with Nike grew into a relationship with Jordan Brand, the Nike division built around Michael Jordan. Sylvester released a collaborative Air Jordan 1 in 2018 and later an Air Jordan 4, each with details drawn from his riding and his New York background. He has also worked with a range of other mainstream companies in fashion, beverages, audio and automotive advertising.
Riding style
Sylvester rides in the New York street tradition: fast, with an emphasis on flow and using the city as it is. His riding features bunny hops over and onto street furniture, wallrides, manuals through traffic and quick barspins and 180s down stairs and off ledges.
His style is less about single difficult tricks than about movement through a place. The GO films show this clearly. The camera follows him weaving through pedestrians, over kerbs and down subway stairs, and the riding is chosen for how it looks in motion rather than for technical difficulty alone. He rides brakeless and keeps his setups simple.
That emphasis on flow and presentation is a large part of why his work connected with non-BMX audiences. It presents riding as a way of moving through a city rather than as a competitive sport.
Video parts and notable moments
Key points in Sylvester's career include:
- Early video parts and web edits with Animal Bikes as part of the New York street scene in the late 2000s.
- Building an independent career around his own projects and mainstream partnerships from the 2010s onward.
- The GO series, beginning with a New York episode and expanding to cities around the world.
- A collaborative Air Jordan 1 release in 2018, followed by further Jordan Brand projects including an Air Jordan 4.
- Appearances in mainstream advertising campaigns and fashion media, bringing BMX to audiences that had never watched a BMX video.
Legacy and influence
Sylvester's influence on BMX is mostly structural rather than technical. He showed that a BMX rider could build a career on personal brand and mainstream partnerships rather than contest results and team videos, and that a rider's name could carry more weight than a company's logo. Riders and athletes in other action sports have since followed a similar path.
He also widened the audience for BMX. The GO films and his sneaker collaborations put BMX in front of people who follow fashion, music and sneaker culture, and they presented the sport through a New York lens that felt closer to skateboarding and streetwear than to contest BMX.
Within the sport, opinions on his approach have varied, as they often do when a rider steps outside the core scene. But his role in showing what a BMX career can look like outside the traditional industry is widely acknowledged.
Related
Frequently asked questions about Nigel Sylvester
Is Nigel Sylvester a professional BMX rider?
Yes. He came up through the New York street scene and rode for Animal Bikes early in his career. He later built a career around his own projects and mainstream brand partnerships, while keeping long-running BMX sponsors such as Animal.
What is the GO series?
GO is a series of first-person films in which Sylvester rides through a city, from New York to Los Angeles, Dubai and beyond. The series blends BMX with travel, fashion and music and reached an audience far beyond BMX.
Does Nigel Sylvester have a Jordan shoe?
Yes. He has released collaborative Air Jordan sneakers with Jordan Brand, including an Air Jordan 1 and later an Air Jordan 4, making him one of the few BMX riders with signature footwear from a major sportswear brand.
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