Gerrit Does
As an active motocroser, Gerrit Does imported BMX to Europe in 1974. What he initially thought of as a nice training opportunity for motocross races expanded so rapidly that he knocked on the door of the International Olympic Committee for the first time in 1981.
He quickly realised that he was dealing with an independent sport and founded the "Eerste Nationale Fiets Moto-cross Organisatie" in 1977 with a first BMX show in Waalre, the Netherlands. In 1978 he added his BMX promotion agency "Stichting Fietscross Nederland" and in 1979 what was probably the first official BMX race in Europe took place in Veldhoven, NL. In the same year, he took the first eight Dutch racers to Indianapolis in the USA for the Jag BMX World Championship II, an all-American event at the time.
At the same time, he was looking for an umbrella organisation for the young sport and so BMX became part of the "Royal Dutch Cycling Federation", after first trying unsuccessfully to incorporate the sport into the motocross association. In April 1981, together with George Esser and Tadashi Inoue, he founded the I.BMX.F. (International BMX Federation) in Florida, where he became Secretary General.
It may seem strange at first to find a Dutchman in the German BMX Hall Of Fame, but his influence on the development of the sport in this country was enormous: as early as 1980, Gerrit advised ZDF on a programme about BMX, which was the first time the sport became visible in its official form in Germany. Shortly afterwards, he met Ekkehardt Teichreber, who then imported BMX parts from the Netherlands to Bremen, initiated the construction of the BMX track and organised the first Germany-wide BMX race. In the same year, he met with Otto Kynast to discuss the production of BMX bikes. The result was the BMX 2000, and it was he who invited the first Germans to race in the Netherlands and then promptly took them to the USA for the World Championships.
In 1983, he then organised the first real world championship outside the USA on the grounds of Ponypark Slagharen, for which he worked as personnel manager from 1988. Between 1984 and 1993, there were 10 more "European Challenge Cup" races in the park, most of which were organised in collaboration with the Dutch television stations Avro and Tros. Alongside the indoor race in Paris, Bercy, these were the most prestigious races of their time.
After Gerrit founded IBMX and established BMX racing in Europe, he became team manager of well-known teams such as Amev and the European teams of MCS and GT. He also worked as a consultant for the Webco-Mentos Euro- and Worldteam, which was managed by Gerrit's son Nico Does together with Albert Knill. In the mid-nineties, Gerrit conceptualised the UCI BMX World Cup series for the UCI. He has also written books on BMX and motocross, helped to establish the sport of mountain biking in the Netherlands and runs the University of BMX website, where he documents the history of BMX.
For his contribution to the development of BMX sport in Europe, Gerrit Does 2025 was inducted into the German BMX Hall Of Fame as a guest of honour. But actually, the honour is all ours, because where would we be without him?