Uli Heidkamp

As a child of the 70s, Uli Heidkamp spent a large part of his youth on Cologne's Domplatte with skaters and roller-skaters, when one day the American magazine "Action Now" fell into his hands. It featured photos of the early BMX pioneers Jeff Watson and Bob Haro riding their bikes in the drained swimming pools of Southern California. Uli was thrilled and a scene emerged of people learning tricks on converted Bonanza bikes and racing on trails.

The resulting races in Cologne's Nüssenberger Busch, which were organised by the skateboard dealer "Blue Diamond", were probably the very first BMX races on German soil, even though they were still ridden on Bonanza bikes and the track consisted of not much more than two straights and a bend. Uli won the very first edition of these races in 1980, and when success followed at the first BMX races in Bremen-Vegesack, Herborn and Remagen, Uli and his friend Andreas Tittmann travelled to the Netherlands for a BMX race, making them the first German participants in a race abroad. That same year, they flew with Gerrit Does and Hans-Willi Zims to Detroit for the "Huffy Pro Spectacular", where Uli finished seventh, and then to Dayton, Ohio for the World Championships the following year, where Uli came third.

But Uli was not just a racer. Alongside his career in the booming racing scene, he always felt a connection to freestyle and founded the "Freestyler Cologne", probably the first freestyle team in Germany.

Uli Heidkamp has truly earned his place in the German BMX Hall of Fame for his commitment as the first ambassador of German BMX sport abroad, for his great racing career and his early pioneering work in the then non-existent sport of "freestyle".