Days of the Wildman! -July 23rd, 1993 - Bike Stolen in Holland @ the World Championships

Jan 11, 2010

Written by Bart de Jong

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July 23rd, 1993 - Bike Stolen in Holland @ the World Championships
Actual Journal Entry: I went to the Valkensward track in the morning. When we got there, I found out that the bag that Dave Clymer & I had left with the guy from Switzerland had been stolen. The guy was supposed to bring it here to Holland, but he said that it was stolen in Switzerland. Shit! All of Clymer’s clothes & all of the stuff that I brought to sell (5 sets of GT cranks, 4 gears, 15 pairs of grips) is gone! Then we picked up our bikes & at night Dave Clymer, Neal Wood, & I rode into Eindhoven. There are a bunch of bars down there. We went in to some & drank and when we walked back by our bikes, they were gone! Somebody cut the lock & stole them. Got a ride back to the track with some BMXers & slept in a shady tent.

Looking Back Now: Oh man, what a bad day! It started out with the bad news in the morning and continued on after the bars closed.

I used to take all kinds of stuff to Europe to sell at the races (Dale Holmes style). I would buy stuff here at wholesale & sell it over there for inflated Euro prices. But on this trip, my stuff disappeared before I could even sell it at the Worlds! Then later that night, our freakin’ bikes got stolen! And this was on the Wednesday before the World Championships in Schindel, Holland. Clymer & I ended up borrowing a bike for the race. Luckily we were in different motos, because we shared the same bike. Needless to say, I didn’t make it too far past the motos.

This was during my 3rd moto later that weekend at the World Championships. This sequence is from BMX Plus magazine. It still goes down as one of the scariest crashes of my life. It was one of the only times that I have EVER got stuck upside down in a flip. Luckily I flew all the way to the flat ground, so I just barely made it around to land on my chest.

Todd Lyons