Benny Talkington found bikes at a very young age, thanks to his dad, Sean, who built him up some stunning BMX racing bikes. This is the story of Benny, his BMX bikes, and how his dad fell deep into the kids’ BMX rabbit hole…
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You think you know bikes? You’re a Radavist reader, so I bet you think you know bikes. I did too—right up until my four-year-old son Benny started racing BMX. I thought I had a decent grip on cycling: weight weenie road, gravel, bikepacky stuff, fat tires, skinny tires, “smedium” tires, all the weird stuff and boring mainstream stuff. But nothing — not 20+ years of two-wheeled everything prepared me for this deep dive into KIDS BMX.
Cheetah’s Back
It all started innocently enough. We cruised over to a local track for a day of fun. A low-stakes clinic. Just a quick outing so Benny could spin around on his little pedal bike. I wasn’t sure he was ready. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure he’d make it through warm-up. We were experimenting.
Expectations were low.
But four and a half hours later — gummy bears in one hand, a neon yellow bottle of “sports drink” in the other — my kid was still out there, pedaling laps like his life depended on it. He was the first one on the track, the last one off, and the only one not on a proper race bike that day. And that “sports drink?” His first Gatorade ever was given to him by a clinic coach. Now it’s all he talks about. We don’t even call it by name; it’s just “sports drink,” like some sacred, secret racing fuel.
Driving home that night, I asked him if it felt like riding a roller coaster. He shook his head no. “It felt like riding on a cheetah’s back.”
HOW GOOD IS THAT!?
That’s when it all clicked. I mean, I run a cat-themed cycling apparel brand, so yeah, what a memorable moment (insert cry emoji). It was a 5-star day fueled by high fructose corn syrup and a brand new passion. I made a promise then and there: we’d go to the track every week as long as he wanted to ride.
That was January 6 2025.
The next day, LA was on fire.
Building Benny’s First BMX
We made it to a track a few days later in search of some clean air because you could see the smoke inside of our house. It was so bad. Then I got pneumonia. The city was still in chaos, my body was wrecked, and the idea of riding or doing pretty much anything felt impossible. After that, we didn’t get back on track for close to a month because I got rocked so hard. Benny was fine, but it felt like an eternity. For me, haha. You know what I could do while horizontal and slow roasting? Research. And so began the fever dream that would become my obsession with kids’ BMX gear.
I’m telling you right now: this world is in an entirely different universe. I didn’t grow up racing BMX, so I really had no idea. If you’ve ever fallen down a vintage MTB rabbit hole, or nerded out over titanium bolts, this hits the same nerve—but for 5-year-olds who ride tubular tires. It’s been happening for a long, long time. It’s a niche within a niche, and it’s packed with true weirdos, visionaries, and small-batch American builders making parts that feel more like spacecraft components than anything you’d find at a big-box bike shop.
Take LDC, for example—a family-run operation that machines hot rod parts by day and BMX components by night. Their gear is beautiful. Custom inlay logo colors, crazy anodized finishes, the works. It’s like Chris King, but with tiny kid ergonomics. Little Dude Customs… LDC
Or Helium BMX, started by Damon Sprague, a guy who basically helped rewrite the blueprint on how kids’ race bikes should be built. Thanks to folks like him, big companies are finally paying attention to things like Q-factor, crank length, overall ergonomics and—get this—the total bike weight actually mattering when your rider only weighs less than 40 pounds soaking wet.
On the weight-weenie and performance side of kids’ BMX, he is a household name. Helium makes 22” tubular carbon fiber wheels for kids called Game Changers, and their 22” to conventional 20” are kind of like what a 29er is to a 26” mtb. Damon has spent hours on the phone with hundreds or maybe even thousands of race parents, walking them through the best way to get the most out of their kids, builds dialed.
But the real mind-bender for this scene has been component manufacturer Rennen. Founded by George Costa, an actual mechanical engineer with MIT smarts, this brand exists solely to make things that didn’t exist before. What a novel idea. Ever heard of decimal gearing? I hadn’t either. Mind melting. A 40g stem? An 80g bottom bracket? This isn’t just boutique—this is aerospace tech for both kids and adults. I spent a few minutes on the phone with George, and he told me that one of the things he is most proud of is his brand’s improvements to chainring bolts. Chainring bolts!? I can honestly say I have never given much thought to chainring bolts, let alone how to improve them. As I said, Rennen appears to have zero interest in making things the way others do. Everything is built on progression.
And you know what? It’s not as expensive. Well, it’s “kind of not expensive”. Not compared to what we’re used to in the adult bike world. It makes you wonder: what if we applied this same ethos to grown-up bikes? What if American-made, high-performance parts didn’t cost a month’s rent? What if domestic craftsmanship wasn’t always tethered to luxury branding and exotic finishing? What if “blue collar fast” returned to adult bicycle racing? A topic for another day… yes, yes.
Benny BMX Racing
The kids who rise to the top of this sport tend to share a quiet, obvious truth: they ride a lot. They practice until the repetition fades into muscle memory, and they race until pressure feels familiar. That part makes sense. What’s harder to wrap your head around is the level of access they now have—to world-class coaching, to committed mentors, to a community that keeps showing up even as BMX racing hums along in a long, slow decline. The people who love it haven’t let go. They give their evenings, their weekends, their patience, making sure the next generation has the room and support to grow. And it shows.
The talent coming out of these local tracks is staggering. If you’ve ever watched a Red Bull edit or a 12-year-old floating a massive jump on a dirt jumper or mountain bike and wondered how it all came together, there’s a good chance BMX was part of the foundation. Around the country, local riders and seasoned pros run clinics, passing along hard-earned knowledge. Benny is right in the middle of that ecosystem, coached by riders most people only know from podiums and photos.
His favorite racer—one of his coaches—goes by the name Dick Cheeseburger, also known as Jason Morris. Benny liked him immediately, purely on the strength of the name, but it turns out Cheeseburger is also an SE Bikes team rider with real depth on a bike. Jason and his wife, Courtney, herself a certified BMX force, run multiple clinics across Southern California. To Benny, Mr. and Mrs. Cheeseburger might as well be Michael Jordan—and somehow, impossibly, he gets to see them every week.
The real trip with kids’ BMX is how personalized it all gets. Every track is different, which means gearing is a puzzle. You’ll find parents at 10 p.m. the night before a race hunched over gear ratio charts and swapping chainrings mid practice like pit crew mechanics at a Formula 1 race. I’m obsessed. Fully obsessed. But, he doesn’t know that, or care, so I’m doing my best to keep it fun—for him and for me. Benny is now 5 years old and has been racing for 10 months. For a kid, in his mind, that’s a really long time.
He is good at BMX, but he’s not a prodigy, and I don’t expect him to be.
Some days he is locked in, and others he wants to goof around with his bike buddies. He has learned how to lose and also how to win with grace. How to “Try your best” and come up a bit short, and also winning while phoning it in. The big picture, endgame goal for us, is that he LOVES bikes, and so far, we are off to a great start. Shoutouts to all of the clinic coaches out there for welcoming us to the scene and making it enjoyable for all the little ones getting started.
Because at the end of the day, this isn’t about winning races or building the lightest bike. It’s about getting jacked up on a high-fructose syrup-infused sports drink and a four-year-old feeling like he’s riding on a cheetah’s back.
