Brandon Pita spent his childhood racing motocross. When he quit, he said, he wanted to keep racing but in a different style. So, in 2009, he took up BMX at the age of 11. And, after riding for a few short months, he travelled to Louisville, Ky. to win the national title and take home the coveted gray plate for his age division.
In 2011, he went back and did it again. Four years later, Pita said, the competition has only gotten more intense. He’s still riding, graduated from Ernest Righetti High School at the end of this school year, and is getting ready to seek a degree in math at Cal Lutheran.
Pita is now 18, which means that he can sign up with the BMX board to ride professionally. He hopes to make a career out of the sport in the next three years.
“It’s how fast you can go in 30 seconds,” Pita explained.
To go as fast as he can in 30 seconds, Pita doesn’t just practice on the course. He works out three times a week. His staples are downhill sprints, squatting, and “deadlifting with the weights.”
BMX isn’t just a physically demanding sport. It’s time- and travel-intensive, too. To go pro, as he hopes to do, riders need to qualify for the main race at six different national events in any given year.
That’s a pricey commitment, plus Pita needs to take time off from working at the Santa Maria Country Club when he travels. Fees and other expenses, he said, can quickly stack up to a couple thousand dollars per event.
One way to defray the cost of those events is sponsorship by companies that manufacture BMX products. Pita can list off a boatload of sponsorships, but the first he mentions is GHP—Greg Hill Products, maker of all things BMX, named for legendary rider Greg Hill. Hill, Pita said, is the reason for his GHP sponsorship and an important resource when training and outfitting for races.
“I personally know the owner, and he’s been helping me with training for all the races, and he’s a good person to rely on for bike frames,” Pita said. His current frame is made out of aluminum, and it’s a lot lighter than frames he’s used in the past.
“It’s easier to ride faster and easier to move the bike around,” he said.
He’ll be travelling to a national race in Las Vegas during the next few weeks to ride out alongside more than a thousand competitors for three days of qualifying races. His hope is to survive the qualifiers and make it to the main events on all three of those days.
“And, if I can, make it to the podium,” he added.
This article appears in Jul 2-9, 2015.
