Athletes - Cheri Elliott

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	Athletes - Cheri Elliott

Cheri Elliott (born: April 17, 1970) was an American champion female bicycle motocross (BMX) racer in the 1980s, and also a champion Downhill and Slalom mountain bike racer in the 1990s and early 2000s. During her BMX career, she spent most of her racing career on the national circuit with the Skyway Recreation factory team.

Racing career

Elliott's BMX career lasted from 1979 until 1986, and saw a brief comeback in 1989. From an early age, was not only dominant in the girls division of BMX (formerly called "Powder Puff"), but was usually competitive with the boys of her age groups. When there weren't enough girls in her age group at a particular BMX race to form out a separate class, she often raced with them, winning "Motos" and "Opens" and, with notable frequency, the "Mains" in the boys division. Even when there were enough girls to form a class, and she did compete in the girls division, she still often participated with the boys in the United Bicycle Racers Association UBR in the 11 Expert Class, complaining that the girls where "too slow", since she dominated so completely. At a 1981 UBR National held in Laguna Seneca California, she raced in the 14 and over girls competition, despite being only 11 at the time, "because the 12 to 13 is too easy".

Indeed, UBR rules at the time stated that if a girl raced in the boys expert classes she could not race in the girls class. The result was she raced mostly in the boys Expert and Open class. She also frequently participated in, and sometimes won, the "Trophy Dash", the final event in which the winners of two closely related age classes and the three skill classes (Novice, Intermediate and Expert in the ABA, and Rookie, Novice and Expert in the NBL) participate in a mostly exhibition race (no points are collected that go to the ranking achieved at the end of the year). Unlike the UBR and the National Bicycle League (NBL), the American Bicycle Association (ABA) did not allow girls to compete in the boys Expert Class. They did allow her to run in the Trophy Dash and 12 and under Cruiser Class. She surprisingly often won on the local level, occasionally beating the male Experts, the highest amateur class before going professional. In the 1982 ABA Grand National she came in second in the Cruiser Class, beaten by only Danny Steplight. She also won a few Trophy Dash races on her 20 incher at national level, the first at the 1983 ABA Cajun Nationals in Shreveport, Louisiana, beating Jason Griggs. Not only was she a very talented BMX racer, she excelled, in comparison with other girls, in Quarter Pipe BMX freestyle trick riding, which was unusual at the time for a girl.

She was also one of the few girls at the time that could do a "Table Top", in which the rider after launching herself high into the air off a steep ramp or ramp-like dirt berm lays the frame of her bike parallel with the ground with feet still on the pedals (or one foot off or no feet in variations) while sailing through the air in the direction of travel and righting the bike again before landing. This is sometimes done by racers during a race to give a little flair.

She is a four time national champion and four time world champion in BMX, including three consecutive Number One girl racer titles for the ABA from 1983 through 1985. She also held the regional UBR Number one girl racer title in 1982. She was the only female racer in the ABA BMX Hall of Fame to be inducted in 1989.

Cheri Elliott retired from 20" racing early in the 1986 season. The reason she gave was "I did all I wanted to do. I wanted to quit last year (1985), but I thought about getting ABA #1 two years in a row. And I did it — that was my goal." (Ms. Elliot misspoke about the number of consecutive No.1 plates she was going for. It was three years in a row, not two.) She also wanted to pursue and concentrate on sports in school, like her favorite, Basketball.

Another possibility for her retirement is that Skyway Recreations, the factory racing team that sponsored her, dropped their racing team after the 1986 racing season. Some have said that she did not want to shop around for a Bicycle manufacturer to sponsor her because they were, in effect, not hiring. The year 1986 was known to racers as the "The year of no sponsorships" due to some bicycle manufactures who sponsored racing teams like Torker and JMC going out of business in part to low cost Asian imports. An even stronger factor was the paring back of race teams such as the one sponsored by Diamond Back and Red Line or, like Skyway, dropping them all together in favor of either creating BMX Freestyle teams or expanding pre-existing ones. As a result, many notable talented racers on both the amateur and professional levels like Matt Hadan, Danny Millwe, Scott Clark, and Toby Henderson went for extended periods of times without factory team sponsorship. This was in response to the rise of BMX Freestyle trick riding in the mid 1980s, a part of the sport that was created in 1979. This and the resurgence of skateboarding is said to partly responsible for the decline in BMX from the late 1980s until its rekindled popularity starting in 1995. With her apparently reading the writing on the wall, some believe as the BMX periodical BMX Action put it she "...decided it was easier to just quit the sport while on top than shop for a ride." Somewhat ironically, in 2000 she would co-author a book called The Athlete`s Guide to Sponsorship.

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