Michael Hunter’s 1987 Bell Pro Plus Helmet

SUBMISSION TYPE: Purchase

Introduction.

In early 2019, Kieran Mitchell reached out to me about a Bell Pro Plus helmet listed for sale just outside of Bundaberg in Queensland. It was easy to tell it was a riders old helmet by the stickers - particulry the Ozone stickers that were only available in one place in Australia. Kieran reached out to the seller who happend to be an old Sydney rider by the name of Michael Hunter. It turned out that both Kieran and Michael rode in the same age class at the North Coast Nationals in 1989. After a quick transfer of some cash, Kieran saved the day and bought the helmet.
This wasn’t the first time I had heard of Michael Hunter - his name was littered through old BMX National magazines I grew up reading and stumbled across his name in recent years doing research.

It just goes to show how small the Freestyle world is here in Australia, and parts of our Freestyle history are still tucked away waiting to be preserved.

UH: Michael, tell me a bit about your riding background – how you got into Freestyle, where you grew up riding and the years you rode?

MH: I got my first BMX at the start of the Christmas holidays in 1982. It was a Bennett steel frame but had all the good stuff, Araya rims, Tange forks, etc. I wanted to Race for so long and finally got to in 1985 at Castle Hill, still with the Bennett. Upgraded to a no name chromo bike a bit later. When I left school in ‘86 I bought an Invada race frame and raced til mid ‘87. I used to commute to and from work by train and bike. Most afternoons when I got off at Parramatta I'd chat to Ron Nilsson who was still at school and selling papers there. He recognized me from school and was always asking me to come riding with him and his friends. I thought Freestyle was for posers and people who couldn't ride fast and I was Racing every weekend so always declined.
In October ‘87 I over jumped the pro section at Castle Hill and went over the bars. I broke a bone in my hand, broke my collar bone and tore my trap and some muscle in my neck. I was a bit burned out from Racing so decided to hang out with Ron and his mates for a while after I recovered.
First ride we went to Dozer's (Shane Pearce) house, and he had this scary, narrow little half pipe in his back yard covered in Masonite. It backed into the train tracks at Dundas. Had a freaking awesome time and was completely blown away by this 14-year-old doing Can-Cans and One Hander One Footers at 6 foot out.
I was told I could come and ride anytime and just let myself in if no-one was there. Soon after I rocked up there on a weekday and was having a ride when Ethan Innes came to the back fence after searching for the ramp on a rumour. We rode for a while and then we went into Parramatta and he introduced me to Flatland.

Michael sessioning Shane Pearce’s backyard ramp in Castlereagh circa 1990. Image: Michael Hunter.

UH: What type of riding did you do?
MH: I ride everything. Flatland was my big thing to start with and I was a shitty Street rider at best. We even had gravity bikes that we used in the blue mountains.

UH: What was your scene like back in the day?
MH: Back in the day all we had was magazines to go off to try to decipher how to do tricks. It was usually just Ethan and myself riding and Ron and a few others from time to time. Ethan hooked up with the Blacktown crew, Niel Johnson, Rob Derbyshire and others, so that was good. Then Shane Pearce moved out to Castlereagh and built a ramp and that was my usual weekend hangout and it attracted other riders too. There was the occasional Five Dock excursion too. Getting around the age 17-19, it became a real lifestyle and there was lots of partying to go with it.

Michael at the North Coast Nationals in Coff’s Harbour, where he competed in 17 & 18 Years Ramp with Kieran Mitchell.
Image: BMX National.

UH: Who did you ride with?
MH:  Ethan lived close to me so I used to always ride with him after work, spent so many hours just the two of us. The usual suspects at Shane's were me, Shane and Rob Derbyshire. There were so many other guys that came to Shane's and guys that I rode with semi-regular to occasional basis, Bix, Stuart Anis, Danger Man, Tim and Ali, Michael Daly, Curt Dupriez, Dexter Granada and others that I just can't think of.

MH: Just a few things about the scene back then. It was very hard to get parts and equipment for us in western Sydney at the time. I'd really got into the grungy street aesthetic that was featured in the UK mags at the time.... Although I did like my nail polish, pink Diamond Back and with the black accents instead of the white it came with it looked cool but I ended up painting the front triangle black and the rear a mid-grey. I even ran tuffs for a while but I couldn't get the tyres to stay on with more than 40psi and I couldn't get the brakes to work...... Oh yeah, I ran a drum brake on the front of the GT Performer I had before the Diamond Back. I liked good brakes and the first time I went to Five Dock I saw Pat Piercy running drums. They were awesome. I got to know about comps through Ethan and we went to two Canberra comps, Melbourne, Goulburn and Coff’s (Harbour) was my last. They were really special events to me and hanging out and having drinks after with Scott Edington, Ricky Keech at Coff’s that time was cool.

Michael’s helmet is carefully preserved in the Australian BMX Freestyle Archives.
Image: Michael Hunter.

UH: What is your most memorable experience about riding?
MH: It's hard to nail down a most memorable moments but getting a rush of blood to the head in my ramp run at Coff’s and deciding to try a Fakie Intermission for the first time ... and nearly pulling it off was definitely a highlight.

UH: When did you stop riding and why?
MH: It must have been ‘91 when I stopped. It was a combination of a lot of things. Having issues with my knee and bad medical advice made me think it couldn't be fixed. Ethan, Ron and Shane were all working now too and weren't available as much, I'd also stopped working in the Penrith region so I was further away from Shane and the ramp. I let women and alcohol take over too. I'd been through some trauma in ‘88 that left me with some real mental health issues that went pretty much untreated and misdiagnosed later on and literally took nearly 2 decades to start to work through. I later realise that I was so obsessive about BMX because when I was riding was the only time my brain would really calm down and relax and I could get a bit of focus and peace. I filled that void with other things along the way but I feel deep in my soul the many years I missed out on riding with great regret.

UH: What is one life lesson you have learned from riding?
MH: I had to think too hard to come up with an answer for this. But I'd say that with persistence, hard work and incremental improvement you can achieve things that you thought were beyond you.

The Helmet.

UH: What year did you get the helmet?
MH: The helmet I got off Ethan, either at the Coff’s comp or soon after. I got it because it was a proper BMX helmet, I'd been using a Bieffe open face motorcycle helmet because my old racing full-face obscured my vision too much on the ramp. It's just that it came up. If we had them in shops I might have even bought one too. It was cool because so many Pros used them too, it was sort of iconic. I think Ethan got it off Zeke Jones originally.

UH: Did you use the helmet for anything outside of ramp riding?
MH: No, I didn't use it for anything else. When we rode gravity bikes, I used my old fullface for more protection. I think...

Ethan Innes wearing the helmet at the Canberra Winter Nationals, July, 1988.
Image: Alan Gibson.

UH: Where did the Ozone and Ame stickers come from?
MH: If I got the helmet in Coff’s, which I'm pretty sure I did, I would have put those Ozone stickers on when Ethan got the Ozone sponsorship there, I'm sure he gave me those stickers. Over the "DOT" sticker used to be an anthrax sticker that I got out of some metal magazine circa 1990.

The helmet at the North Coast Nationals with the original Ame Stickers. Residue from the yellow stickers on the visor is still visable on the helmet today. Image: Jason Chant.

UH: There is a split in the visor, how did that happen?
MH: The spilt in the visor happened at Shane's ramp. I used to do front wheel grabs effortlessly and I don’t know what happened this time, everything felt right but it was like my left hand wasn't even on the grip when I landed, I went straight over the bars - head and shoulder first basically into the flat bottom from a 4-5 foot air. I got up and was really confused nothing was broken and I wasn't in pain, it was a strange feeling. Where I hit the ramp, a rib in the ramp broke probably absorbing a lot of the impact, I was really lucky. That's the only real big one I had with that helmet, probably went through dozens of failed Fakie Intermission attempts while learning them. Sometimes it's the only thing I was wearing while riding the ramp besides shoes and sometimes 3 socks.

Since the purchase of the helmet, Michael has donated his PJ Racing pants (pictured) to the ABMXFA.
Image: Michael Hunter.

UH: Since you stopped riding, what happened to the helmet all these years and why did you choose to sell it in 2019?
MH: That helmet just stayed with me ever since as a memento. I sold it because I was trying to be a little more minimalist and was just in one of those places, like the time I threw all my trophies out. The helmet depressed me sometimes when I saw it, just regret and longing for the past, they were some of the best days and the people around me too. I also needed money badly right then. I'm glad about where it went, I was cringing that some weird ass collector that never rode would put it on display or take it to shows with is over-accessorised colour matched and ill adjusted old school BMX with 5000 pegs and 3 frame standers etc.