dirty sundays

Toby S.Henderson (born October 10, 1961 in La Mirada, California, CA) is a former professional American "Old School" Bicycle Motocross (BMX) racer whose prime competitive BMX years were between 1979 and 1985.

Henderson was inducted to the ABA BMX Hall of Fame in 1994, and into the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame.

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After his BMX career, Toby was competing MTB Downhill at pro level. Henderson wasn't happy with the bikes he was riding at the time and felt he had a disadvantage compared to his competitors who raced on factory bikes, so Henderson and Iron Horse teamed up with Brent Foes of Foes Fabrications to co-design the THS - Toby Henderson Special. The THS-1 is basically a reconfigured Foes Fab Weasel with a shorter top tube and a slacker head angle.

According to the MBA article from May 96', 50 of these first batch THS-1 were made and already sold out by then. This is #25. 

It looks like the yellow THS-1 were used for the first part of the 96' season, at Worlds in Cairns they had new bikes from the 2nd production run, which were painted all red.

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At the beginning of his BMX career, Henderson received his first sponsorship from Butch Bottema (1974-76). Butch was the uncle of Jeff Bottema, who was Toby's friend and they eventually became team mates at Raleigh (1979-81).

During his MTB years, Johnny Roy Bottema (born 1954) was Toby's team mechanic.

This bike also has his sticker at the bottom of the down tube. Unfortunately Johnny passed away in 2013.

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This bike is linked to the ODI Southridge Team and the rider was a certain G.T. Ramirez.

So far I have no info about him or his whereabouts. 

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The history of this bike isn't so much about the racer (at least not yet), but more about Toby Henderson's story, so I build it close to some of his bike specs and by representing the ODI Southridge sponsors. It's a mix of 95' and 96' parts.

I still have the RST fork and maybe I'll mount it one day, but the Judy DH just looks better and it's the fork that Toby used in early 96' before he got a BoXXer prototype for Worlds. 

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Toby suggested to contact Donnie at Southridge Cycling.

Amber (Donnie's daughter):

"OK, so my dad said it’s a 1996. You're correct it was the ODI Southridge team bike it was a Foes Weasel that was reduced from 6 inches of travel down to 4 inches of travel. If you look on the back of the seat post there should be like a cable drop out to use the front derailleur. If it’s missing that, it’s because we added travel to the bike by cutting that knob off. That’s the best he can remember."

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Jake Guthrie (owner of another THS-1):

"Toby had about 10 riders on those bikes.

Pretty sure they only made 30 (*50 according to MBA article) of the yellow bikes for the team then 100 of the red ones the following year, some of which were sold to the public. Mine didn’t have a name on it but it has the same Shimano decal and had the RST forks too.

Your frame still has the Bottema sticker.

When the Iron Horse guys came to Cairns for the 96' Worlds they sold their red frames after the race instead of traveling home with them. So I don’t think they held onto bikes for too long. They were riding intense bikes the next year."