FRIDAY FLASHBACK: JOHN AND ELI TOMAC IN 1995
They're two of the fastest bike riders in history
We found this photo in our picture files from 1995. That’s mountain bike legend John Tomac, holding his son Eli, at a mountain bike race in Hawaii, in 1995. At the time, John was one of the top mountain bike riders in the world and Eli was just two years old. Born on November 14, 1992, Eli Tomac just turned 32, so MBA staffer John Ker shot the photo almost 30 years ago.
John Tomac is widely considered to be one of the greatest mountain bikers of all time. He won the UCI’s World Cup XC title as well as the XC World Championship in 1991. He also placed second in the UCI’s Downhill World Championship that year and took second in the Downhill World Championships again in 1997. John Tomac also won numerous national championship titles in the U.S. in both cross-country and downhill.
John Tomac was famous as one of the best and most stylish jumpers in the mountain bike world in the 1980s and 1990s. If the Red Bull Rampage had existed back in the early ’90s, John Tomac probably would have won that event too.
John Tomac recently told us that Eli started riding a motorcycle when he was four years old. (Besides being one of the greatest bicycle racers in the world back then, John Tomac was an avid motorcycle rider, too.) Eli raced motocross for five years, from 1999 through 2003, before he won his first motocross title in 2004, when he was 11 years old.
We asked “Johnny T” when he realized that Eli was turning into a great motocross rider. John told us he realized that fact when Eli was about eight or nine years old.
Eli has turned out to be one of the greatest motocross and Supercross riders in history. He has earned 52 AMA 450 Supercross wins and 32 AMA 450 motocross wins. He’s won a total of eight AMA titles, split between motocross and supercross in the 250cc and 450cc classes.
As we mentioned earlier, Eli turned 32 yesterday, on November 14th, 2024. Happy birthday, Eli!
