sponsors, so we didn’t have to rely on T1 to pay our rent. We certainly didn’t pay ourselves. From my past experiences we wanted to pay our riders, make the best bikes we could and show the world BMX isn’t just what you see on TV. We supported riders such as Paul Buchanan and Garrett Byrnes who were amazing but as far from podiums as you got. Through all of this, Joe and I would occasionally go to some of those ESPN contests, maybe we’d do well, but that was not to be our focus. I think we did accomplish our ideas with T1. We inspired a lot of people to open up doors… to make BMX how they wanted it to be.
Taj Mihelich
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In the early 2000s, Terrible One quickly grew into an iconic and respected brand. Taj and Joe’s little corner of BMX grew into a dominant force in the industry, opening the sluice gates to a golden era of BMX, captured in the video Etnies Forward and the Props Road Fools series. It saw the rival of Backyard Jams, which restored the original atmosphere of the old contests that Taj so loved. No one personified this time more so than Joe Rich and Taj. The two were the inseparable guardians of their own beloved world of independent BMX. From the outside it was an unshakable friendship, but on the inside cracks were beginning to appear. “When we started T1 we knew business could ruin friendships. The pact we made in the beginning is that we agreed, if we stopped being friends, we’d just close the company down and not let it ruin our friendship. That pact stuck for a long time. We both worked really hard, it was hard to know when to stop. It was ours, no one else was going to do it. “The company grew. We’d struck a nerve with riders and people wanted what we were selling. We had two full time employees who had families and team riders who we were paying well. We’d become a full company and people were counting on us to make it work as a business. I took that seriously and that’s where Joe and I started to have a difference in opinion. Joe didn’t like the responsibility or the idea of T1 being a business. I would argue that it could still be ethical, moral, and maintain our ideas as a business… I wasn’t trying to get rich from it. “Before I continue, I should make it clear, Joe and I are no longer friends. Anything I say about him needs to be taken with that in mind. If anything sounds negative, just remember this is only my side of the story, but I’ll try to be objective. When we started we had different ideas and met in the middle. That middle ground produced some great stuff. But more and more we were going in opposite directions. We got to the point where there was no middle ground, it was just us fighting. I think we just grew into very different people. “We had issues over the product a lot towards the end. This was about the time that stuff made over in Taiwan was starting to get as good or better than the stuff we could make in the USA. It became harder and harder to justify making stuff in the US. The nail in the coffin for me was the T1 Bars. They were a big seller for us. All of a sudden all the bars from Taiwan were cheaper, stronger and lighter. I thought ‘how can we keep on making our
bars in the US?’ But Joe wasn’t into it. To order bars from Taiwan meant we had to order a lot of bars and so we had to run the company as a business to sell them all. I started making changes to run the company more like a business but Joe hated the changes. I can’t really blame him for wanting to keep it as a hobby, but with everything riding on it. It just wasn’t for me anymore. “T1 really started to effect our friendship. We stopped wanting to see each other out of the office, we weren’t friends. That’s when I left. One day I walked into the office and told Joe, ‘we’re not friends anymore, we have an agreement that if we’re not friends we’d close it down, so let’s close it down, let’s try to save the friendship.’ That was the end of it. A few days later Joe called me and said, ‘I agree with you, you’re right, but what would you think if I kept the company going.’ I had some apprehension about it, it was my baby and I didn’t want to let it go on without me. But I knew T1 meant a lot to some people, we were getting photos of kids with T1 tattoos. I said, ‘alright, you keep it going, I’ll give you my entire half, I don’t want anything for it, go for it.’ “I walked away. I tried being just a rider for a while and it didn’t work. I’d walk into the office and see something happening I couldn’t handle. It was a learning experience in letting go. I gave Joe my part of the company so I had to accept him doing whatever he wanted with it. I stopped riding for T1 and went back to that mindset I had when I left Hoffman of never riding for anyone again. Things seemed good between Joe and I for a few years but then he stopped talking to me. I don’t know why, he won’t tell me. We were friends for 20 years and then one day he just tells me ‘I don’t want to talk to you anymore.’ Since then I can’t go to a BMX event without the fear of seeing him, I’m a nervous wreck. I really don’t know how to reconcile it all. I guess it’s just a lesson in learning that some things are out of your control.” Hearing Taj’s words, it is obvious he is still very sad by the fallout. Mildly drunk and the camp fire burning out, we call it a night. The next morning we drive to Ray’s indoor skatepark. With the park empty I watched Taj drop in and pull a perfect deck manual and fufanu in his first run in three years. As the session progressed the pain of an old back injury raised its ugly head and to shoot a photograph, Taj put himself through an ordeal of suffering that I found uncomfortable to be a part of, but I was also honoured to be a first hand witness of his mental strength. Later that evening in a nearby Mexican restaurant we discuss his injury. “I was always very fortunate with injuries throughout my riding career. I got hurt of course and I did have some serious concussions. Once I got knocked out and lost a lot of memory. I got home from the trip and my girlfriend wasn’t there. I called her up, ‘Where are you? Where’s all your stuff?’ ‘You threw me out’. She told me. I had no memory of it and she moved back in. A year later I remembered she was cheating and we had broken up, and I’d completely blacked it all out. Apart from that and a burst spleen, I never tore a knee tendon