BMXers are sport's best spokes-men.

Byline: Matt Cooper The Register-Guard

LUMBERJACK NATIONALS

IF YOU GO What: National BMX racing When and where: 8 a.m. to noon today at the Emerald Valley BMX Track, next to Autzen Stadium at 2715 Leo Harris Parkway in Eugene Cost: Free; parking is $10 before racing starts For more information: Visit evbmx.com or call 485-6379

Most kids need training wheels to learn to ride a bike. Little Dariene Galt just needed a finishing line.

She was 3 or 4 the first time Dad set her down on a bike - no training wheels - and as soon as he let go he could barely keep up.

"That's our racer," William Galt said to himself, and Dariene, now 7, has been racing ever since.

Galt - a Eugene resident and one of the best racers in the country - is among 1,000 riders competing in the BMX Lumberjack Nationals, a three-day national race that ends today at the Emerald Valley BMX track in Eugene.

BMX, which stands for "bicycle motocross," sometimes gets confused with motorcycle dirt-bike racing. Both take place on dirt tracks and the riders in both wear flashy racing gear, helmets and goggles.

But BMXers rely only on their own pedaling power as they whip around a track that has more twists and turns than a soap opera.

The Eugene course features ramps, jumps, huge corners and an evil series of bumps - with the deliciously innocuous name "the rhythm section" - and riders blaze through it all in less time than it takes to walk to the corner.

The key is using the course and its features to go faster.

"They have to be able to ride a bike, and they have to be able to get the most benefit out of each obstacle," said Lance Maguire, a coordinator and president of Emerald Valley BMX, which has about 200 riders.

The American Bicycle Association, a BMX sanctioning body, has 60,000 members. The average age for racers is 13, but this is a sport for the entire family, said Stephani "Rad Mom" Bastian, 43, of Roseburg.

Bastian and her husband got tired of just cheering on their kids, so they started racing, too. Now she's a state champion.

"It's great exercise," Bastian said, noting that she shed 23 pounds in her first year.

"And we were all doing stuff together as a family,'' she added.

The sport's 75 pros compete for $600,000 annually in prize money.

Dakota Senger, a 10-year-old from Springfield, may be headed in that direction.

Pictures can be found in BMXer magazine of Dakota, tearing it up on the track or sporting gear in an advertisement by Redline, the team that sponsors him.

Dakota finished second and third in the nation last year in different racing classes.

He was in typical form Saturday.

With the drop of the starting gate - clang! - he bolted to the front of a multicolored mass of churning legs and whirring wheels, riding expertly through the track and finishing five or six lengths ahead of his nearest challenger.

"I could've went a little faster," he said afterward while catching his breath. "When you jump in the air and look down, sometimes it looks like you're not going to make it over the jump. But then a lot of times you make it over."

Dakota's dad, Rob, said there's a lot of hard work behind his son's trophy collection. The two spend six days a week at the track, and Dakota puts himself through a regular routine of push-ups, sit-ups and squats.

"It's quality time for us," the elder Senger said. `It's fun to watch him mature as a rider and a person. (The work ethic) should help him in whatever he decides to do in the future.'