to the 1996 Summer Olympics, Rebecca Twigg quit the team, citing her Superbike's ill fit as one of the reasons for departing. On October 11, 1996, GT announced that it had reached an agreement with Nike whereby Nike would be an official sponsor for all of GT's bicycle racing teams in 1997. Under the new agreement, all GT team athletes would use Nike shoes and after-race apparel. This new sponsorship agreement represented an expansion of Nike's current sponsorship as the official shoe of the GT mountain bike team by then CEO Michael Haynes. GT Bicycles had the first and the only mountain bike and BMX teams that are sponsored by Nike. GT had a total of 57 athletes on various teams in 1997, including nine mountain bike racers, 32 BMX racers and 16 freestyle/GT Bicycle Air Show performers. A week before GT's debut at the 1996 Summer Olympics, GT co-founder Richard Long was killed on July 12 in a motorcycle accident on his Honda Valkyrie en route to a national championship series race for the National Off-Road Bicycle Association at Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino mountains. At the time of Long's death, GT maintained an office at the factory in Santa Ana as well as a factory in Huntington Beach — and manufactured 600,000 bicycles annually under the GT, Powerlite, Robinson and Dyno brands, distributed bikes, parts and accessories via its Riteway network and had annual revenues of $150 million. Less than two years after Long's death, in 1998, Bain Capital sold GT to another investment group, Questor Partners, which at the time also owned Schwinn, for $175 million. Nearly five years to the day that Richard Long had died, Questor would file for bankruptcy on June 27, 2001, and was acquired by Pacific Cycle, which was in turn acquired by Canadian company Dorel Industries in 2004, and subsequently acquired by Pon Holdings in 2021. Teams As well as the manufacturing of bicycles, GT Bikes sponsored several teams competing in BMX, mountain and road competitions. GT Factory BMX Racing Team There are currently two riders on the BMX Race Team: Jonas Harmon and Dougie Butcher which compete in competitions held globally. GT BMX Freestyle Team (GT Air Show) Along with Team Haro, Team GT helped shape the future of BMX Freestyle and helped pioneer a sport once deemed nothing more than a fad. GT produced some of the