| Bart de Jong, www.fatbmx.com: After several years at the NEC in Birmingham, the Bike Show moved down South a few miles to Coventry. Not knowing what to expect a strong group of riders made the trip and that includes American based riders such as Corey Bohan, Ryan Nyquist, Gary Young, Nasty, Ryan Guetler, Steve McCann, Jamie Bestwick, Scotty Cranmer, Alistair Whitton, Dave Dillewaard, Axel Jeurgens, Travis Collier and Tom Haugen. | |
| VERT | |
| Bart de Jong, www.fatbmx.com: Vert at the Bike Show is always a good event. England has a wide range of halfpipe legends and the Europeans are happy to make the move to the Bike Show contest to ride with them. The 18 meter wide RedBull ramp was put in one of the main halls (the cow sheds were too low) so they were in luck. No dust, good light, a warm hall and plenty of spectators. The event had a couple of cash jams during the weekend, where the riders could earn some pocket money when they pulled off a good trick. The main contest took place on Saturday. With 16 riders on the ramp it was another stacked field. Mark Theaker was the first victim of the ramp. Riding vert is rough and only destined for real men who can take a slam or two. No wonder it scares off the new breed of BMX-ers. This is no video game. Mark crashed and messed up his ankle and later returned with crutches and a cast. Get well soon Mark. Darrell Twells and Toby Gresswell are relatively new vert riders out of the UK and they're doing well. Airs with variations at the 4-5 foot mark and a little twist left and right. Good to see them tear it up. Achim Kujawski's alley-oop airs, x-ups and turndowns are awesome to watch. Not all his tailwhips worked out and Achim had to leave the ramp early otherwise he would have made it in the top 10 no problem. Ronnie Surridge, what can you say of this rock star? The sweetest inverts for all the chicks in the crowd on his silver Macneil with blinging Profile hubs. Can I get a "wooo-woo" for Ronnie please? Paul Jones is a true Bike Show regular. He has turned it up a notch and pumps his 100 kilo body to respectable heights and even throws in sweet 540-s and did you see his flairs? Damn right. Still pushing it. Shaun Egglington has the airs and the flairs. The goofy footed vert rider is the first rider in the top ten. With a new lady on his side he's pumping hard. On place number 9 we see Stefan Geisler. Struggling with a bad ankle and some back problems every now and then the OBG is not his old self yet. This doesn't mean he didn't throw down with cancan-lookbacks, supermans, x-ups, no-handers, toothpick to barspin, tailwhips and decade airs. It's just a few feet lower than we're used from the OBG. Don't you worry, he'll be back. Jon Taylor likes to ride a good vert session with the mates. The Hoffman Bikes rider was going incredibly high in Coventry on his blue ride with bright white front wheel. Let Jon explain the coolness of that and I'm sure you get to hear a cool story. Style is all. From Germany we have Tim Eichert. Tim has been going higher and higher. Has his own style (like it or not) and a whole bunch of variations. Just when you think he's slowing down, he throws in a one0handed 540 followed by a regular 540 and a flair or two. Tim, just like most of these vert riders, doesn't have many guys to ride vert with, or the possibility to learn tricks in the foam or on the resi. Therefore he has to wait till the end of his run to throw down a "big one". This used to be a backflip, 540, flair, tailwhip, but now he has set his mind on the 900. It sure is a way to end your run, good or bad. Unfortunately for Tim, it was a ride to the UK hospital after knocking himself out cold on another attempt. 7th place though........ In 6th, Mike Mullen. Mike was easily skying with the best of them. He has been for years and it just doesn't grow old seeing someone blast huge air. Mike has his classic variations that he throws in there together with some lip tricks and some lower 540-s. Mike is one to walk away from every comp and does not scare me when he rides. It's back to work on Monday, you know... Ronnie Remo has been hanging out with his buddy Dave Mirra in Greenville. It rubbed off on his as his riding is progressing. With some tips from the Mirracle Man his tailwhips and 540-s are done at height and Ronnie nailed a couple of awesome flairs over the weekend. 5th place in this field is damn good. Free Agent's Tom Haugen is another solid rider. He whips it more than some photographers like it. Tom is the master of the alley oop: no-handed suicides, x-ups, tailwhips, all at the 6-7 foot range. His spins his bars and turns his bars multiple times in one air and has a bunch of liptricks to make his riding complete. 4th for the only American in the field. Oh boy, up next, Eduardo Terreros. The Spanish Fly is causing multiple heart attacks in the crowd every time he rides. It's either super smooth or sketchy as hell. His drive to ride is so high that he keeps on going. More often than not this has resulted in broken bones and rides to foreign hospitals. The Spaniard walked away this time and I was happy with that. It was a close call though because he got off the ramp because his rear wheel was wobbly and he was not done. Hey, he could still walk so the contest wasn't over, right? I was stoked he took his helmet off and I'm sure his girlfriend was happy too. Fly did huge flairs, huge airs, all very stylish, opposite airs, one-handed inverts, no-handers, x-ups and topside no-footed cancans. A podium for our friend from Bilbao. This leaves two riders on the deck. Simon Tabron (Mongoose) and Jamie Bestwick (GT). Both have won gold medals at those big contests Stateside. Now, on home territory, it was on! Home crowd, sponsors present, media ready to capture everything, what was it going to be? It was a great jam session. Neither of the riders slowed down. Simon did flairs, table-540-s, tailwhips, opposite airs with variations, and a sweet 900. His variation airs were at the 9-10 feet range and the crowd was loving it. But what did Jamie have to offer? Bestwick is so solid that he basically tells his bike what to do. His variations were a few feet higher than Simon's and Jamie used the ramp in a V-shape most of the time. Do a "set-up" air in one corner, carve the whole opposite side with a flair or huge alley-oop and then air the other corner of the super wide ramp, which at times didn't even look wide enough. Fastplant flair? Sure. Opposite flair? Sure. But there was this one trick that I have not seen Jamie pull; the 900. Simon has done plenty of those and has shown he can do them well. When Jamie set in the spin it was just waiting if he was going to land on both wheels. Guess..... Sure he did! I'm not saying Jamie was miles better than Simon and I don't really know if the goal was to show who was the best. For sure it pushed one another to step it up and everyone was a winner. Once again it was an amazing vert contest. |
Pro vert: 1 Jamie Bestwick 2 Simon Tabron 3 Edwardo Terreros 4 Tom Haugen 5 Ronnie Remo 6 Mike Mullen 7 Tim Eichert 8 Jon Taylor 9 Stefan Geisler 10 Shaun Egglington 11 Paul Jones 12 Ronnie Surridge 13 Achim Kujawski 14 Toby Gresswell 15 Darrell Twells 16 Mark Theaker |
| STREET | |
| Bart de Jong, www.fatbmx.com: The street course was a weird set-up. First of all the Braun Mini-Ramp was incorporated in the course and you could ride the spineramp during the street comp but it had its own contest too. With this ramp in the middle it did not leave much space for flow or lines. The ramps that were built were very slippery. Although a mix of RedBull and Coke was sprayed on the ramps, the dusty surface made sure people slid out every now and then and that includes photographers (Lard!?). The next problem was viewing the contest. Basically the crowd could watch from one side. Depending on where you were sitting in the stands, most likely one side of the course was blocked by the 40 foot container of the mini. If you sat higher than 5th row, you could not see the jumps that were done on the jump box or spine because the roof was too low. It must have resulted in some sore next the next day. Being stuck in the far corner of the event wasn't nice either. All of this was addressed with the organisers so expect some changes for next year. Enough complaining. With Paul Roberts and DJ on the mic and a great rider group there was plenty of good riding going on on the street course. Senad Grosic had crashed badly on his hip before the finals. When he hit the first jump and attempted a flip whip, he fell on his black hip and had to leave the course looking for some ice and a cigarette. Owain Clegg impressed with canonballs, footjam fakies, no-handers and a bunch of brakeless tech stuff. Lance McDermott has got the moves and almost pulled that handplant 360 over the huge spine. And then we have Cameron Hardy. The youngster rips and has a big future ahead of him. So stylish, so good, watch this space. Mahoney did his transfers, 1-footed x-up flip, no-footed cancans and stuck most of his moves to make it in the top 10. Ben Hennon was fired up and ready to go for the final. He threw in a flip whip but lost too much time trying to pull a double whip-transfer. Hannu Cools, what can you say? Tech, burly, big, originality. The Belgian had it going. Tobias Wicke was another top rider in this final but he had a hard time getting comfortable with the course. He started off tech though and threw in a few biggies over the jump box. Oh boy was Guettler stoked on that flatbank to wallride/flair! He kept going too but got stuck with 6th place. That means there was more good riding going on. In 5th we have Mark Webb who does flairs on anything. One combo was a 360 up a ramp to flair to tailwhip off. Good thing he kept the electro shocker in the pocket. Dave Dillewaard is one good rider. 2 years ago at the Bike Show he was an unknown rider from Australia. That has changed since he picked up that GT factory ride. Dave can do it all. Another rider who can adapt to any situation is Alistair Whitton. Ali blasted over the Vans hip with a 270 alley-oop turndown and made sure he showed he can pull a double whip. His impressive riding got him on the podium. Scotty Cranmer was late for the finals but he qualified in the first group (that started at the end) and decided to just throw down. And that he did with a BIG frontflip over the box. It was huge and so different from all the others I've ever witnessed. No front brake either, "just leaning forward and rotate". Another impressive move was his flip-double whip that took him a few attempts but that's forgiven on a combo trick like that. Cranmer continued to rip up the course, the boy's got skills. First place went to Ryan Nyquist who used the Braun mini ramp to his advantage with several of 360 variations over the spine. A "first" for Europe was his no-foot cancan nothing - barspin. You know that trick where he hangs on the side of his bike, and then he spun the bars. Sick dude! Ryan transferred with a 360 tiretab/manuel from mini over the container in the street course but in the end he wasn't sure he deserved to win: ‘There was a lot of good guys who were riding out there. I’ll take it (the victory) if they want to give it me but I think there are people out there who were better than me’. The riding sure made up for the circumstances. Knowing it can be so much better, the organizers will have to work something out for the street course and venue in 2006. |
Scotty Cranmer flip double whip. Pro Street: 1 Ryan Nyquist USA 2 Scotty Cranmer USA 3 Alistair Whitton GBR 4 David Dilleward AUS 5 Mark Webb GBR 6 Ryan Guettler AUS 7 Tobias Wicke GER 8 Hannu Cools BEL 9 Ben Hennon GBR 10 Chris Mahoney GBR 11 Cameron Hardy GBR 12 Lance McDermott GBR 13 Owain Clegg GBR 14 Senad Grosec AUT |
| FLATLAND | |
| Sam Foakes, Ride BMX UK january 2007: 2005 Bike Show; This is one of my best memories because it was a personal triumph way above that of a simple contest placing. For me, 2004 was a difficult year in which I nearly quit riding, so coming back from that to place at a big event ahead of my favourite rider was like a dream. It sounds a bit selfabsorbed, but it was an amazing feeling and is now a great memory. | |