Date: may 10-13
Place: Real Ride Skatepark, Perris, CAlifornia
10th place went to Japan's Akio Kotani. Akio rode well in his first United States pro appearance, throwing down a bevy of moves for his fellow screaming Japanese flatland posse.
9th place went to Colorado Springs' own Aaron Frost, riding for London Bikes. Aaron threw down some difficult brakeless combos. Hopefully, we'll see Aaron at some B3 events in the future pulling more of his awesome rolling style.
8th place went to Brian Tunney. He really should not have qualified. He sucks. I wish he would take a bath too.
7th place went to another Japanese rider, Hara Shinichiro, riding the shiniest bike of the contest. Hara threw down some good pinky squeak combos and also got the Japanese posse on their toes and screaming.
6th place went to Adam Pintek, in his first pro outing. Adam has a unique approach to his riding, and especially, his bike setup. His bike has no cranks, only two pegs through the bottom bracket shell. So he can't stamp down on his pedals to ride away from a trick. He's got to create enough momentum to be able to glide away out of his tricks. He does this by throwing boomerangs and megaspins into the end of his combos, and he does it well. In my opinion, I thought Adam had the most unique style of the comp. Good job Adam !
5th place went yet another Japanese rider, Takashi Ito. Takashi's tricks are way too difficult to write down. I can only tell you that he rules flat, and that he smokes cigarettes after his runs. Find some videos of Takashi to witness his riding. You won't be sorry.
4th place went to HB rider Art Thomason, who already left town to do a show for the 'Got Milk' campaign. Art is a swell guy to share a hotel room with, as he doesn't snore and doesn't party all night. He rode just as good as he always does, with that trademark Art consistency.
3rd place went to another Japanese rider, Horisake Moriya. Horisake, unfortunately, did not do the hang 5 bunnyhop, but he did do all the other insane moves that can't be explained here. Wait for the CFB show to see more of Horisake. He rules.
2nd place went to semi-local Stephen Cerra, doing it for Dig-iT, Axion and Odyssey. This was Stephen's best contest outing to date, pulling the no-footed tomahawk glide, the knee on the seat megaspin and a slew of other original moves. I think keeping a rag in his pocket to wipe away the dust from his tires every minute helped him out a little also.
And in 1st, yet again, was that Canadian wonder boy we've all come to know and love, Nathan Penonzek. Nathan did it again, linking everything with consistency, style and originality. Nathan arrived at the contest in his semi new Volkswagen Vanagon, and his battery died while he was leaving, so now he has money to buy a new one with this latest win. It looks like we've got another year-end title for Nathan as well.
Tune into ESPN for some action from this contest as soon as the latest CFB show gets finished. And stay tuned to HSA Central to find out when you can see that show.
AMATEURS FLAT: 1.Genyo Ninomya 2.Scott Weaver 3.Edward Boniol 4.Ryan Sanchez 5.Trent Field 6.James McGraw 7.Travis Collier 8.Manuel Prado 9.Matt St. Gelais 10.Jason Pitshke 11.Keith Osby 12.Darin Wright 13.Jorge Luzuriaga 14.Brandon Saville 15.Johnny Lopez 16.Matthew Agar 17.Vince Fierro 18.Yingfing Thao 19.Rodney Dye
Heath Pinter is Mosh's team manager and one hell of a rider himself. He had a great style and can 360 both ways.
Adam Baker is the tallest bmxer ever. He also does some suicide double trucks and comes really close to double tailwhips.
Style for miles we have Jerry Bagley who did tons of multiple tricks in one jump and a good tailwhip transfer.
Mr. Potty mouth, Steve Murray can 360 both ways and does a rad turndown flip.
The Biz, Ryan Jordan 360 tail whipped and did nothings to no-footed can-cans.
Chris Doyle can turn down 360 better than anyone and he did. He also did a rad no-footed can-can 360.
Steve McCann did a no-handed flip and tons of other variations.
Colin Mackay did a 360 to x-up and tailwhipped to x-up for third place.
It's good to see TJ Lavin at a contest. He superman seatgrabbed, double trucked, tailwhipped and 360 tailwhipped the first set and kept on going.
Ryan Nyquist won. He did some crazy stuff but the run that made me pull me hair out was a one-handed x-up flip the first set, double trucked the second, barspin-catch-barspin the third and then did a nothing no-footed can-can the last set. Crap! Man this was a good contest.
By Leigh Ramsdell .www.hsacentral.com .2001
Ryan Nyquist and T.J. Lavin were neck-and-neck going into the finals, with T.J. qualifying first and Ryan qualifying second. After the first two runs of finals were over it looked like nothing was going to change. Then on Ryan's third run he finished it off with a no-handed, no-footed can-can. Everyone went nuts!
The contest now depended on their last runs.
Ryan dropped in and pulled a double barspin-backflip on the first jump, but then he hung up on the second after a barspin. He barely had enough speed to make it over the third, but he still managed to do a nothing-to-barspin and still have enough speed to pull a tailwhip over the last jump.
T.J. let loose a 360-whip over the first jump, but had to go for a set-up air on the second. On the third he went for a double barspin and he got a little squirelly, landing with his bars backwards. But, like a true Pro, T.J. managed to hang on for the last jump and spun his bars one-and-a-half times to set up for his landing.
When the results were tallied, Ryan's two last runs were the deciding factor, and he came away with the win.
AMATEURS DIRT: 1. James Foster 2. Shaun Taylor 3. Josh Pyle 4. T.J. Stultz 5. Tim Bostock 6. Travis Guillen 7. Justin Lane 8. Danny Hart 9. Greg Andreoli 10. Kacy Badger 11. Jeremy Estrada 12. Ricardo Laguna 13. Michael Saavedra 14. Leland Gilmore 15. Nathan Mackey 16. Clint Chandler 17. Sergio Munoz 18. Justin Leal 19. Chase Hawk 20. Scott Foster 21. Ronnie Cramer-Zesk 22. Bryan Close 23. Kenny Dovak 24. Aaron Day 25. Jeremy Hrabal 26. Gordon Toth
The CFB organizers decided it would be best to run vert finals in an open jam format for both Amateurs and Pros. Doing this amped the riders up so much that it turned into a veritable huck-fest. Everytime a rider dropped in you could count on something crazy happening. Flairs, flips, and barrel rolls were included in almost every run.
Vert had a lot of great riding including the return of English enigma, Carlo Griggs, to competition. Carlo rode smooth and effortlessly while using the entire ramp. He was going high and spinning 540's, tailwips and doing the craziest rocket airs where he left his feet on his pegs until the last possible moment when he would go back to his pedals !
Jamie Bestwick showed off with some barrel roll variations that nabbed him a first place finish. Jamie was also going really high, I mean really high. No-handed 540. Loodown flair. Opposite airs. Opposite flair.
For second place, Kevin Robinson did a no-handed flair and almost pulled three back-to-back barrel rolls.
Koji Kraft was going off like a firecracker. Koji managed to stay on his bike until time was almost out before taking a hard one to the head. This kid needs to take care of himself; his head has been rattled so much lately he's going to need a new prescription for his glasses soon. A well-deserved third place went to Koji.
Josh Harrington is having a good first year in the Pro vert class. Double barspin.
At the end of the contest it was just Rick Thorne left on the deck. Rick was bound and determined to pull a backflip to fakie. It never worked out for him, although he did make the rollback into the opposite transition once. In the end Kevin Robinson had to tackle Rick to keep him from going on.
That was just one thing that showed how CFBs are relaxed events. Another was how the Hoffman crew decided a tie-breaker between Jeremy Fanberg and Tom Stober arm wrestling. That's right, a table and two chairs were pulled into the flat bottom of the vert ramp and the two had to battle it out. Of course, this didn't work because every rider jumped in and started pulling on their arms. But it was good for some comic relief !
Kevin Robinson Flair no hand
STUNTMEN VERT: 1. Jamie Bestwick (GT) 2. Kevin Robinson (Hoffman) 3. Koji Kraft (Schwinn/RGXS) 4. Carlo Griggs 5. Jay Eggleston (Schwinn/RGXS) 6. Jeremy Fanberg (Specialized/Mountain Dew) 7. Josh Harrington (Haro) 8. Rick Thorne (Hoffman) 9. Tom Stober (Mongoose) 10. John Stober 11. Scott Wirch (Mongoose) 12. Steve Nowak 13. Brian Dahl
AMATEURS VERT: 1. Jason Branham 2. Ben Snowden (GT) 3. Matt Beringer (S&M) 4. Walter Peringer 5. T.J. Stultz 6. Eric Tomczyk 7. Lucas Rea 8. Dan Clements
The Amateur park contest went by smoothly with only one major injury, which was surprising because the riders were going all out. Props to all the Ams that entered the contest.
The Pro class had 41 riders, so qualifiers were split into four heats, each rider getting one 75 second run. Many of the riders were entering Pro for the first time which made it a big event for them. The field was cut down to ten riders to go head to head in a jam format final.
Ryan Nyquist dropped in first and flew around the course with big tricks for at least a minute before resting. Although Ryan didn't carry the same momentum for the rest of the jam, no one could match his first run around the course. However, Rob Darden did come close with a huge double-whip over the box and a ton of tech tricks on the rest of the course. Rob's street tech style mixed with big tricks was enough to garner him second place. Koji Kraft, fresh off his KO in vert the day before, rode Park and nailed big moves like a no-hander to no-footer backflip, and wedge-to-wedge tailwhips. Much to Koji's surprise, he made the cut and rode the finals with the same reclass abandon.
Colin Mackay also made a big impression on the judges by blasting big gaps around the course and a tailwhip-to-x-up over the box. This landed Colin a third place score. At the end of the 20-minutes, Colin Winkleman and Ryan Nyquist were the only riders left on the course. Colin was determined to pull a 270-to-icepick-to-270 back in and Ryan was there to cheer him on. Although Colin pulled about a million different variations, he never quite got the trick he wanted. But it was great to see everyone get behind him, and you can't ask for a better way to end a contest.
AMATEURS PARK: 1. Justin Inman 2. Josh Pyle 3. Brian Kachinsky 4. Cody Talada 5. Casey Burk 6. Morgan Wade 7. Mike Grosse 8. Dan Sieg 9. Jeremy Hrabel 10. J.W. Barton 11. Aaron Newsome 12. Justin Bland 13. Michael Castillo 14. Jed Rogers 15. Jack Johnson 16. Orlando Liwanag 17. Jon Demers 18. Kurt Hartman 19. Ryan Folmer 20. Steve Pasquale 21. Jay Schlie 22. Neil Harrington 23. Chase Hawk 24. Shaw Leonard 25. Michael Saavedra 26. Matt Lippott 27. Joel Hulsey 28. Sergio Munoz 29. Lance Elliott 30. Dave Cabrera 31. James Graham 32. Andy Belcher 33. Tim Oliver 34. Scott Foster 35. Brennen Britton 36. Eric Walter 37. Will Bissell 38. Mike O'donnell 39. Lucas Rea 40. Ryan Fudger 41. Troy Brookshire 42. Adam Deemer 43. Larry Alvarado 44. Dacian Gingrich 45. Kyle Cole 46. Nate Duquette 47. Andrew Holloway 48. Jacob Whisenand 49. Nick Scoma 50. Jim Nelson 51. Arthur Galaviz 52. Rick Lakin 53. Pablo Castano 54. Gary Martin 55. Brian Damon 56. Dillon Gassaway 57. Eric Retto 58. Jerry Buerman 59. Kevin Kuenzie 60. Nick Benson 61. Mike Stuart 62. James Foster