Medias: Ride BMX UK #1, A dirty weekend in Southsea video, BMX Now xmas 1992, Ride BMX US october 1992.
Place: Southsea, Hampshire, UK.
Organisation: Catlow family.
Expert was again mainly jumping, with the exception of a couple of turns in the pool, and Stephan Prantl taking four of his runs in Satan's Toilet, and Dennis Wingham taking all of his eight in the same. Dennis won, whether it was realistic to judge his airs out of a bowl against everyone else's jumping is dubious [bowls in both groups was effectively a jumping comp], but his ability to ride this out-dated, harsh, deep bowl is not. He went very high, and now has rad variations to match, invert no-footer, stretched indians, high 540. He lost his pedals a couple of times, but somehow landed without crashing totally. At previous KOC's Peter Hawkins has been announcing and mentioned the 1985 King Of The Skateparks when Ruffell and Campbell dominated this bowl, but now Dennis has progressed beyond, his airs were a good 2/3 feet over the 7ft of 1985 [which was rad then and still would be now]. Everyone was expecting a flip, but this we had to wait for until the next day... The other placings were fought out with 720 attempts, 360 variations, no handers, etc. Darren Bailey placed highest for jumping ability, hard stuff done smoothly. Dave Frame was attempting framewhip 360's over the weekend, and also pulling no foot can can 360's.
Mike Jory, Ride BMX UK october 1992: Flatland these days has become so advanced and varied that there is no longer one trend which everyone follows. We don't see every rider trying dump/death truck combos, hitchikers, cliffhangers etc. Obviously, the influence of Kevin Jones was still present at Southsea but it seemed as though most people were trying to think of new things to do, even if it was only a minor variation. For me, practice was the highlight of the day. Everyone riding as they normally do, ie, ride a hit, rest a bit, ride again, produced the most fluid, fastest and entertaining riding. Anyway, onto the competition. C group consisted of a combination of people, from those doing basic tricks to some trying advanced rolling stuff. Koroly Zerman did the most amazing linking moves and won the class, although the guy who did the no handed, barspin, hipwiggle cherrypicker [a Ia Pepi Winder] got the biggest cheer. In B group James White won with unbelievably smooth jugglers during which he'd roll quite slowly whip the frame round really quickly. G Turn cliffhangers, and two footed antrider glides were also included in his runs. A group meant two runs of 2 1/2 minutes each, or for most people, one run where you pull virtually everything and one, after sitting around in the cool evening air for 3/4 hour, you crash nearly every trick. Notables included: Zak Shaw doing a backyard in circles ad infinitum, one rider throwing his bike around, Armin Batoumeni's turbined cliffhangers [where he would switch the direction of where he was rolling, three times], Geoff Martin spinning characteristically manically on his back wheel, and Albert Retey's surfer to bar ride and real backwards whiplashes amongst a host of other hard stuff for 4th. In third was Marton Szilagyi who rode fast and consistently with hard up-to-date tricks. Phil Dolan came out for his first run riding to Led Zeppelin's Black Dog and produced one of the best flat routines this reporter has seen [thank you John Ker]. His stand out tricks were switch-footed dump truck from which he'd jump round the bike into a backwards upside wheelie, and stubble duck cabooses. In practice he was also doing a forward karl kruzer variation of the chainsaw - very, very fast. He took second behind Chase Gouin. Throughout the day Chase had been doing rad stuff, like forward death truck to a no brakes jump to peg wheelie, and forward rope-a-roni to forward upside down wheelie, during which he switched feet and went into a junkyard. His runs [which were curiously lacking triple decades and a goatee beard] contained a christmas tree where he switched feet halfway round, candy bar whiplash to backpacker and what must have been 90 seconds of linking involving everything from pinky squeaks and boomerangs to bodyswitch squeaker tricks, body varial and barspin stuff. A deserved first, but I feel the difference between Chase and Phil should have been smaller.
He came, he saw, he conquered. Chase Gouin won A Group flatland with his combos, rolling, and decade variations such as this vertical switchfooted christmas tree decade which looks like a catapult but isn't (photo by Anthony Aquilina).
C-group flatland results:
1.Koroly Zerman
B-group flatland results:
1.James White 13.Mike Jory
A-group flatland results:
1.Chase Gouin 2.Phil Dolan 3.Marton Szilagyi 4.Albert Retey
Greg Hansen. Photo by Mark Noble.
Jamie Bestwick. Photo by Mark Noble.
B-group street results:
1.Scott Timmins
A-group street results:
1.Thomas Hansen
A group. A mixed bag to many 540's and people doing new stuff - Dave Frame pulled eight back to back twists, Jamie did twist to invert twist to lookback twist, no handers, grinds both ways, and a bad crash on an Indian. Gerry did three consecutive 540's, all high, Mark Atkins did no foot inverts. In points, Bestwick was roughly 109 points ahead of the others, and the next two were 60 points clear of the remainder.
The first seven riders in A group took their first runs, then it started to rain [the only rain all weekend]. Whilst everyone waited for the rain to subside and the ramp to dry, some of the prizes [extremely good] were given out for the other categories. Prize givings aren't particularly exciting, so I'll leave it at that. The ramp did dry out, and mini ramp was completed. So, what counted? Again it was the technical tip stuff that earned good placings, along with flowing lines with few mistakes. It was a difficult group, it wasn't possible to place well with a few lip tricks and some big airs, as in KOC's of past years. Bestwick again flowed, fast and technical with few errors for second. Mark Atkins took third, controlled and with some beefy stuff like 360 to 180 rock n' roll in. One standout was Mike O'Connell, who won with smith to nosepick and other snappy lip work that marks his riding, with virtually no repetition in his runs, and he deserved home victory. The others who shone were a much improved Jeff Cam, who took 5th, and the Texan Homeless Homey James Shepherd. Shep rode very fast, very hard, whacking his pegs, innovative, blunt to icepick [stalled icepick], icepick grinds, all with a possessed look in his eyes and no pads,his had been stolen - not at Southsea. 4th was his placing.
Well, how can I finish? I've said everything about why you should go and what makes the comp so good in the intro. I guess I can apologise for the lack of detail in the descriptions of people's runs, but there were a lot of people, and a lot of classes, and, a lotof runs! Thanks toGeoff Catlow and helpers for the hard work. My finishing tip is, don't break bones in the Summer, it means you don't get to ride at KOC!
This letter is by way of a belated explanation and apology. As you all know this year we introduced novice and expert groups for the overall, Prince and King. After some discussions with our statistical helpers we also rationalised the method we used to calculate the overall placings. Unfortunately I omitted, forgot, to inform your good selves, for which I am very sorry.
The overall was calculated by adding each rider's event score to form a grand total. We feel this gives a more rounded picture of a rider's efforts during the two days. This system will operate next year and before then we hope to publish a complete manual of KOC events how they operate and such like.
Once again my apologies for forgetting such an important piece of information. Who knows, next year I may forget to turn up myself!
Yours faithfully,
Geoff Callow