MTB slopestyle in the X Games! I all ways thought they should have put it in there but I wasn’t sure they would, thankfully they opted to give it a go ! When my invite email showed up, it seemed appropriate to have a MAD air guitar session in my living room. With the air guitar session done, I sat down and reflected on how pumped I was to make the cut for the comp. With the invites based on the results from last year’s FMB tour I was stoked my hard work from 2012 comps had payed off to get me a spot at X Games.
A week before X Games I called into my brother’s house in New Hampshire USA to get some training in at Highlands bike park training center which was awesome—foampits, airbags and big jumps scattered all over the show, what a great place! With a good brotherly catch up and a few days training under my belt, my girlfriend Samantha and I jumped on a big old plane and headed to X Games Munich.
Showing up to the event site was pretty trippy! Loads of action sports superstars just cruising around, and the scale of the event was huuuge. One of the coolest things was being able to check out the best guys in the world throw the heck down in their chosen sports. BMX park and skateboard park were my faves. Wild stuff going down on the course, I’d never seen skating at that level before which was a pretty cool experience for me.
The Slopestyle course was interesting with some BIG burly features, some weiner techy features and also some speed issues. The on and off showers weren’t really helping either! We dodged showers on Friday and tested the course out and got some practice in. Saturday was a write off, it poured all day and no one rode at all, which definitely put the pressure on, and meant we had about two hours on Sunday morning to get all our practice done and be ready for qualifiers.
We got off to a hell of an early start and got up to the course on our bikes and started throwing down. I was feeling pretty good, but I knew I needed to 360 down the first drop in practice so I was dialled for my run. The drop was far from small and I was feeling pretty nervous about the whole thing, but I had to get it done so I went for it in the last 5 mins of practice. It came around okay but my speed was a little slow and I cased slightly, sending me over the bars into a fairly horrific crash! Damn I was shaken up for sure but managed to pull myself together and get my first run done ( with blurry vision in my right eye!) I made it to the bottom with a pretty safe run.
My second run came around and I wanted to push it a bit more so I chucked a big ol fronty over the 40 ft jump up top and stomped it perfectly, I was so stoked http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrAbbySUD8U I made it to the bottom without dying and scored 12th place. I was pretty stoked on that considering the monster of a crash I had in practice .
After a long afternoon of weather / course /rider safety controversy the X Games final went down. Only six of the ten finalist riders choose to ride due to the wind which was a bit of a downer, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.
The finals came down to the wire with an exciting dual between teammates Brett Rheeder and Brandon Semenuk who were both shredding the hell out of it! In the end the youngster Brett came out on top, I was stoked for him!
All in all the X Games was a cool experience for me. I was the only rider from the Southern Hemi and stoked to be reppin DOWN UNDAA MATE! Thanks to all the great people that helped me get there,support me and be part of the first MTB X Games Slopestyle!
