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DAY ONE - FLATLAND JULY 06, 2000 - Woodward, PA - Crazy Freakin' Bikes - FINAL ROUND - FLATLAND The day began as usual, okay, not really - I woke up at 3:30 in the morning and packed up the car to head on the three and a half hour trip North to the most incredible riding park in the world, Woodward, Pennsylvania. I had a solid three hours of sleep the night before so the drive was more fun than you could possibly imagine but actually went by pretty quickly since I had taken the time the day before to fix the CD changer in the car. At 8:20AM we arrived at Woodward and found out that we weren't supposed to be doing anything prior to 8:30.... Fine, ten whole minutes that needed to be killed. Quickly everything started happening, registration was set up, and we were good to go. A few hour of flatland practice left the few beginners that had bothered to show up feeling rather dumbfounded since all the riders in the contest area were pretty much just pros and experts. If you ever REALLY want to feel intimidated, go to some event where you suck, and then have people expect you to practice with some of the best in the world. Needless to say, there were a few beginners that found out that the contest area (poured concrete) was slippery for the first time when they began their contest run. Organization seemed to be in high key as the contest began pretty much on time at about 10:30AM and the eight or so beginners were done with their runs before 11:00AM. StuntBoy (expert) and StuntMen (pro) qualifiers happenned by about 2:30 that afternoon and right away some of the bigger names were knocked out of the running. But the group of ten that remained for the pro and expert finals included the names that most people would expect. Most notably were the powerhouse of Japanese riders that showed up to put a little bit of a twist to the normal American/Canadian force on hand. Possibly the most notable absentees included Trevor Meyer, Chad Degroot, and Marti Kuoppa who must have been off getting their runs ready to unleash at the X-Games. The final runs for pros were broken into two 90 second runs with only ONE run making the score. This idea is supposed to encourage riders to go for new tricks during their runs - but knocks off the need for riders to be consistent across their runs. Also, because the riders qualifying scores are thrown away, a rider that does poorly in the first round and barely qualifies could jump all the way up to first place... just a little bit sketchy. Of the ten finalists the hottest riders weren't of any surprise - Nathan Penonzek, Matt Wilhelm, and Andrew Farris were easily the favorites, but the Japanese riders, including York Uno who won last years Burning Bike Festival were all in the running. When the scores came in the last five places were separated by less than two points. Rookie pro Jeff Desroche marked in tenth place with a lot of front wheel bar flip and walk around tricks... completely brakeless. Andy Cooper moved up from amateur last year to bring home ninth place with a couple of solid runs that might have lacked Andy's normal consistency, but included rebates to hitchhikers and turbined hitchhikers pulled cleanly. Aaron Behnke made the trip to the event and was definitely the slowest riding flatlander there. He was also the only flatlander that didn't receive a higher score in his first run over his second run. With the pressure on the music slowed down and Aaron put together a decent second run, though definitely not up to the level that Aaron is capable of. Pretty sure that he was hoping for cleaner runs. Speaking of cleaner runs - York Uno who was nearly flawless last year at Burning Bike just couldn't seem to hold it together for this contest. Completely brakeless is hard enough, but if you aren't 100% on then you are 100% off your bike to often to do well in a contest. It wasn't a complete disaster but was way under York's normal performance. Tanak Kotaro, another Japanese rider, got sixth with back wheel tricks. Now, everyone knows a few back wheel tricks, but up to this point no rider has based their ENTIRE style and contests runs solely on back wheel tricks. On a neon green bike Tanak rolled and spun forward and normal death trucks into other variations that just shouldn't have been possible. Whenever possible Tanak would skip the scuffing and just try to roll the bike while switching the bikes direction and his body position. While his runs weren't perfect, it was definitely a break from the normal front wheel bar flippy trend of most riders. If there was going to be an award for judges screwing a rider over the most it would have to go to Matt Wilhelm who ended up in a disappointing fifth place. Perhaps the judges were only counting the number of times a rider touched the ground (didn't that stop in the days of the AFA?) but Matt easily pulled the most high energy run of the contest. Matt arguably does time machines as fast or faster than anyone ever seen before, then links them to other tricks without losing any speed. In his first run Matt pulled the upside down pedaling time machine cleanly and spun another dozen, almost all original, tricks on his way down to fifth. After the contest Matt said that he had fun... which is typical of Matt, who continued riding flatland straight through to Sunday night. Fourth place went to Brian Rybak, who has a style all his own.... Andrew Faris didn't hold together his normal level of perfection with incredible tricks and winded up in third place. His first run was solid but didn't include much in the way of new tricks for him. Perhaps this will be his downfall as he heads into the X-Games, unless he has a whole new batch of tricks that he has been holding out. Tough as nails for flatland though would have to go to Andrew for his second run. See, after his first run, Andrew was happy and just wanted to hit a whopper (bunnyhop tailwhip) to a 180 rollback half-cab whopper. The problem is that he can do half-cab whoppers a LOT better than regular whoppers and proceeded to land sideways on his bike 10+ times throughout his run. Landing hard enough to knock his bandana off of his head. Twice. The surprise of the day may also be a questionable call by the judges... Leif Valin. Leif has a TON of respect from other riders and was the only pro in the finals to go out and do a flawless run in the finals with some pretty cool tricks. The coolest of which was a one handed nose wheelie (no, not a hang-5, a NOSE wheelie on the pedals). Drop a gun in his hand and he would have been able to shoot the crowd as he went by. But other than that most of his stuff was a good five years old for him. He also didn't link up tricks as much as some of the other riders. As it was the judges all liked Leif (personally) and this may have played a part in judging. The winner was not in question, and there would have been needs for a lynch mob if this guy hadn't been bringing home the gold from this event. Nathan Penonzek's only flaw in his run was a barely noticeable tap while switching positions on his back wheel. Even then Nathan puts together a flatland routine that makes him look like he is flowing through a set of trails with no effort. It is amazing to listen to the crowd as everyone sits in dead silence while Nathan works his way over, around, and across the bike with no effort, then as the crowd erupts in applause when he finally finishes a 45 second combo and rides away cleanly. It is like watching figure skating, and waiting for the big move. When it happens the crowd gets intense... when it is missed the crowd is surprised. Nathan did not miss. Flatland finished up and Woodward quickly kicked everyone off their grounds. As it happened I was not kicked out and had a hook up at Woodward to stay with for the night. So for the next five hours I rode around Woodward having fun before calling it a night - next day was dirt. |