Confidence is running low for management at IFL headquarters.

It especially makes one nervous when they are headed out on a ten plus hour drive to a place they have never been before.  Here we go anyway...

Time:  4:00AM
Location:  Howard Johnsons - Athens, Georgia
Status:  Tired

A quick five hour nap in the van before checking into the hotel followed by a shower and some new clothes and we are ready to head off to the contest area.  Fortunately, the contest area is only about five minutes away and is easy to find.  Suddenly though, we are wondering if we misplaced the IFL event for an ESPN contest...

The flatland area, to put it mildly, was a LITTLE bit slanted.  As in, if you do a trick one direction, you better have plenty of speed or you will come to a complete stop.  If you do the trick the other direction, you better be ready to ride out while flying at full speed.  This was a huge letdown to every rider that attended because this was the exact situation that the IFL was supposed to avoid.  Good, big, open areas for a flatland contest was the idea.  We had big and open covered, but good was left out in the cold.  Bottom line was that this is where the contest would be though, and the ground wasn't wavy or dirty, which really helped to make things better considering that slant.

By about mid-afternoon things were ready to get underway with the beginner class.  Not enough riders are showing up to these events to warrant and intermediate class (where are you guys?), so there were a few riders that may have done so-so in the expert class, but were afraid of that level of competition.  Most notably was the winner of the class, Bill K. who was pulling backwards hitchhikers during his run.  Must be nice to consider that a beginner trick.

Experts got underway about twenty minutes later and there was little doubt of who the winner would be if he could hold his tricks together.  Chris Woodling did exactly that...  Time machines to blenders to pedaling death trucks.  Cross-footed hitchhikers to backwards backpackers back into cross-footed hitchhikers.  No-handed hitchhiker jugglers.  Ummmm...  Chris was told after the event that if he wins again he will be automatically bumped up to the pro class.  I think he should just do it now.

Speaking of the pro class, there were eight, no nine guys that showed up to compete.  A last second entry by Jody added one number to the competition and dropped all the riders down one notch in their final results.  Jody pulled off the win with a big assortment of original tricks.  This is the usual flatland stuff that is next to impossible to explain, but he finished off his run with a 180 barflip into no-handed hang-5.  Other guys up there included Bryan Huffman who, despite having four VERY clean & consistent runs, only could manage 5th place.  Brett Crowther had been messing with tricks like hang-5's with his foot on the pedal and no-footed death trucks all day.  He put them together in his runs to pull off second place.

James McGraw and ????  tied for third place.  James has been around freestyle forever, and took a few years off.  Now he is back and was coasting tricks that I just can't remember the name of - but check out the pictures of him.  He was on an orange Quamen which he brought out on the back of his motorcycle from Colorado.  Pretty sweet setup there.

A tie for last place between ????  & ????.  ???? could have pulled off a much higher standing if he was able to put his very original tricks together without touching.  Unfortunately, he was walking his bike around more than he was riding it, so that ruled out the win.

A trip to Outback for dinner, a good nights sleep, and a few hours on Sunday riding with some of the guys who were still around and then ten hours (eleven?) in the van and we were back home by the early hour of 2:00AM Monday morning.  Good enough for 5 hours of sleep before getting up for work that day.

It should be noted that judging was, to say the least, sketchy.  Paul Osika, Chris Day, one other guy, and myself were all judges.  The pros took FOUR runs, which is very hard to remember what they did throughout their runs after watching 36 different runs.  Scores were not given, but a conference was held at the end of the event to determine the placing of the riders.  This is where personal preference plays a major role in a non-structured judging system.  The loudest voice (Osika) made it clear that originality was the most important factor and that he took off performance if people went with tricks like funky chickens during their runs.  I may have been second loudest in saying that I would rather have seen Jody (first place) do a funky chicken or two over walking around his bike as much as he did.  At least one is a trick.  Well, I lost that arguement, but three out of the four judges thought certain riders did better than others, and one non-contest rider judged entirely on originality and not what he actually saw happen.  This is not good for riders who want to be clean, but not as orignal, over riders who just want to do 'new' stuff.

A good way to judge still isn't existent.  It never will be.  I can't make things change to be fair, and people will always have problems with the way I, or others, judge a sport that is VERY individual.  Every rider was doing things the other riders couldn't do, and every rider seemed to have fun throughout the day despite the sloped surface.  This is what is most important in a contest, not the placings.

For those who missed it, hopefully we will see you at the Ohio IFL event which I KNOW has the best contest surface that I have ever ridden on.  Smooth black asphalt, on a huge parking lot that is almost perfectly flat.  It is the place to be in August of 2001.  Check the event schedule for full details!

~P~

PHOTOS
IFL Athens - Gallery 1
IFL Athens - Gallery 2

RESULTS