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If you read the story earlier this
year from the IFL round 1 then you already know that Maplewood is a
small place to be holding a contest. To give you a better idea
check out the photos of the contest. This was probably the number
one thing that was running through people's minds during the
day... "Damn! This place is small, I hope I don't run into
anyone." Throughout the day, if you didn't run into anyone
then you were on the few and far between list. The
idea of the whole contest was to have 4 classes: Beginner, Expert,
Pro, and Women. With only ONE girl showing up to ride in the
event, Erin Dinato, she was dumped into the Expert class and the Womens
class was dumped. At the end of the nite Erin was still awarded
the Queen trophy and prizes. Of course she got 5th place in the
expert class, so she did better than most of the guys in the contest as
well. Beginner class had a
whopping 16 entries in it, several of whom would have done alright in
the expert class. The bottom line was that at a contest this big
there should have been an intermediate class so that the 'weak' experts
could have stepped down a level and the strong beginners could have
stepped up a level. I think there is just something wrong when you
see beginner class riders trying backwards hitchhikers while other
beginners are struggling with tailwhips. The
riders all had an open practice throughout the morning then at about
12:00 the floor was shut down. John Ortiz, the organizer of the
event from QuikTrix BMX had noticed riders slipping on the floor and
arranged to have the floor swept and mopped before anyone would compete
on it. About 12:30 and the floor was reopened to beginners
only. Unfortunately many of the people on the floor practicing
were not competing in the beginner class... or at all. This meant
that instead of getting a little more space, the riders still had a
tough time making use of the floor and warming up. In
the end, the riders just made the most of it and the beginners went
through two sixty second runs, the expert riders had two ninety second
runs, and the pros each had two two minute runs. The
pro class only had six riders in it including Bryan Huffman, Stephan
Clark, James McGraw, Jeff DesRoche, Mike McFadden, and Ed Neusbaum.
During practice there were three standout riders Mike, Jeff, and
Ed. While Bryan and James were both throwing down some good stuff,
it didn't look like they were quite at the level that the other three
were at. I think this was Stephan's first pro contest and he was
going to need some time to adjust. Sixth
place went to Stephan who tried some of the new school bar flip front
wheel stuff, but didn't manage to hold almost any of the tricks together
long enough to get in a solid run. Both runs had him on the ground
before he was able to pull any tricks. No question that he could
probably do the tricks most of the time, but not today during the
contest. Fifth place went to
Bryan Huffman which is always disappointing. Bryan has some
incredibly hard tricks, unfortunately they aren't all that
original. He flows and does tricks on the back wheel of the bike
which doesn't play well with many of the judges who are stuck in their
front wheel mentality. He rides to do clean runs and hits some
long solid combos, but doesn't throw down crazy original or impossible
tricks in the process. He just does hard, solid runs and pays the
price by never doing so well at events. Oh well, he's still a good
guy and seems to enjoy the contests. James
McGraw drove all the way out from Colorado and went back home with
fourth place. James has been into freestyle since the mid-80's and
over the last year he has made an effort to really get back into the
sport. Probably the best trick of the contest was his time machine
holding the forks straight into a spinning death truck. Not
usually very consistent for him, but he nailed it in both his
runs. Unfortunately nerves seemed to dump his ass on the floor a
few times to many to help his position in the contest. During
practice it looked like the top three would be Mike, Ed, and Jeff, but
nobody was sure exactly what place they would finish in. Mike was
going off with some solid tricks in his runs. No handed one footed
hang-5's with his foot on the handlebars, long coasting tricks, and some
crazy stubble duck gerators helped him land the number three spot for
the day. There was little
doubt that Ed Neusbaum did better than Mike, but the judges also thought
that Ed did WORSE than Jeff. If you haven't looked at the videos
from this contest yet, now is the time to take a look. Jeff is an
incredible rider and I don't want anyone to think that I am knocking his
riding ability... But, a contest is supposed to be about what you
actually DO during the two minutes you are out on the floor. Jeff
seemed to spend the entire time walking his bike around instead of
riding it and in my opinion that is good for LAST place... not
FIRST. The initial result was that Jeff won the contest. Ed
though.... Ed was simply incredible during his runs. He has
some new tricks completely wired. Not new to him, new to the
sport. He does some stuff on the bike that I have never seen in my
life like it is a joke. To try to explain the tricks would be
impossible. Yet, imagine things like a fire hydrant to front wheel
stubble duck to walk over coasting one footed half-packer. No, it
doesn't make sense. There
was enough complaints about judging results for the pro class that John
went to the 'backup rules' on judging which allow him to take the
average of the pros scores instead of dropping the low riders
score. The AVERAGE put Ed in first place and the official results
for the day left Ed in first and Jeff in second. All
in all this was a pretty good contest. It is nice to have a place
indoors to ride at during the colder months of the year to have a
contest and major props need to go out to John for putting on a contest
all through his own hard work. He let me know that he wants to try
to have four contests next year - two indoors at the gym and two
outdoors on tennis courts. I look forward to all of them. ~P~ |
