X-Trials Connecticut - Flatland Photo Gallery One
X-Trials Connecticut - Flatland Photo Gallery Two

As we rolled into the parking lot at about 9:30 in the morning and paid five bucks for parking we were ready for 'another' wonderful ESPN contest.  Upon walking in we realized that the X-Trials are NOT like other contests.  The five bucks was given back to us and we were handed a parking pass (media).  We walked a few hundred feet across gravel to a brand new blacktop area.  Not perfectly flat, but still pretty close.  The asphalt was no more than a week old and seemed like it would be the ideal surface to make all the riders happy.  Clean, sticky, smooth....

Four hours later at 90 plus degrees (about 34 degrees centigrade) with a ton of humidity did wonders to screw up the flatland area.  Asphalt began to melt and shed tiny sticky pebbles that stuck to everyone's tires and made scuffing...  ummmm....  interesting to say the least.  It wasn't really that bad, but it was not the ideal surface that everyone was hoping for.  Oh well.

Riders missing from the contest of note...  Or should we say rider.  Trevor Meyer pulled a no show at the last X-Trials event of the year.  No rumors, no news, just a no-show.  He wasn't missed by any and the riding that was going down made jaws drop regardless.

Qualifiers went down at about one in the afternoon when temperatures were peaked.  26 entrants were broken into two groups (Gabe Kadmiri showed up and was not allowed to enter).  Highlights included Kotaro doing fuck trucks (coasting lawnmowers straight into death trucks) into pedaling death trucks - sick.  Adam Pintek was on a GT Show with 6 pegs and no cranks doing hitchhikers with holding the 'crank pegs' and dropping the bike so it was 2 inches above the ground.  Day Smith was still recovering from to much partying the night before and just wasn't up for riding, but still didn't end up in last place.  Bryan Huffman rides all day and during his run his back wheel screws up on him.  Aaron Behnke was whining about people standing within 30 feet of him with a camera and asked them to go stand in the corner.  Bad, Aaron, bad...  way to try to get ANY coverage for your sponsors.  Why the hell do they bother?

Aaron Frost finally made the cut to enter the X-Trials events and finished in 21st...  He didn't really finish in 21st, but what do judges know?  Takashi hit a triple barflip to halfhiker in practice, but simply could not put it together for qualifiers.  Keith King simply gets a mention because he has a website called keithking.com which you should go check out right now.  Sean Peters got dead last.  This is especially noteworthy because less than five years ago he was doing longer runs with the exact same tricks and hitting the run flawlessly.  Strange things happen to riders when they get older.

Oh...  and Chad Degroot qualified in second.  If the videos from the event end up on the site you may wonder why he qualified at all...  but the qualifiers were pretty sketchy and Chad rode really well.  In the finals Chad couldn't keep up the pace and he fell from 2nd place qualifying to 10th place finals... you can still see him in the X-Games though.

A few hours passed and we grabbed some food and watched the vert qualifiers then headed back over for flatland finals.  There was a lot of pressure that got to the first place qualifier, Matt Wilhelm, and he simply couldn't hold it together to put together a clean run.  He ended up in the number nine position after screwing up on his signature blender bike flip to upside down megaspin.  York Uno picked up the number eight spot with his typical brakeless combos including jugglers and tomahawks.  He also was doing some crazy spastic wheelchair glide that was just fun to watch.

Seventh place went to Jorge 'Viki' Gomez, who was riding incredibly all day long but couldn't put together a good run.  He was possibly doing the hardest tricks in practice including some very sick cross-footed front wheel pinky squeak/rolling combos.  He should have done better.  Art Thomason scored sixth place after hitting a near flawless run.  He should have done MUCH better as no other rider hit a flawless run on the sketchy flat surface.  The highlight of his run was a spinning hitchhiker to a 360 barflip straight back into a spinning hitchhiker.

Ryoji Yamamoto was representing Dragonfly and was pulling a bunch of different front wheel/switch footed variations including his one-handed side squeak kickflip and a cool half-whopper ride out from mccircles.  Count him in at fifth.

Top three did not consist of Martti, Nate, or Phil - it included Stephen Cerra...  But the judges didn't agree with me.  Stephen his a really solid first run with a crazy no-footed tomahawk and a solid upside down pedalling megaspin as well as his usual  360 barflip combos.  Oh well, fourth will have to do.

The number one overall flatlander for the year, Martti Kuoppa, could only manage to land third place at this event.  After hitting incredible runs at every contest he went to this year, he simply couldn't pull his signature moves on the first try.  It was still Martti though and that means the no-handed blender happened, the steamroller kick flip happened, and a long combo at the end that could have put him in first place if he hit it clean, including a turbined cliffhanger, barflip, cliffhanger.

Nathan Penonzek hit a sick no-handed stick bitch combo and a really long no-footed t-glide.  He also hit his jump from the rear pegs into cross-footed steamroller.  It was good stuff, but pretty typical of Nate.  Solid though.

First place went to England's own, Phil Dolan.  Phil had been struggling and getting frustrated throughout the day with his hitchhikers, but pulled them together for the finals and was doing nose-wheelies with his right foot on the left pedal and his other foot off.  He also hit a really clean stick bitch combo that finishes with him coasting 20 feet backwards standing on the pedals.  It was super tech, but he dabbed the ground a couple of times.  The judges didn't care and he walked home with the gold.

Tomorrow...  Vert.

RESULTS