Wednesday, May 9

Infecting the World with Bike 2001

By Jim Cielencki
www.bmxonline.com

One recipe for putting on a great contest is to start with some accents, possibly English, Canadian, American and French. Then, add some of the best riders in the world and stuff them into a small corner of a bike convention in Birmingham, England. Finally, and most importantly, let them loose on a street course designed to allow for many different styles of riding.

The result of all these ingredients was Bike 2001, a contest put on by Seventies distribution that took place from April 20-22. This contest felt like the Primo La Revolucion contest in Toronto. The riding was just as incredible at Bike 2001, with everyone riding well and numerous never before pulled tricks being pulled. John Heaton flaired-to-double peg on the subbox, while Matt Beringer tried to flair-to-wall tap, but ended up going into a disaster. These guys must spend way too much time playing video games. In fact, they should play more if they are going to keep doing this stuff.

Nate Wessel is back from eye problems. He did the coolest 360 transfer ever, but to describe it would be way too difficult -- just trust me. If you've never seen Mike Aitken ride then you are missing out. He rode way too good to deserve his placing. Let me just say along with his super smooth jumping stuff, he managed to double peg grind the wall ride and then went to fakie from the top of the eight or ten foot wall. In my opinion this was one of the best "treats" of the weekend.

The best "treat" had to be Ruben Alcantara's wall ride-to-manual on top of the wall ride from quarterpipe to quarterpipe. Again, what is it with the video games?! This alone was reason enough to explain why he won the contest as well as best trick.

My memory fails me as to everything that happened, so I apologize if I missed something. But let me say this: Bike 2001 was just another example of how ridiculous bike riding is getting. If you have a chance to go to one of these types of contests, you had better go, because if you don't, you will miss out. Everyone should thank Ian Morris and everyone at Seventies for putting on a great contest and helping to push riding.

Click here for Bike 2001 results