Friday, March 15

La Revolution

By Josh Root
EXPN.com

The Toronto LaRevolution contest has turned into one of the most anticipated for many of the best BMX riders. The reasons behind this are: It's run by a crew of riders who know what a good BMX contest is, It's (mostly) sponsored by companies who really care about BMX and the course is designed and built by riders, which makes it just about the perfect size (maybe a smidge small) yet with a ton of different lines to try.

The list of riders in attendance was pretty much a whos who of the BMX world. True, there were a couple of big names who weren't there, but that was more than made up for by seeing some of the great riders who, purposefully or not, stay out of the spotlight. Taj Mihelich, Jim Celneki, Edwin Delarossa, Brian Terada, Brian Wizmerski, and a ton of others.

Pedal stall as the camera gets it all.

Mike Aiken won the street contest and Jorge "Vicky" Gomez won flat. Hardest trick was a 3 way tie - Brian Terada (180 over flatbar to peg-grind to fakie), Edwin Delarossa (bunnyhop 360 to smith grind) and Rob Tibbs (720 to fakie on a quarterpipe). Berringer was trying fastplant flip fakies and Tuck no hander flip fakies on the 6 foot quarter. Dave Freimouth destroyed the sub ledge pulling foufs, canadian nosepicks, a 270 to double peg, and a nosepick to toothpick. Reuben transfered from the wallride onto the bank-to-rail flatrail. Alistair downside whipped the wall to bank gap.

Dave Osato, tailwhip to tiretap.

Jay Miron didn't ride in any of the contests but was in full effect during practice. Over double peg and back grind across the whole bank-to-rail flatrail and, nose manual across the whole 25 foot snowplow deck (later he came amazingly close to toothpick grinding the whole thing also), his first tailwhip to manual, and then just for fun he aired the 20 foot wallride wall. Jim Celnieki had all sorts of crazy grinds on the rails including a double peg on the second rung of the slanted rail and a gap to pedal across the longbox to the slant rail that he pulled and then slid out on. Edwin spun a 270 to feeble from flatground down the box ledge. Brian Kevin Porter kept trying handplant 180s over the street spine but kept sliding out. He did pull a great foot plant x-up tailwhip on the wallride.

Kevin Porter, tailwhip.

I wish I could say something about the flat contest. But even though I watched the finals, I have no idea what was going on. I'm always really impressed at flat comps, but the tricks passed by those of us who don't ride flat, a long time ago. According to the riders I asked, it was a good comp though.

Rolling to first place in Flat.

Toronto is REALLY cold with a biting wind that tugs at your bones. But this contest was well worth it. I got to see some amazing riding, meet some new friends and hang out with old ones. Good times eh? Deadly, deadly.