FISE Experience Marseille. Free trip to the World Tour you say? By BdJ

Mar 20, 2014

Written by Bart de Jong

Read 5912 times

For pretty much everyone outside of France the FISE contest is that one big event in Montpellier every year where more people show up for Sunday's park finals than at any other BMX contest. But the FISE is more than that. For years they've taken the portable ramps from town to town in France to put on FISE Experience stops. The overall winner of the tour would win a car. I believe Maxime Charveron and Alessandro Barbero won one once and Daniel Wedemeijer won the overall a year later and got a big check. Fast forward to 2014 and the FISE is taking the tour to the world with stops in France (Montpellier), Andorra, Malaysia and China.

The tour was announced at an official press conference in Paris a few weeks back. Announced was not only the World Tour, but at the first stop of the 2014 Experience tour the pro rider who would win, would get his flights and hotel paid for for the World Tour. Not only that, the first stop in Marseille had a pro purse of € 15.000,=!

Getting there is half the fun. Not really. My flight to Marseille left from Charleroi airport in Belgium at 06:40am. That meant I had to leave the house at 02;30hr to catch my plane. With the event being a one-day Amateur - Pro contest all the qualifications and finals were run on one day. 2 lonesome hours later I got to Brussels in time for the Ryanair flight. The only time I'd ever missed a flight was from parking at the long term parking lot in Brussels and that wasn't going to happen this time.

It's amazing how quick you can be in a different spot. 90 minutes later the Marseille sun welcomed me. It would be the only 5 minutes I got to enjoy the sun that day as it was straight to the venue for a judge meeting followed by AM qualifiers at 10:30am. I'm not much of a coffee drinker but a few cups later Hank, Dropsy and myself were ready to judge the Ams.

I'd picked up a couple of views of the course on the internet but seeing it with your own eyes is always different. For the World Tour stops in China and Malaysia replicas of the course are being built at the moment. The set up will be used for the Montpellier and Andorra World Tour stops and other Experience contests. A few things had changed from last year's course and the ramps had received a fresh lick of paint. A rail was added also for the park riders to use. A few actually did grind that thing.

The amateur class took a few hours as 46 riders signed up. The pro class was huge also with over 30 riders entering. 8 riders made Am finals and 15 transferred to the Pro finals. Not making it in Pro class were big name riders like Mike Varga, Michael Beran, Tom Isted, Jesus from Brasil, Jimmy van Belle, Justin Fouque , Kevin Kalkoff, Dustin Greis, Ashley Douglas, Channon Balorian to name just a few. Yes, the pro comp was stacked.

During qualification and Am finals only a handful of people showed up to watch. It was tough for both Catfish and Lionel Cardoso to get the best out of them but this all changed when the Pro finals were about to start at 21:00hr. The Palais Omnisports Marseille had packed up and the riders were ready to put on a show. With the live feed and TV covering the SFR FISE Experience it was important that things were rolling smoothly. The finalists were lined up in the order of qualifying. Tom Justice was introduced first, Matt Armstrong 2nd, followed by JB, Wedemeijer, Coleborn, McGuirk, Casey, Perkins, Brooks, Jack Watts, Daniel Dhers, Logan Martin, Daniel Sandoval and Kevin Peraza. That's one hell of a final line up. The carrot in front of their noses (4 free tickets to the world tour stops) had worked attracting a stron

g field and the finalists were ready to lay it down. The riders had 2 runs each and a final trick with two attempts to pull it. The time schedule was strict as it was live on TV with live scoring. 3 riders per group, 5 groups total. It looked like nobody held down anything. The level of riding is being raised on a weekly basis and even since Simple Session a few weeks ago, never been done tricks were performed in Marseille. Pat Casey's 180 tailwhip to tuck no-hander over the spine was one of them and a wallride to bikeflip by JB was another new one. Kevin Peraza's 540 over the double was huge and his 450 nose wheelie over the hip is sick. So much bike control.

The crowd clapped their inflatable Freegun clappers to the point that people were looking for their earplugs. The atmosphere built up when the pros threw down their biggest tricks. With the live feed going down plus the videos being online we woud like to direct you to the footage to see the tricks. Here are the links:

Full live feed of the Pro finals
Declan Brooks' final runs
Daniel Sandoval's final runs
Logan Martin's final runs

Winner of the Marseille contest turned out to be Logan Martin who will be making the long trip back and forth from Australia a couple more times this year. The China/Malaysia stops are a bit easier on him. Next to the four flights/hotel being covered for the 2014 FISE World Tour, Logan also won a € 4000,= Euro check for first place. He'll be grinning all the way back to Oz, that's for sure.

BdJ

Pro results FISE Experience Marseille, France
1 Logan Martin
2 Daniel Sandoval
3 Declan Brooks
4 Jack Watts
5 Kevin Peraza
6 Alex Coleborn
7 Pat Casey
8 Jack Clark
9 JB Peytavit
10 Anthony McGuirk
11 Daniel Wedemeijer
12 Daniel Dhers
13 Matt Armstrong
14 Tom Justice
15 Leon Perkins

Amateur results FISE Experience Marseille, France
1. FERASSE Florian, 18 St Jean De Vedas 86.33 pts
2. HAYWARD Troy, 12 Portsmouth 86.00 pts

3. CZARNECKI Ugo, 21 85.67 pts
4. CIOFFI Olivier, 16 Eygalières 84.33 pts
5. BRIAND Nicolas, 20 Montpellier 81.67 pts
6. LABERTRANDE Tanguy, 16 Rognac 81.33 pts
7. ZIMBARDO Mickael 79.67 pts
8. VICTOR Vincent, 16 Castries 79.33 pts
9. MICHAUD Vincent, 17 Gemenos 0.00 pts