The event is a BMX and MTB team contest. The combination is kind of strange. One BMX-er got teamed up with one mountain bike rider. Each rode a one minute run and the scores got added to get an overall score. The terrain does not go down hill so you won't be seeing Andy Zeiss on his 9" travel Kona on the course. In fact, it's park course with dimensions similar to the Dew Tour. Big transitions, walls on both sides, a spine, double and big box in the middle and a hip + wall piece in the corner. There's not too many complaints about the course which is a good thing. The heat however is a different story. Practice sessions are from 11am-1pm and 4pm-6pm in the blazing sun. No fun. But there are other people in Europe at the moment who have it worse (rain). 
Anyway, qualification happened last night. BMX-ers in Trieste are: Tobias Wicke, Ben Shenker, Senad Grosic, Stefan Lantschner, Perico, Axel Jurgens, Arthur Dietrich, Michael Sieren and Barry Kohne. There are a few wild cards in there who still have a chance to make the finals tonight. Local hero Alessandro Barbero did not compete last night because of a swollen left upper leg. Today he was pulling flairs, 3 doublewhips and tuck 3-s without any problems so he's back tonight. He missed the Best Trick contest last night. It was a 20 minute open session after qualifying and good stuff was shown. 1000 Euros were there for the winner with 300 Euros for 2nd and 200 for third. 
The Bas Brouwer look-a-like from Italy pulled a nice double whip over the box. For his efforts he received nothing as he did not make top three. Michael Sieren pulled a double whip over the hip. Senad Grosic worked his way through a tailwhip tiretap to hang-5 and Ben Shenker pulled a flip to manual. Barry Kohne did a sweet handplant on the vert wall and received nothing either. So who did get something? In third we saw Tobias Wicke do a bunnyhop tailwhip drop-inn from the wall into a quarter. Serious height, serious trick. Axel Jurgens' barrell roll over the jump box was so smooth and traveled over so far that he had to get a prize. It was 300 Euros for Mr. Argentina. In first we had Stefan Lantschner. He was stoked to say the least. He tried the hardest too. He crashed so many times on so many obstacles trying big shit and in the end he did a huge 180 over the "double jump" and pulled it after crashing out 3 times. He was bruised, black and blue and bleeding but he put the 1000 bucks in his pocket and stepped on top of the podium and sprayed some champagne on the Red Bull ladies. Hard work paid off for Stevan. As mentioned before, tonight are the finals here in Trieste. We'll report more about the contest soon.
BdJ
After doing a BMX 'zine for ten years (1987 - 1996) FATBMX made it on the internet. The year was 1998. Here to stay.