FATBMX Your Online BMX News Resource Since 1998

- April 1st is the 10th Anniversary of Paul's Boutique BMX Hardware Store Aarle-Rixtel, put that date on your calender! Party at the shop and the MINI FAT JAM Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd of April. - The Dutch are going to Estonia! This years Simple Session in Tallinn will be visited by more riders from Holland then ever, finally we have some good riders that can enter international contests. - VANS will be sponsoring FATBMX.COM and the PURE BMX Factory team in 2005 again. Thanks Ruud for supporting us, you guys rule! - The Bike Devil is working on a backyard vert contest for 2005. When the sponsorship has been gathered you will hear more about it. Place: Overpelt, Belgium. - BioRacer in Belgium have been rushing producing UCI BMX World Championship jerseys for HARO PRO Warwick Stevenson. You see, Warwick is heading for the X-mas classic in Florida and has to wear the rainbow jersey riding UCI/NBL affiliated races. Being world champion comes with a price...... - Eric Mulders and Rob v.d. Wildenberg both have purchased sweet 125cc Honda's for some winter practice. Pieter Does, you're up next! - FOX Racing are presenting their new DVD called: Drama. They've been working on it for 18 months and has sections on Dave Mirra, Josh Harrington, Colin McKay, Dave Dillewaard, Allan Cooke and a bunch of others. Watch the trailer on the re-vamped FOXRACING site. - The one and only real Dutch BMX pro Robert de Wilde has written a new column where he looks back on racing the NBL, the ABA and the UCI World Championships. Go find it in the race section on FATBMX.com. - Over in Europe Ben Shenker just returned from a visit at the RedBull training center in Austria: " It's an unbelievable place. I spent a week at that place. I took all sorts of tests to measure my physical and mental state. All is ok, so I'm happy." While in Austria Ben also met HARO rider Senad Grosic. "We were making some plans for next year, looks like we're going to travel a lot together again." Ben continues: "You won't believe this one: I got voted by on of the daily newspapers to be in the 50 most successful young people in Hungary. No shit...." Other than that Ben is riding a lot and getting back to his previous state. "I ride a lot opposite and switch, it's loads of fun. We have a foampit now in the skatepark too, I helped them design some new ramps and lines too, so the one and only indoor place is getting better." - BMX books are hard to find. 2 new ones were published by MBI recently: 1) BMX Trix and Techniques for the Track. ISBN 0-7603-1964-2 2) BMX Trix and Techniques for the Park & Street. ISBN 0-7603-1963-4 They're both terrible if you know what's going on. - Dave Mirra will be racing the Toyota celebrity race at the Long Beach Grand Prix in April 2005. He'll be flying out to LA to take driving lessons before he takes on the race against fellow sports, movie and music stars. Some of the 2004 drivers were Lil' Kim (hiphop artist), Laila Ali (Muhammad's daughter) and Sean Astin (Lord of the Rings). Shaun Palmer and Coolio have also participated in the past. - BMX World Cup info from the UCI: The UCI continues to develop the UCI BMX Supercross World Cup series as the premier international BMX racing series for 2005 and beyond. With BMX being included in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the UCI BMX Supercross World Cup series will become the platform promoting the Olympic BMX format. With other major events such as the UCI BMX World Championships being based on a large number of participants and age categories, the UCI BMX Supercross will showcase a limited participation number of elite athletes similar to the upcoming 2008 Olympic BMX event. The UCI BMX Supercross World Cup will be held on stadium-format BMX tracks as well as on the previously featured downhill BMX tracks. With 8 riders going head-to-head on a highly technical BMX track, the UCI BMX Supercross World Cup offers BMX racing in a very exciting and spectacular format, tailor-made for the very best BMX athletes in the world. The 2005 UCI BMX Supercross World Cup schedule and venues will soon be announced on the UCI website. - After a crazy round of 3 finals at the ABA Grands in Oklahoma, Redline's Bubba Harris grabbed the ABA #1 title. - Ben Foakes, Company Director of the Front Brake Revolution Ltd., sent in a message that he has moved to a temporary address in Cambridgeshire. #'s remain the same. - Kink's Cheap Thrills DVD is out now. Contact your local Kink dealer and tell him to order that thing. - Ryan Nyquist returned from a Hawaii holiday with a Bronze tan. Talking of Ryan, he has signed with HARO Bikes for the next 5 years. - The new wethepeople productline for 2005 is online. Available now worldwide!! New in 2005: • mono frame (new street frame, 74.8° headtubeangle) • frenzy frame (featherweight frame with retro dropouts) • sinus frame (flat specific frame) • 5 star deluxe sprocket (Now with 7000 series Aluminium) • slim seat (light race style) • D12 Fork (Unique twisted fluting for rigiditiy) • mantis flat fork (slick looking with reduced diameter blades) • royal cranks (the complete re-designed pro crank) • ti-spareparts like axle, cones etc. (blingbling) • pi-hub front with 12mm hollow axle (improved strength up front) • addict complete bike (price aware 4130 complete) • sinus AM complete bike (All new flatland complete bike) WTP also updated every single other product, we hope you like the improvements. Check it out under: http://www.wethepeople.de/product.php - Other wethepeople news includes: * In case you still haven’t seen the wethepeople “etc.â€? video yet, you have a chance to check out some scenes on our news site www.wethepeople.de. * Wethepeople is venturing stateside, this time for the props megatour#4. With riders like Brian Terada, Dave Osato, Dustin Guenther, Will Jackson, Tobias Wicke, Ashley Charles and Max Gaertig it will be nothing short of an epic. This epic will be doing the rounds in sunny Florida, so unlike Italy they will at least be guarenteed sun... everything else will be open to your imagination until January. * Testing the ground stateside is team rider Ricky Feather from the UK, currently somewhere (hopefully not jail) in San Diego. * If you want to see even more front brake action than the Props 53 coverage of Tobi Wicke, you can find more footage of the machine on the recently released new Front Brake Revolution dvd. - Mat Hoffman and rider Kevin Robinson met Target House resident Tyler Emert at the Target House holiday party, where Team Hoffman athletes delivered holiday gifts purchased by families across the country as part of the St. Jude Wish List to patients receiving treatment at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. To brighten the holiday season for kids receiving life-saving treatment at St. Jude, families across the country purchased gifts in November by clicking on the St. Jude Wish List posted at Target.com. During his leukemia treatment Tyler and his mother, are living at Target House, the long-term housing facility for families of St. Jude patients, where Tyler enjoys arts and crafts and is learning to play pool. - Austrian Senad Grosic did a show in Poland with Tobias Wicke last month and then went to Slovakia to do some riding in what he called: "Monkey Camp". Senad must like the Eastern European countries. Next up is the Pop!Session in Tallinn, Estonia put on by Risto Kalmre and co. Ryan Nyquist, Josh Harrington, Tim Eichert, Axel Juergens, Tobias Wicke, Markus Wilke, Bas Brouwer, Barry Kohne, Mark Vos, Ronnie Surridge and Peter Geys will make it to former Russia too. Expect a report on the FATBMX site from the trip mid-January. More info on this contest at: http://pop.session.ee - HARO UK TOUR: 29 March - 4 April. - One of the hardest training athletes on this planet goes by the name of Ricky Carmichael. RC has been winning tons of motocross titles and is currently preparing for the Supercross season that will start off in Anaheim on January 8th. Dave Mirra got to hang out with Ricky and joined him in boot camp. Mirra is one of the fitter riders in BMX but after seeing Carmichael train he decided to step up his personal gym program. - OBG Stefan Geisler is enjoying his time at Woodward training camp. The German started off at Woodward West but is currently riding at Woodward East in Pennsylvania. Achim Kujawski has his winter vert ramp set up and also Simon Tabron now has an indoor location to ride vert. "I bought the 414 vert ramp and have spent the last two weeks building it in Mount Hawke skatepark in Cornwall (England). Adidas helped out with the cost and my friends have been helping with the build. We're building some extra features into the ramp like a midi section and it also connects into the street course. It should all be ready by the new year in time for Geisler and Achim to come and visit!" The park is a charity youth group that gets government funding. With Impact skatepark in Belgium having two indoor vert ramps up and Peter Geys' outdoor ramp it looks like vert riding is far from dead. Can anyone say Olympics? - Risto and his buddies over in Estonia pulled off making a magazine called Sahtel. It's super stylish and has a bunch of BMX stuff in it. People going to the Pop!Session on 8-9 January will get to see it. By the way, right after the Pop!Session in Tallinn, Risto is going to be studying in Amsterdam for a couple of months. Good choice. - Alex Baret at Twenty Bikes is updating the site on a regular basis. With the snow arriving in France you can watch clips of BiBi, Dimitri Ivanov and Alex "jailhouse rock" Dropsy shredding the fresh powpow on a snowboard. twentyvelocross.com - Jens over in Germany sent in the following news: "We have a new bmxcompany. It's called breakless. Our first products are buttons, stamps, stickers and t-shirts. In the next time we will make tires, grips and more hardware. Our website is www.breakless.de." Hopefully the price of the Grips and Tire molds won't scare off the breakless crew. Hey, there's always stickers, buttons and T-shirts. - Big News from Mike Mancuso: "I got engaged last night. What up NOW. She was taken by surprise to say the least and there was some poetry involved. Mancuso the romaticist, watch out. It was truely romatic though. Go me, Go me, it's my engagement!! LOL Anyway, Tonya and I haven't planned any dates or anything yet but will keep everyone posted when we are close." Congratulations from everyone here at FATBMX. Also a big congratulations to Steve Swope and Katie Moses who tied the knot earlier this month. - The 2005 UCI BMX World Championships will be take place 29th-- 31st July 2005 at the Paris Bercy stadium, France. The preparation of the biggest and most important event of the year is already getting hectic, and there’s no doubt that this years event in the magnificent Bercy stadium will be a great show. With this in mind, the event schedule is somewhat different for previous World Championships, with the Elite Cruiser classes competing on Friday evening, and the Elite World Championships will be held on Saturday evening. All Challenge classes will compete during daytime all through the weekend. Please visit the official website for more information; www.bmxworld2005.com - Becky Hannam has left Hot Wheels in the UK. "It was a difficult decision to make as I have made so many friends and met so many really sound people through my work. I am going to miss working with the BMX team, I have enjoyed being in the position to be able to help those guys out over the past few years and enjoyed getting to know them." Rebekah continues: "I am going to join my boyfriend in the snow in Tignes, France - shall be there in time for new year and will stay now until May. Like I said, it was a tough decision, but I think it is right for me at the moment." - Andy Zeiss has become a daddy. Max Lorenz Zeiss was born on 15 December 2004 at 9am in Cologne, weighed 3450 grams and 56 cm tall. Congratulations! - More BMX babies on the way: "Me and Kerry are going to be parents. Our first child is due on the 26th of June. We are very happy." That one came in from Jamie Bestwick. Nice one. All the best with the pregnancy. - UGP Underground Products and Evil Monito got together to present "Ye Royal Sunks." These limited edition socks are made out of the same secret blend of materials that make all UGP socks the best on the planet. Really, they're serious about that at UGP. The three color ways, Adams, Tambio, and Shimabuku are offered with the Evil Monito and UGP logos on opposite sides. - Just when you thought we had gathered enough vert ramp and baby news for December we received this e-mail from Mr. Lover Lover Romaric Fath: "I've not been riding much lately because I have had a lot of work renewing the appartment I have bought and my son was born on October 19th ... But next year will be the time to get back into riding. A huge vert ramp is under construction 20 min from my house in Champigny sur Marne. This is the town where French dirt jumping was born in 1994 with Blockhaus' Nicolas Curie, Black Jack etc ... The ramp has been designed by Inliner Taîg Khris and it's exactly the same transition as Global X-games 03. 4 meters high around 30 meters wide !!!!!!! More over it's located 5 min from Bry sur Marne. Maybe you know already about that but Shelter and Vincent Vernet have been working for years to have a park in their town Bry sur Marne. It's now a reality..... spined mini with wall, jump box, rails, etc ... almost a reality... it was finished this summer but Herve from FISE, who had the contract, decided that only one layer of skatelite was enough. It was a good idea to increase benefits but it's broken under John's ( Petit ) frontwheel who had to visit the local hospital... So the openning is postponed to maybe next month until they add another layer of plywood." That means more BMX babies and more ramps in France. - 414's Shaun Scarfe is serious about his grass speedway-ing and could actually become the winter champ in his class. We've got pictures that will be online soon. 414 are working on the next version of "The Bike Show" which will be held on a new location in 2005. News from Alex Reinke: - Mark König is a new member of the Split Euro Team. You will see him entering more contest than ever because he gets a good travel suport from now on. The rest of the BMX team is Ralf Schiefer, Daniel Holzinger and Flatland Newcomer Sven Steinbach for Germany. You can find more infos and lots of videos on www.split-europe.com - Münster changed the settings of the Skatehall positive again. Now we they have removed the Vert Ramp completly and built a 90degree corner that goes into a little bowl corner that leads into a long quarter that is sitting right in front of a big wall. The Small miniramp that was right under the roof is now 15m wide and 1,50m high plain mini. Because of the big interest of BMX riders into the hall since the "redesign" the owners desided that there is goin to be BMX only evening. Every Monday from 7PM is BMX only till 10PM. Great news for a city where Skateboarding is a law. Good news for Münster as well is that Miki Krsteski moved up here to study. Which is a good thing cause now we have a good rider more in this town. - I still ride a lot to, but no Vert at all, only street mini and everything that is possible to ride. Enjoing it more than ever couse there is no more "must ride..." only "fun ride"!!! I enter my first contest in the last two years which was at the Lumberjack "team" contest. We (Christoph Huber, Axel Reichertz, Ralf Pozer and me) where "forced" to enter the comp whith a 30+ team! Well we where 133 years old together and placed fith (out of 12) with cracy combinations like tailwhips over handelbar flange! - Besides that I still try to push Split Clothing as good as possibel and started working for La Finca BMX Distribution as a sales rep too. - Check www.FATBMX.com for regular updates.