FATBMX Your Online BMX News Resource Since 1998

Nathan Berkheimer left Staats and he is racing for Schwinn now. Yes you are reading it right. Schwinn is back. Schwinn is still working on their new race frames. Nathan is racing his old Schwinn for now. Be on the look out for the new design. Kyle Bennett switched sponsors too. He is riding for Free Agent now. I heard he signed a 3-year deal with them. In the last report I told you something completely different, so I didn’t know what I was talking back then. Mike Day signed a deal with Red Bull. He is racing with a special painted helmed. You know, the one that every athlete has. I hope Mike can sleep at night. All that caffeine will keep you awake for a long time. Darrin Mitchell is out of retirement. After being retired for a month he decided to get back in BMX. He is racing as a Vet Pro know and he is riding for Redman. I talked to him about it and he still wants to race, but not on a high level. He is a personal trainer at 24 hour fitness know and he is loving it. He is quite the ladies man and the gym is a very good place to meet girls. The black snake is still going strong. I just signed a deal with Troy Lee Designs. I’m very happy with the deal. They hook me up with race clothes and their race helmed. I resigned with Oakley too. I’m still looking for other deals. My agent is still working on a lot of things. We will see what will happen in the future. One thing is for sure. I’m not ready to go back to the Netherlands. I want to race at the Olympics in 2008. Till then I want to stay and race in America. After that I don’t know what I’m going to do. Only the future will know. Christophe Leveque is still not racing. His heel is still not healed. It’s been about 6 months now and it’s going to take a little bit longer from what I hear. Man that really sucks, not able to race or ride your bike for such a long time. And he just recovered from his back and now this. I don’t think I could make a come back after all of that. I hope he gets well soon. Donny Robinson did something to his collarbone in Shelbyville. I’m not sure what is wrong with his shoulder but he hasn’t been to a race since then. He is getting hurt a lot. He his pretty short but he has a lot of muscles and he is fast as f#*k. He will be back soon. He is still young, you know. Some old school guys came out to Phoenix to race a bit, Brian Lopes and Jamie Staff. Brian had a special bike. The bike had 9 gears in the back. GT build him a special bike, when you have 9 gears in the back, your back end needs to be a lot wider then normal. The bike looked pretty slick with those gears and disc break. Personally I have mixed feelings about the gears. I hope it’s not going to be the next new thing in BMX. BMX needs to stay BMX if you know what I mean. The clip pedals deals kind of like that too, but you can’t ban then anymore. They are a part of BMX now. I think shifting gears on the first straight is not going to help out that much. I think it will mess you up more then it will help you out. But what do I know, I never tried it and I hopefully never have to either. Jamie needed a little break from Velodrome racing. He did too much last year and it burned him out a little bit and what is the best thing to do about that, go back to your roots. The guys were going pretty good, but they both didn’t make the main. The UCI Supercross race in May is an X-Games qualifier now. This should help the event. Normally you will be invited to the X-Games. Because of this, a lot of foreign racers do not get invited for the event. Everybody can race the Supercross and this way they have a chance to qualify for the X-Games. I think a lot of people will show up at the Supercross and they should. It’s a chance of a live time. The race season started in Reno at the beginning of January. Since then there have been 5 more races. 4 ABA races and 1 NBL race. I didn’t go to the first 3 races. Kyle Bennett and Warwick Stevenson have been dominating most of the races. It’s time for the other racers to step it up, or both guys will walk away with the title in mid season. I have been to Phoenix, Boulder City and Oldsmar. The race in Phoenix was okay. The track was pretty good when you were in the lead. It was really hard to pass someone and I found that out the hard way. In the semi final Thomas and I elbowed each other out of the gate and were game over after that. We tried everything to pass but we weren’t able to pass anybody. On Sunday it started to rain before the semi. In ABA they will not stop the race and wait for the rain to stop. So we raced in the mud. It was like riding on ice. It’s not like in Europe. The tracks are still race able but in America it’s a different story. Warwick destroyed everybody that weekend. It’s his home track and he was going super fast. He won everything. The race in Boulder City was pretty good besides the wind on Saturday. Greg Romero got caught by a lot of wind in the pro section and he crashed hard. After that the pro section was optional. Saturday, Kyle was leading the main into the rhythm section, but he made a mistake. He never makes a mistake and especially when he is in the lead. Jason Richardson was able to pass him and take the win. Warwick won the other 3 races easily that weekend. The local track organized a special race on Saturday night. They build a sprint trail track next to the racetrack. You race against one other person. It’s kind of like dual slalom. First you take one side and the next time you will ride the other side and the total fastest time will win and will move on to the next round. I only watched the time trail. Kyle was the fastest. The 16 fastest guys would qualify for the race. Randy Stumpfhauser won that night. From what I heard he was pretty much the guy to beat. He had both sides dialed. Oldsmar is in Florida and you know what that means, Hot and humid. The track was allright; it was pretty slippery in the turns. Kyle and Bubba were racing for the win all weekend long. At the end Kyle won AA Pro twice and Bubba won Pro Open twice. Warwick crashed hard in the second main on Saturday. He flipped over his bars and landed on his side on a roller. He had to go to the hospital. In the hospital they told him he has a collapsed long and that he can’t go home by plane. He can’t fly for a month, they said. Now he has to drive home from Tampa to Phoenix. That’s about a 1500-mile drive across America. I’m on my way back to the Netherlands right now. I will be in the Netherlands for 2½ weeks. Hopefully I will be able ride a bit. It’s freezing right now and when it’s not freezing it will rain and I’m not used to that kind of weather anymore. This was it for now. Later. Robert