FATBMX Your Online BMX News Resource Since 1998

Barry Kohne and Dwayne Verkade are organizing a 3 series BMX street competition over in Holland. Round one took place on Saturday 12 March at the Promise park over in the South of Holland. With the park located 10 minutes from the German and 10 minutes from the Belgian border, it saw some strong interest of these two countries. In fact, after the 8 groups of 3 pro riders finished the jam session format qualifying, 7 Germans and 1 Belgian had to ride once more in the XL Series finals. If you're not aware of the Promise park, it has something for everyone. It has spines, ledges, sub boxes, jump box, wallride, rails and a pyramid with plenty of transfer possibilities. Barry had another crazy fufanu beam installed for this contest but in the end it wasn't even touched.

The Expert class at the Soulcycle XL-series started off an hour late at 13:00 hours. Still some riders did not arrive in time which shows once again that it's hard to start off a BMX freestyle contest in the morning. The max capacity of 50 entries was reached and every rider got one run to try to qualify for the finals. 15 riders out of the 50 were taken and we saw some very good talent in the expert class finals. It was sad to hear that for some people it takes complaining and video footage to convince an organization that the rider belongs in the final, but it happened. They're in there for the wrong reasons. Winning isn't everything, having fun is. A lot of German riders had plenty of fun. X Martin X (Sponsored by Durex) and Captain Dotterbart (with the most Neon front wheel ever) understood what the comp was about. Dotterbart even made the final and scored third place with a huge wallride and plenty of grinds on the rail. 5th place went to Leroy Kleppe, the Belgian kid with the white helmet who did

BMX in Croatia? Yup it does exist. Ben Shenker went over there and reports on the street course and some party at a boat house. A bunch of flatlanders and I headed to Zagreb for the Bike Fight 2 comp. I was excited to go, Croatia is always a good place, thanks to the super-friendly people. The comp/course/event turned out to be worse than I expected. It was at a sports-boat exhibition, so space was limited. The course was really small, with a jumpbox I hopped up straight every time. There was a good wallride, until the wall gave in

Bike Show 05 is looking good, a new venue and also the addition of the new Braun Spine Mini ramp, and way cheap on site accommodation available (from £20 p/n twin room). This is your info to ride at BIKE 05 1-3 April .... Stoneleigh Park NAC You Must Confirm your entry with 414, contact details are below and that’s it. *Contest Entry is Free *Pro Prize Money ~ $ 21,500 ~ Contact email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. More Info: www.thebikeshow.com Registration 09.00 to 12.00

It seems like everyone and their uncle is jumping on the Old School BMX freestyle bandwagon. 3 sources in France are getting material together, the Joe Kid on a Stingray movie is coming out soon (premiere 2 April) and now also Bob Osborn is working on getting the history of BMX freestyle out with the help of several Old School freestyle enthusiasts like Maurice Meyer, Oscar Gonzalez, Tim Hughes, Brett Downs, Eric Rothenbusch, Thom Lund, Paul Willis, Perry Kramer and some more. Wait a minute, Bob Osborn!!???? Correct, that's the man in the picture that was posted yesterday. Oz is back at it and posting a lot on the www.vintagebmx.com site trying to track down the first aerial, the first carve in a pool, define the first flatland trick (is it a rockwalk, or a no-handed wheely, or something else?), the first freestyle specific part, the first contest, the first trick team, the first demo, etc.

Brooklyn Jam (20-02-05) First ever flatland jam in a supermarket Written by Hoite Polkamp Brooklyn? Isn’t that on the other side of the pond? A hood in New York? Nope! The original name for Brooklyn is Breukelen, which is a little town in between Amsterdam and Utrecht. Breukelen evolved to Brooklyn, just like New Amsterdam evolved into New York.. But this all took place a pretty long time ago. Fast forward to 2005. In this little village, an abondoned supermarket was turned into the perfect flatland spot. This has been a flatland spot for about a year now, where locals Philip and Felix actually lived for a while. The

We received some pictures fromt he second annual GIRLS TOUR. This year's version was sponsored by FOX clothing company and went all over the East with visits to New York City, New Hampshire, Ohio, all over... It took two weeks and according to Anita Hodgin it was a blast: Woodward was our last stop and we had fun. They catered to us and gave us a place to sleep and ride. Every stop was like this. We went to ECT park in Binghamton, New York and those guys are super rad. Heather broke her foot there but they gave her some cruthches and were real great guys...FBM was in full effect with Crandel and the crew. They showed us around their shop and we received some insight as to how the frames and parts are made. Studio 54 was fun and the owners are super cool. I forgot to bring my gear and they let me use some of theirs. That park is small, but every tranny is perfect. They couldn't have done a better job with the place.

A new year has started and soon enough an invitation arrived from the guys from Asphalt Distribution in France for another edition of the now famous Circle Cow. Carhartt got hooked as the main sponsor so the Carhartt Circle Cow 2005 tournament was born. Held on the weekend of 12 & 13 Februari in Servon, a town close to Paris in the same hall as all the previous years. We went down there on Saturday morning with two cars packing the best of the best of the Dutch flatland scene: James Alberto, Sytse Winkel and Dutch Destroyer Bram Verhallen (FLATtv rider). Plus me, mr. FLATtv and my wife Francis. After a 5-hour ride through some pretty nasty weather we arrived at the scene of the crime and met up with some of our friends from all over Europe: Czech riders with Mirek Hanzl, London Ripper (and FLATtv rough rider) Jason Forde, James Smith & Gareth Hawkins, Stuttgart Boyz Flo & Ass and Sven Steinbach from Karlsruhe. Of course also all our French friends like Alex, Jimmy, Yannick, Stephanie, Arnaud, Cedric Decosse and all the others. Viki Gomez was there, he and Alex were riding the new prototype KGB frames. We were welcomed by organisers Pascal and Ismael, they made sure we didn't miss out on anything.

Next month the Local Exposure Tour 2 is going to take place. The pros on the tour will be Allan Cooke, Brian Kachinsky, Josh Harrington,Ryan “Bizâ€? Jordan, Morgan Wade, Dan Sieg, and Dennis McCoy, and last year’s tour winner ,Quinn Semling. The announcers will be Micah Kranz and Zack“Catfishâ€? Yankush. Expect to see a two-hour demo (in which locals are encouraged to ride), and then the eight best locals as chosen by the pros will have their own jam. Two winners will be picked from those jams, and then an overall winner from the tour will be picked to go on the Local Exposure 3 tour next year. Every jam will be filmed for an upcoming video as well. March 25 at Scrap in Hoffman Estates, IL March 26 at Rampage in Davenport, IA March 27 at 4 Seasons in Milwaukee, WI March 31 at Midway in Waucousta, WI April 1 Undercover Skatepark in Kimberly, WI April 2 Area 51 in Appleton, WI

While wandering around at the pits of the Supercross in Anaheim I stumbled across a set up that I had not seen in a while. The GT/Schwinn team had set up camp to do bicycle stunt shows with the 9 feet tall transportable quarterpipe and a box jump. I have done plenty of these shows in the past with GT but I have to admit that I don't miss them one bit. It's a good thing to show BMX to a new audience but to me it feels like the sport has moved on.