Russian BMX Award show. Moscow. December 2012. By BdJ. Pics by Danil Kolodin/RBA

Dec 31, 2012

Written by Bart de Jong

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Last week the Russian BMX Award show took place in Moscow. It's the Russian version of the Nora Cup which they've put on for the last couple of years. It's a legit event, put on by BMX-ers for BMX-ers and it gets the scene together in the heart of winter. And cold it was. -25 at night, but once inside things were warm and comfy. For this year's edition Aaron Ross and Matthias Dandois along with myself received an invite to experience the event. Aaron couldn't make it because of a bum ankle but Matthias and I met up in Prague and took the last plane to Moscow.

We arrived at 5am which is kind of odd but whatever, it's always an adventure and I'm down with that. Nikita and Alexander Furaev were both there to meet us. With noone at the airport and no traffic so we were at the hotel in no-time. Nikita's Mercedes was well comfy, better than dad's Lada, and I'm a Lada fan. We checked in at Oksana and got some sleep.

This year the RBA had no jam/contest before the event so the day before the award ceremony was spent doing some sight seeing. Matthias and I made it to the Red Square somehow by metro. It was freezing outside but we could operate our iPhones enough to get some pics. At night we went to A-ONE Studios for an interview which was a good time.

The RBA was happening at a cinema this year. The party was planned for a club downtown afterwards. No wasted people accepting the awards this time so at least that part of the RBA they can remember. I've got to say that everything the RBA crew does is legit. The trophies are super nice, the intro videos are amazing, the host is pro, they even had a staff photographer and a film crew covering the award show.

The Russian riders are becoming familiar faces and it was good to meet up with them again. BMX brings people together and as long as the intentions and interests are the same, good times will be had. I don't speak any Russian so following the award show was tough but we had a translator next to us who explained what award was up next. Here are the people who won the 2012 awards:

Rider of the year by FUNBOX: Grishin Danila
Street-rider of the year: Stepanov Denis
Park-rider of the year: Chuprina Maxim
Dirt-rider of the year: Grishin Danila
Flatland-rider of the year: Chernov Kostya
Video-production of the year: Until it's dry
Photographer of the year: Bivol Alexander
Event of the year: XSA Backyard Jam
Tour of the year: Red Bull Local Hero tour
Opening of the year: Gladkov Sergey
Race-rider of the year among mens: Malyshenkov Pavel
Race-rider of the year among womans: Suvorova Natalya

When the awards were handed out Matthias Dandois got on stage to do a little flatland demo. Matthias was very impressed by the flatland riding he saw in the award videos so he couldn't get away with doing some simple stuff on the Ikea floor. A little Red Bull made the floor sticky enough to ride and the BMX-ers and a Google+ girl got into it.

Congrats to the award winners and compliments to

all who helped make this possible. It's a lot of work pulling something like this off from booking the perfect location to finding the sponsors to support it, to promoting the RBA so people will show up. Great job. It was back to the hotel to drop off some stuff and head for the party. We've got pics of that too but I'm not sure if we can show them... ahh sure. Just later. Too much fun.

BdJ