Turndown flip during the 360 contest… I don’t 3 very often and when I do… it’s not the best.
The crowd was awesome!!!
Patrick Guimez 20″ rider from France flipping the first set in his run.
Damjan dropping the drop
The first rider to hit this spine road off the edge and 15′ to the ground and a rail soon followed.
DIRT!!!
OK… Big Dirt!!!
I just got home from and exhausting 4 day trip to Koln, Germany where I was lucky enough to be invited to T-Mobile’s first ever indoor slopestyle called the Extreme Play Grounds. By the way the finals were on MTV Europe live with a huge concert… why are we going back to speed stunt trials here in the US??? How’s that phrase go??? One step forward…. remember the rest???
The course was pretty good all though the drop was a bit sketchy and short. The drop sent you into a huge wooden berm with a lip at the end to jump out of to a scaffold. The scaffolding was where the 2nd part of the course was built and it consisted of a small landing then a 5′ street spine and a 5′ quarter. The last quarter was only to get you onto the dirt roll-in 20′ above the dirt jumps. Once you dropped into the roll-in you needed every bit of pump to get over the 7 1/2′ lip and 20′ gap… this jump took out quite a few riders during practice mainly due to the semi-soft conditions that always plague dirt jump contests on freshly built jumps but Bibi and his crew worked their asses off to get them dialed before the show… thanks guys!!!
The format was head to head style which I don’t think any of us liked but made the best out of. I won my first round but definitely wasn’t riding as good as I was in practice due to nerves. It was very hard to relax and put together a good run on 3 days with no sleep and the worst jet-lag of my life. Paul Basagoitia took me out in the next round but went on to win the whole event 2 runs later. Here’s the rider’s list and the top 3 finishers. I tied for 5th place overall. Paul also won the 360 contest with a clean 3 whip… Paul was also the only rider to actually trick the drop… he 3’d it in his final run.
T-Mobile 26′ Riders List:
Paul Basagoitia 1st
Lance Mcdermott 2nd
Phil Sundbaum 3rd
Marius Hoppensack
John Cowan
Grant Fielder
Carlo Dieckman
Damjan Siriski
Timo Pritzel
Carter Holland
plus 4 wildcard riders from Germany’s Homegrown Tour
Thanks to everyone who worked hard to make this event happen and showed us around… specially the Mountain Bike Rider Magazine staff… Frank, Pierre, Sabrina and Tull. Until next year!!!
Carter