We heard about this freeride last year and we missed it, we saw videos and the Google map image of this road and I signed up immediately for this year freeride.
We drove for a long time from Kozakov and arrived really late at night mobbing down in our new car down all the hairpins, we were frothing!!! We set up camped in the dark and started hearing very familiar voices running towards us. I was really happy to meet up again with a great friend Ishtar and the super lovely Gloria.
KNK w the boys, by Mirko Dardic
We had a fucking great time in this freeride, no pressure, sick parties, nice food, great friends around, beautiful place and a SICK HILL: 18 steep hairpins from 10am-6pm for 5 days!!!! It was definitely my favorite event to go. Had so many cool runs filming with Marisa, Ishti and Sammy; fast runs with the whole sector 9 -rad -these crew and heaps of fun just me in front of the pack bombing down as fast as i could blasting fast checks and slides and enjoying the hill with no one in front that could slow me down!!! LOVED IT!!!
I was super excited and nervous to come back to this race track. I knew how gnarly it was last year but I was excited that I could go a bit faster and perform much better.
At the beginning of the year Rob and I we were planning our skate trip for 2013, we start researching for the IDF races this year and minutes later we saw a post from our good mate Stephan Risch about a new Almabtrieb race for 2013, I asked for more info and quickly added it to our list of events to attend for 2013. The road was sick a lot of turns, fast and technical 2 left corners
that needed to check or break and one long and fast straight into a left
hairpin....
So we finally got our car...... we packed everything really fast, put some petrol and left to skate some massive mountains around the country: Go go Flow, Moo moo and Sugar! (sorry we can't revealed the real names , so these are the name we gave them for now.. hahaha)
After a 30 hour trip crossing through Abu Dabi and Munich , we finally arrived to ZURICH!!!! We travel together with Mustard. I love Zurich and what a better way to arrive with everyone waiting for us: Reinke (Fibretec Creator) his lovely girlfriend Natalie, Raoul (alles isssssi) and Alex , all waiting with a beer ready to party haha....
Our date to travel gets closer and closer, we started to get ready for
the Euro Tour a month before and what else better than racing 4 Aussie
Outlaws........
Lennox Head race at Byron Bay. in the flowing green fields just
south of Byron Bay Ash Armitage decided to put an outlaw on the old Dash
and Slash race track. The track starts in a steep driveway that throws
you down into a smooth road with one left turn into a long drop that
finishes in a sharp right turn with a rock slippery surface, at the end
it finishes with a left hand gravatronover the finsih line.
On the 2nd of May, many excited riders packed their bags and drove through the beautiful Blue Mountains to get to a really famous mountain in Australia...Famous for people who love speed and adrenaline!!! This is a mountain where V8 cars race super fast but where skate boarders accelerate through corners even FASTER: MOUNT PANORAMA, for this year's first IDF World cup: Newtons Nation.
Rob organized an other outlaw race : HE IS ANEVENT MACHINE always spreading the stoked... this time in the central coast (Naccos local spot).
The track was really fun , it wasn't super gnarly but it had a few
tricky right corners were people crashed more than once... We had all the international riders that arrived early for Newton's
Nation World cup including the fast - steeze Marisa Nunes from Peru and local
shredder Gemma Holland from Brissy. We had a round robyn system for the qualification and after a single
elimination race to final for the opens (with the boys). I found it super fun and challenging to race
these boys although we didn't do go to bad against some boys :) .. Results for the opens where: Adam Person got 1st Robdog 2nd James Kelly 3rd.
Here is the video Thane Destroyer by The Shred Shed. This hill is in the north of Sydney in a secret spot since it's dangerous for beginners: it's really steep, fast, you have to stay on your lane, you must throw fast pre-drifts slides to take each corner and it's always busy with cars.
So on the 24th of April I had my second race of the
year at Pump station which is a really chill closed road in the Blue
Mountains of New South Wales. This race was organized by Cam Kite.
I had an awesome time at the All About OZ (Sydney) tour by Phil Thorn , Cliff Coleman and Sergio Yuppie. We had the pleasure to have Cliff and Sergio in our house for a couple of days, those two are Champions!!! We went skating 2 days around the north shore and eastern beaches. We all had a blast.
After our racing and freeriding tour in Europe I tried , tested and relied in one big brand .... I am so happy and super stoked to announce that from now on I'll be riding and representing the company that makes my favorite type of wheels:
In the beautiful town of Byron Bay there is an amazing shop with great great style, rad clothing, great service, variety of unique items and an awesome crew: Unplugged Byron Bay. Now this shop is not just any retail shop with great style, these guys are always supporting the Byron Bay community. They've have done many projects like Byron Bay The Meeting Place and many more, always with the great aim of contributing to their local community.
Now I have the great pleasure of representing this company all around the world since 2011 when my great friend Oliver (owner of this shop) showed me his interest in my passion for Downhill, my dreams of getting better and travelling around the world sharing the stoked. With his massive support I started doing it and he is always proud of all my new achievements.
Unplugged Byron Bay and the team behind are always creating new projects and sharing their stoked.... Thanks guys!!! You know how much this means to me.
If you go this amazing and gorgeous town please visit this fantastic place:
Yeah a bit sad today to find out how many local shops around Australia are going through a really hard time.
The
problem: American on line shops are trying to get in the Australian
Market, the Aussie dollar is stronger and they know how much our scene is
growing. Kids and Uni riders are their biggest target.