Must Watch! Alex Jumelin TCU Interview.

Jim McKay of http://www.thecomeup.com sat down with professional flatland rider, Alex Jumelin to talk about a number of topics including: his move from France to the United States, the current state of Flatland BMX in America and how it differs from the scene in Europe, what’s better: France or America?, his signature line of parts, The Come Up’s recent addition of Flatland to the site, and Alex’s differences with Brian Tunney.

Some of you may have heard about that last bit; a fact that has upset quite a few Flatland riders. During the NORA Cup awards show, Brian made several questionably humorous remarks about Flatland that ruffled many people’s feathers. One person who was offended by these comments was Alex Jumelin. Alex promptly posted his strong dislike for what what said on his blog and on Twitter. Brian reacted by a Twitter post which read: “In an effort to keep Alex jumelin happy, we will no longer be featuring any flatland coverage on @ESPN_BMX”. Since then, no Flatland has been featured on the site. This in my opinion, is a huge loss for everyone involved, and I thought it was only fair to go public with this and to and get Alex’s views on what happened and how it affects our corner of BMX. Alex expressed no hard feelings towards Tunney, yet he feels that this situation was handled inappropriately (Tunney has since claimed he was joking).

24 thoughts on “Must Watch! Alex Jumelin TCU Interview.

  1. Great interview – I think that Alex articulates the great aspects of the sport really well. I can’t wait to see what he will get up to over the winter, whether it’s on the back wheel or the front.

    DON’T READ THIS: I must say I wasn’t a fan of Jim saying that flatland was “banned” by ESPN. I don’t think that’s at all what happened. Using words like this and trying to incite controversy is boring, considering there are already far too many BMX turf wars online. Alex’ response was pretty true though: a guy who rides flatland made some lame jokes in the wrong place.

    If anything we should just rag on Brian Tunney for having a poor joke repertoire. That guy needs to pick up his humor game. Because ultimately if we can’t laugh at ourselves (and each of our friends, etc.) then we are taking things way too seriously. The internet is a joke. Life is a joke. Everything is a joke. The least you can do is laugh.

  2. i completely agree w/ the 2nd part of trevor’s comments, flatland doesnt need that kind of journalism, it makes TCU look like TMZ

  3. Man, I just watched the portion for flatland in nora cup and apart from that whole thing looking pretty lame with all this weird unbalanced music and weird screaming and shit, the flatland part was pretty awful. Brian did seem drunk and his commentary was bad. Seemed like he was showing off for his street buddies. That being said, he is an amazing rider with great taste in music. I am really just tired of flatland being this joke to a lot of people and kind of dissed. So tired of ¨no one understands it¨and ¨it is super impossible.¨

    Why don´t they just throw a big party and give out trophies instead of having a lot of awkward dudes talking about being stoked and shit?

    Cool interview Alex.

  4. It didn’t seem like a joke to many. I didn’t think it was either until someone said he was screwing around. I also don’t think what he said was funny but thats just me and i don’t know Brian well enough maybe to get his jokes.

    Alex is passionate and I appreciate that. Tunney did say he wasn’t gonna do flatland and seemed to take it personal. But who really cares.

    Go ride people!

  5. Hi everybody,

    Here’s a photo that I cut, uploaded and captioned of Alex Jumelin for the ESPN Action Sports website in mid October, a month after Alex publicly told me to shut my mouth about flatland.

    http://espn.go.com/action/photos/gallery/_/id/8504783/image/17/alex-jumelin-2012-odyssey-texas-toast-jam

    Last week, I also sourced, uploaded and captioned photos of Martti Kuoppa and Trevor Meyer for a photo gallery on ESPN here: http://espn.go.com/action/photos/gallery/_/id/8663292/image/2/trevor-meyer-bmx-turkeys-x-games-three-gold-medals-row

    Personally, I’ve been covering flatland since about 1993 or 1994, in Dig, Ride BMX, Ride UK, Chase, Props video magazine, ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com. I’ve been working at ESPN for four years now and have included flatland (and racing) in our coverage from the start.

    I guess everyone can form their own opinions though. As Alex’s tattoo states: “Life is a choise.”

    I will however continue to make bad jokes about flatland because I realize that I am 38 years old and have spent way too much of my life in parking lots by myself trying to ride a little kid’s bike.

  6. I don’t know how anyone could take Brian seriously as he has put in years of work covering flatland (which is being overlooked in this context) and seems to always impart some level of humour into all of his coverage. The NORA speech was a little awkward, but I think Alex overacted and so I don’t really see the point in dogging Tunney too much. ESPN still covers flatland…. so no harm done?

    Sweet seeing flatland as a TCU premiere though! That’s an awesome development and NORA/Tunney questions aside, it was a great interview.

    • I took the whole deal as Brian being sarcastic thats how he has always been, as Alex said a misunderstanding. Theres been coverage since the Nora Cup on the ESPN site, so
      I didn’t think it needed dragging up again, thats just my two cents though I don’t know much about it other than what I read on twitter, and here on FM…

  7. I thought the tone was fairly clear that we thought the lack of coverage on ESPN was a shame, and that’s all. It wasn’t any kind of personal attack; in fact Alex and I still respect him and have no hard feelings. We just thought it was worth mentioning that because Brian didn’t like Alex’s reaction to his humor, he said no more coverage on ESPN. We’re not sitting here crying about it, and I thought that we approached it in a light hearted way.

    The interview is 8 minutes long, with one minute on the above topic, and covers many things. I’m very stoked on it, and I think that Alex is very well spoken on the subject of BMX. I hope that some of you are able to enjoy the rest of the video without so much focus on the drama. So far that is almost all that’s been discussed, and that is also a shame. Flatland is fun, it’s relevant, and we want to see it flourish.

  8. it is quite refreshing to see that this conversation has taken a positive turn since i posted my original comments 6 hrs ago. i was possibly expecting a GF or TCU style backlash, instead i’ve found the opposite. the last thing flatland needs is the negativism of the worst of TCU posters

  9. I’m not really sure why Tunney not covering flatland is a bad thing. He’s a mediocre writer and rider who got where he did because he made friends with all the right people and rode their coattails to a cushy job at ESPN. If he doesn’t want to cover flatland, forget him and call it a day.

    When Jim McKay stops covering flatland, that’s when you want to worry.

  10. Great interview Alex! I liked what he was saying about the growth of flatland over the past 10 years, so true. and I’m looking forward to seeing it grow more in the next.
    I’m also looking forward to seeing Alex’s back wheel stuff. If it’s as unique as his front wheel it’ll be amazing to watch!
    Keep it up Alex, Looking forward to seeing you at contests soon!

  11. Seems like its something that was much better not brought up. People have drama, have bad jokes, have not meant threats and hot words.

    Bringing attention to these actions seems to only create more drama and more negative feedback.

    When things like this happens do the best thing you possibly can: Ignore it, and ignore the drama queens that are perpetuating any vocal outlashing of the content.

    You can see the impact it had on the interview. Instead of people being thrilled about alex’s interview instead everyone is bickering over drama and the concept of drama.

    AXE THAT SHIT!

  12. Back on to the Alex interview itself…

    Always love hearing about what he’s up to. Super interesting guy who’s been in the game a looooong time from a rider and business perspective. Really dug the interview, Jim asked some good Q’s and Alex on point as always. Dope.

  13. That was such a good interview!!! Props to JM and Alex. Also, I didn’t know a whole bunch about the controversy so I found it intersting to hear Alex’s take on it.

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