Todays dominated of course by the news from JomoPro! Maybe you fancy a break from all the Jomo hype, maybe fancy a something old school? Eddie Fiola and RL Osborn, Bercy, France 1984!
Todays dominated of course by the news from JomoPro! Maybe you fancy a break from all the Jomo hype, maybe fancy a something old school? Eddie Fiola and RL Osborn, Bercy, France 1984!
i was there! this started it all for me!
Thanx Effraim!!!
You were at that Thomas? No way! I remember going one year for the 2 hip King of vert, and the venue was huge!!! The bleachers were filled with spectators! It was like a rock concert type of atmosphere! Incredible!
RL and Fiola absolute legends ,great footage ,man i always loved those Redline RL-20’s .
That crowd sounds crazy! Even for the flatland stationary balance moves in the show.
Yep for whatever reason,the crowds in Bercy were always nuts!!!! Think back to that show with Kevin Jones and Mat Hoffman, where Mat first did the backflip fakie. Man the crowd were hyped!! That is a big arena to fill!
Think this may of been the first time American riders had hit Europe ,we are talking August 1984 here.
I guess they must’ve been able to get the US magazines over there back then? Their level of stokedness is off the chain. I guess it couldn’t ever be this big again.
A similar Motocross event used to take place regularly there for many years before this. It always attracted huge crowd and was promoted in the media like mas. I used to go there with my dad sometime… At the time, the Bmx event was presented as a safer/cheaper/ more accessible substitute for motobikes for kids ….so we kids instantly loved it. Racing was what everybody went to see that day …. but Eddie Fiola’s 10 minutes demo stole the show because what he was doing couldnt be done on motorbikes at the time and was never seen before!
Bmx revealed itself to many as “superior” to Motocross rather than just a cheap alternative thanx to this . Plus Eddie looked like a super hero. Some kind of Power ranger! All the kids in my neighboorhood went in the park afterward to “play” and imitate Fiola (like kids playing football thinking they’re Cantona or something….we were riding while saying the TV commentry outlood as the same time…fun times !
PS: “Bicross magazine” organised the event.( it was a little sister to a hugely popular motocross magazine :”moto verte i think) “. Bicross magazine ruled my teen!.many years before “Freestylin” or even “Invert”.
The second or third year there was a french team doing freestyle demo as well at Bercy: the MBK’ “mad dog”. Adolphe Joly and Jose Delgado (who i believe still rides) were the first french pro flatlanders. they toured France like crazy promoting the sport.Many including ..Alex jumelin, Alexis `Desolneux, Armin Batoumeni i believe and myself became the generation inspired by these pioneers…Crazy to see how far the sport has gone since!