12 thoughts on “Throwback Thursdays – Hiroya Morizaki VS Sam Foakes KOG 2008

  1. Oh, man! The things I missed! Amazing riding. E thank you for posting these “older” clips. It’s like a formal education in Freestyle.

    • Thank you Scott! You make a great point that was one of my first motivations to start Flatmattersonline. Its always a learning process, for me included. Truly one of the many great things about flatland.

  2. To this day, I still don’t understand how Foakes dialed in such an insanely hard style and set of tricks. Maybe I didn’t see enough of his riding in videos, but it seemed like he had a MASSIVE leap of difficulty within a very short time frame without a whole lot of indication where he was heading with his tricks (for instance, comparing his riding in some of the old Flatground comps to what he started busting in the TGM edits). I can only imagine how much work he had to put in to get to the level of control he reached before he stepped back from the scene for his career.
    Sidenote: I was also just watching these old 2008 KOG comp clips last night, and another notable from that contest was definitely Miura Hirokazu’s backwheel stuff. Insanity, and a nice contrast in backwheel styles compared to the time machine-centric stuff that’s common now. Next to Foakes and Justin Miller, he’s another rider I really wish was still on the scene.

    • Miura was so ahead of time even back in mid 2000’s. His runs back in 2007 would win Pro class contests even today. Search ‘kog round2 miura york’ on youtube for a glimpse. #legend

    • @ultramanzoffy – one of the favourite memories actually is when myself and sam were on this trip and we were going back to back on our combos, I think we both did 5-6 in a row on our combos. I stopped and he carried on, think he did his KOG run about 11 in a row. That just gives a small insight into the work it takes to be that dialled. Mislav from Zion posted a video of the trip on vimeo. Sam also made a mistake mid way through one of the combos and totally freestyled the rest, pre no pumping days. Amazing skills, and a pure athlete.

      • Yeah, this jives with what I recall reading in an old Cream (or Ride UK?) interview with Sam when he made it a point to really go after the Worlds title. Something like he was practicing hitting his crazy hard runs 5 or more times in a row consistently leading up to it in some insane training regimen, similar also to what I remember Martti mentioning before about his X-Games training methods. I guess that’s what separates the kings from us subjects. =)

        • Yes indeed, helped my consistency a lot when I was rising contests. Takes a toll on the body tho, tendonitis stopped me competing. Sam had it down for sure, great mindset.

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