Winners of Battle in the Rockies announced!

The results are in! I can honestly say this was one of the toughest contests I have ever judged! Big respect to all of you that threw down in the one minute format and gave us all so much motivation, and us the judges a headache!
Myself and James McGraw went back and forward and after much deliberation rather than fly two riders out, we are flying three!

Jean William Prevost
Thomas Noyer
Cory Fester

This was without a doubt one of the best contests I have seen, congratulations to Dub, Thomas Noyer, and Cory Fester! We will see you in Colorado Springs in November!

1- Jean William Prevost
2=Thomas Noyer / Cory Fester

4-Dez Maarsen
5-Lee Musselwhite
6-James White
7-Moto Sasaki
8-Shintaro Misawa
9-Hiroya Morzaki
10-Tsutomu Kitayama
11-Alexis Desolneux
12-Simon O’Brien
13-Sebastian Grubinger
14- Laszlo Tivador
15- Akihiro Takahashi
16-Mateus Beckmann
17- Viki Gomez

42 thoughts on “Winners of Battle in the Rockies announced!

  1. Congrats to Dub, Thomas, and Cory!

    Congrats to everyone else that entered as well, and most importantly, congrats to flatland; we’ve all won by witnessing so many amazing riders step up for this video contest.

  2. I can not comprehend that at all.
    and, I am mortified.

    haha, however,
    Congratulations! DUB, Thomas Noyer, Cory Fester !!
    So, I will challenge myself and try again next year !!!!!

  3. wow no Moto ? ok so it’s Tokyo JAPAN – LAX – Colorado Springs ?? $$$$$$ 2 way trip… I get it / you totally deserved it Moto, may be next time we can get a good discount on those tickets

  4. Ok I am not going to get caught up in drama. We organized this event to bring something different to flatland. Like any contest there is always someone who is disappointed. Everyone in the top ten could have won, it has nothing to do with cost of airfare!!!!!! We added an extra person because it was so hard to pick. When u have 10 guys dropping bombs like this you have to be critical. Moto smashed it as only he can- he is one of the greatest riders ever. But what he did here was not enough for the win no matter how epic it appears. The one person we had a hard time with was Dez who clearly pushed himself so hard and delivered an unreal combo. I love and respect each rider hence the reason I personally choose them with that said I personally stand 100% by the results. We are a small family of brothers and like all families we will disagree.

  5. Congrats to the winners!!
    Just wanna say the tsutomu trick was the most bad ass for me. Arigato!

    Best combo: dez omdat je gewoon een dikke baas combo heb gepulld je weet zelluf!

  6. mr Kitayama’s stole it for me, but whateves. Congratulations to those chosen few. The participants entries were all fucking amazing. We were totally spoilt for some of the most progressive riding I’ve seen in eons.

  7. Wouldn’t want to be a judge for this. It’s like comparing apples to oranges – easy to pick a favorite but hard to pick a winner. Here are my picks…

    1: apples
    2: oranges

    Thanks to all the riders that put up videos. So exciting to watch.

  8. Two out of three don’t even need a flight here do they? I’m sure dub would represent anyways ! No dez? Oh well congrats to you all that made it

  9. I think the confusion is that there was an option to come up with one trick or one link. Those who did one trick like lazlo , kitayama, and akihiko got relatively low placings for the individual tricks they did none of them Idont think I’ve never seen done before. The idea od the contest was great but Ithink that small detail made what was being asked of the riders slightly confusing.

  10. Judging a contest with no touches is often really hard even when there’s only 2 riders! This must have been impossible! Props to all involved. One last thing… I don’t think anyone PAID to enter this contest…. yet 3 people won a trip.. Just sayin..

  11. This was an awesome idea. We saw some impossible links and 3 people get a free trip. Very cool. I am not skilled enough in flatland to be able to judge something like this but I will say that I am glad to see Cory Fester in the top 3! That combo was ridiculous!

  12. Much respect to James for taking the time to put an event on like this. Without a doubt there is a ton of work involved. Also, without a doubt everyone will have their own opinion of who should be their. Please show James some respect for what he is doing even if you don’t agree with who won the spots. Much luck with the event James, i’m sure it’ll be great!

  13. @James : Respect for what you do and what you give.

    @Judges :
    how Lee Musselwhite can be 5th ?
    -Moto pulled a perfect with perfect rhythm, 3 original and hard trick on the pedal and finish it by two very hard pivot.
    -Tsutomu destroyed a physical law about his knee, and pulled one of the most craziest and may be dangerous trick.

    I know it’s never easy to judge but in this list of link there are some differences that easily appears.
    May be i am missing something.
    What made lee 5th ?

    • Surprised and bummed by the reaction of many, especially top pros. I’ve felt this way for many years, but in essence flatlanders kill flatland themselves. There is a lack of respect to what we do as Judges. Due to the subjective nature of our artform/sport, I’ve never ever been to a contest when someone is not pissed off. It’s how as a pro you deal with that. Did everyone forget James and his sponsors didn’t charge to enter the online contest and are paying not 2 flights, but 3 flights!!

      Because of the nature of the video contest, consistency was not a criteria, everyone was clean. So after that, it becomes lot of detail, originality, aesthetics (did bars touch ground, dead time in tricks, and so on).

      Every switch Lee did was his, two really hard combos back to back, and the no hand no foot crack in circles was really well executed. When you are look at tiniest details, these can make difference of one point, re: Lee 5th.

      Omari made some good points, and thats something if James decides to do this again, I will bring up.

  14. @Effraim – You are banging your head against a brick wall! As you said this happens at every contest, if not every contest, it’s telling how the japanese riders have dealt with this. I looked up to a lot of those riders, yesterday gave me a few hard shots of reality. Such a shame. This has been brewing a while, look at Viki’s comment re: Dom’s 3 minute combo. These are considered top pros, but acting like that, it doesn’t come across like that at all.

  15. I loved Tsutomu`s delivering a new original trick + combo never seen before! Everybody killed it and I was so shocked to see everyone trying so hard! Congrats to all the riders! Keep killin it!

  16. Step 1: Organize Event
    Step 2: Event takes place
    Step 3: People are disappointed with results and complain
    Step 4: Other people complain about the complainers
    Step 5: Repeat

    Contest riders, contest judges, and contests organizers are all accountable during contests. With respect to riders, some people should be more humble regarding placings. With organization, there is always room for improvement. If organizers or judges do not want any people upset or complaining afterwards, they should leave no room for those to complain.

    In this case, outline the positives and negatives of each video so everyone can clearly understand the point of view of the two people judging instead of just a list of riders from 1-17 with no explanation. Just like anything else, when trying to prove a point, you should back-it up with something to shut down the opposition. Leaving this announcement open ended like this is a recipe for people to question the results.

    • Good points Mark, we can try that perhaps in the future I don’t think it will change the attitude/egos but like you say you can at least understand the rationale behind the score.

  17. This is such a positive thing for our sport. Especially in the wake of the Trinidad contest money fiasco… We have a free online, invite only, video contest… And 3 riders walk away with paid trips to the USA for the Am Flatland Circuit Finals!!! On top of that, the actual event has NO PRO ENTRY FEES and a Pro Purse bigger than any event to take place in North America this year. I’m super psyched and super proud to be a part of the flatland scene world wide, not just the USA. 17 riders put on a progress/originality clinic. You should all be so proud of what happen over the last month. Maybe we will someday see this type of progression/originality/motivation in a live flatland event in the future.

    So rad. Thanks to all the riders. Mad props.

  18. I had Moto second. But, I can see people having a difference of opinion and that will undoubtedly always be true with such an artistic sport. I had Dub first….3? well that was difficult. Thomas Noyer is looking original and fresh….congrats to all for being so damn good at flatland. Peace.

  19. The level of riding for this contest got me thinking…….

    Take 20 or 30 of the worlds best riders, give them each a few months to film up to 2 minutes of footage. At the end they each submit their clips to Chad Johnston for a new online inTRIKat video.

  20. For me flatland is more like art and on this level you cant say what is better, harder or more difficult, its like make competition between picasso and van gogh. someones likes picasso anothers van gogh so the fight who is better is pointless, i like one of them so its my personal choice. The winners here are not because they do most difficult tricks but because judges like them most, and if they think that they chose hardest tricks, they are wrong.

    So it was not competition what the hardest, it was like everybody do the video and two guys will choose which one they like most and the list has nothing to do with the hardest or easiest video…. and the list with places?? For what?

    if you want to know which one is the hardest so you have to learn all the tricks form all videos then you can say which tricks takes how many hours of practise, then you will think like WTF really motos combo takes less hour of practice than lee, and viki???

    So the idea is cool because i really enjoy all the videos and somebody got ticket, but next time better to say “We will choose one or two riders that we like most” because it was nothing about hardest tricks.

  21. Lapsley made some good points..
    Great event.
    And Great idea with the video contest.

    I wouldn’t have liked to be judging it. Its not like other forms of
    BMX where you can judge ones double whip against another
    Everyones laying something completely different to the other.

    I would of been happy to have seen the winners announced in no ranking.
    ie. Here is the the winners in no particular order.

    i really enjoyed watching these bangers coming in, and think it was a great idea and motivation to riders to give it there all.

    Possibly could open up ideas to a all online video contest. With just prize money, with various categories. Black mailing the bangers out of people.

    Leave the judging to the judges. They set there rules as being there contest, and can go there way and the pack shouldnt jump on the people who are putting on events. Because it may just put them off doing it again.
    I hope not

    Good stuff james ! thumbs !

  22. It was the best riding from a bunch of riders that I’ve seen in one dose since 2006. Good work all of you.

    Look at Martti, stepping up for no reason at all, all those times, just because. Now you’re all here complaining?

    It doesn’t matter whose riding I thought was best, because nobody really deserves a free flight to America do they. And, is the flight free? Or are two hardworking dudes in the 40s making sacrifices to pay for them?

    And, to the guy who complained about Lee being fifth, just because you’ve seen most of it before it doesn’t make it easy – and more switches don’t trump it.

  23. @Paul : come on take it easy.

    “just because you’ve seen most of it before” off topic.
    I didn’t understand the ranking, asked “What made lee 5th ?”.
    E. answered and even if i disagree, that’s all. I used the example of lee because for me it was the most obvious.

    Nothing more…

Leave a Reply to pawelbobowik Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*