Must Watch – Michele Maiolani / Straight Ahead

Oh, its a good day when Michele Maiolani drops his first edit four years. I had messaged Michele a while back and just asked, are you still riding? I heard nothing back and assumed he had quite riding. Today I was really happy to wake up to a message from Michele letting me know about his new edit “Straight Ahead”. This man possesses rolling god skills that give me flash backs of Chase Gouin, Denes Katona, Alexis Desolneux and so on.

Let’s discuss this one in the comments section, that ender tho! Mad respect Michele, thank you for blessing us with your skills.

Throwback Thursdays with Effraim Catlow

I don’t really feature myself on the site very often, something to me that feels rather odd to do. Today I have a Flatland Immersion Podcast dropping, so why not feature myself for a change. We go back to 2014, and edit I worked with my friend Ollie Denny who is an amazing videographer.

“I wanted to document my riding as this point in time, to remember the spot and also help push my personal progression. I was inspired by a podcast that asked a question, “How do you know when a music track is finished?” I immediately started thinking about flatland, and your combos. When are they over? Is there a right time to pull out? After much gnashing of teeth, and riding time in between injuries, I’ve come full circle from doing long combos in the contests to short combos outside of the contest environment.”

Space Brothers Podcast with Art Thomason

Stoked to listen to this Space Brothers Podcast with Hoffman Bikes shredder, and all round sound dude Art Thomason.

“We’ve had the chance to learn not only about some amazing riders over the past year and a half but amazing people as well. Beyond the realm of BMX, many of these riders have had interesting jobs or random hobbies that we’ve discovered during the interview process, but our next guest takes the cake in terms of an intriguing career.
Art Thomason is a 5 time X Games competitor in BMX flatland, sponsored by Hoffman Bikes, and currently works for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, also known as NASA.
In fact Art lives in Houston TX where he’s worked for NASA for the past 15 years. He’s helped train over 50 astronauts for various missions performed at the International Space Station. At age 44 Art is still currently competing in a variety of BMX flatland contests, spending plenty of time pushing the boundaries of his own riding, while maintaining his career at Johnson Space Center, also known as Mission Control.
In our conversation with Art we got the lowdown on his favorite contest moment, riding for Hoffman Bikes for the past 17 years, the first time he met Mat Hoffman, how he applied to work at NASA, his official job title and what he does there, working at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab which is a massive swimming pool with a replica of the space station located inside it, what type of reactions he’s received from co workers that know he rides BMX, his connection to the International Space Station, his average day at work, his favorite NASA project he’s worked on, and what skills he’s learned on the job. So get comfortable, crank up your speakers, and get to know one of the most down to earth people with an out of this world job… Art Thomason.”

Matthias Dandois wins Ruhr Games

It’s been a busy contest schedule in Europe this week, the Ruhr Games started on the Thursday just an hour away from Cologne in Duisburg. One of the biggest invitational contest of the year.
Congratulations to Matthias Dandois who won the contest for the second time, followed on the podium by Dominik Nekolny and Alex Jumelin. You can watch his winning run below.

Dominik Nekolny 1st Place iBMXff World Championship Cologne

I just got back home last night from another amazing weekend in Cologne. I have no doubt this week will largely be taken up with content from the event, and we kick off todays posts with Dominik Nekolny’s winning ride, and was his third win in Cologne in a row. Last year Dom won the Flatmattersonline readers vote for contest run of the year, will he win it again with his finals run this year?