Congratulations to Benjamin Hudson who qualified first today at the UCI world championships here in Chengdu, China followed by Dominik Nekolny and Jean William Prevost who are both battling injuries, top 16 make tomorrow’s semi finals at 3pm.
Congratulations to Benjamin Hudson who qualified first today at the UCI world championships here in Chengdu, China followed by Dominik Nekolny and Jean William Prevost who are both battling injuries, top 16 make tomorrow’s semi finals at 3pm.
Watching the highlights on Our BMX. Seems they are making the same mistake I saw at the X Games in 2002. There are maybe 100 people watching. If you put bleachers out, people would think that they are in for a show, not a sideshow. They will sit down, watch, get stoked and be encouraged. It’s depressing how this is such a huge event and nobody sees it.
Whoever is running the flatland events for FISE needs to make it spectator friendly in order for it to be successful. While the riding is great, the event is a dud. If you are going to do it, do it right.
Hey Brett,
I went to watch the FISE highlights after reading your comment. I have a slightly different view than you on the event. I think Lionel is very knowledgeable rider and MC and does is best to hype the audience (I ve ridden at events where he MCs). We can all be for or against flatland contests and none is ever perfect but I have to give props to FISE for always including flat to their events (Alex is huge part of that) and props to them for taking BMX and other actions sports to new markets/countries ( I am not Naive, I understand they are also in it to make some cash). It must be quite a logistics undertaking. That being said, In Chengdu you have, I believe a double problem. One, they are presenting flatland to a neophyte audience that clearly have not been exposed a lot to our sport/art. The various techniques, intricacies and combos are very hard to decipher for the untrained eyes. Hell, riders themselves even have a hard time sometimes… And 2, Lionel is MCing in English to a Chinese (mostly) audience that probably has a very limited grasp of the language. That makes it quite hard to get the energy going. They don’t know when to clap or scream unless Lionel raises his voice and/or the rider is spinning fast or is being expressive (wink wink Matthias). So yes, you can argue that perhaps Bleachers would have helped, that more promotion could have been done before hand or that the finals or another round be scheduled at a different time slot (not sure when these happened but I think they try not to run 2 events at the same time). If you look at the FISE Montpellier, there is a HUGE crowd watching flatland and feeding energy into the event but again it has been running for over 18 years and the MC speaks french (and English). I ve ridden at FISE events and it is quite a rush, I’d say.
My 2 cents.
Totally agree.
Aaron your back on our screens, at least since Landscapes. I thought you’d vanished down, what was the name of your bars, something street? Good to see.