Springtime is here, and as we all look forward to the summertime. The contests are more frequent, everyone is getting more riding time, and the content on FM grows.
It’s not often we kick off month with a Must Watch edit, but we did that in May of this year, and boy was it a treat!
Japanese flatland legend, Hiroya Morizaki teamed up with Taichi Kunieda to drop these two brand new amazing back wheel lines. So great to see Hiroya is still pushing hard, hitting the rewind again!
The clocks go forward one hour, that feel good factor that the extra daylight brings, more riding time equals more time filming and documenting what you do. April was a busy month!
Deco’s Chad Degroot kicked off the month and had this to say:
“Since I starting riding my head wants me to learn as much as possible and this includes bars backwards tricks. The beginning of this link I learned this day so to make more smooth flow and no scuffing. The middle has been a gem and great feeling to whip the backend around with no brakes and keep speed. The end is bars backwards and played a huge head game for a bit because I had to push so much momentum to get into the backyard position and pump to keep speed. Real excited to move past the 15 second persona and get onto the longer story of this trick.”
March is always a good month, springtime is coming and after a long winter its nice to be able to ride outside again. Not to mention generally there is a whole lot more content coming through from riders worldwide.
On the first day of March, Paul Chamberlain just dropped a real nice promo for the Down Underground 2016 series, filmed at his local riding spot in Summer Hill. Plenty of awesome hang 5 variations in signature Paul Chamberlain smooth style, well worth watching again.
Nowadays it feels like stuff gets forgotten a few weeks later, so it is always interesting to go back over the year for me. See who did what, as I continue my breakdown of the year today, with February. This year that shall be remembered forever for the tragic death of BMX icon/legend Dave Mirra, RIP.
February began with a nice “Decade teaser” treat from Scott Powell, really like the fire hydrant to foot jam decade direct to back pegs to direct foot jam decade at 00:54 not to mention the upside down decade to xft ice cream lines at 1:03 and 1:15. Looking forward to the Decade Anthology edit Scott is working on…
On February 4th, the BMX World lost the greatest to ever grace our sport. I was lucky enough to share many great memories together with Dave on the Haro team during the late 90’s, a personal hero of mine, my thoughts go out to his family and friends.
Truly a heartbreaking day!
R.I.P Dave Mirra.
Welcome to the 4th annual Flatmattersonline Year end awards! It is also time to celebrate FM being 8 years old, it really is hard to believe I have been covering what’s going on in the world of flatland for 365 days of the year for 8 years now. The awards is my chance to help give back to the scene that has given me so much over the years, and also it’s a lot of fun going back through and seeing who did what throughout the year.
The reader categories have once again seven categories for you to vote for. Whilst for the editorial awards I will concentrate on the Rider of the Year and the edit of the year.
Voting runs from Monday 19th December through till Tuesday January 3rd with the final results announced the following week, Tuesday January 10th. This gives people plenty of time over the festive period, and more importantly based on feedback from the first year I ran the awards, time after Christmas, less of a rush during the festive period and New Years Eve like 2013. It seemed to work much better in 2014/15, so I’ll stick with it.
Good luck to everyone, look out for some posts related to the awards throughout the remainder of December and a huge thank you to Johann Chan for his amazing graphic design work once again!
Flatmatters: 8 years Strong!
Effraim Catlow
Flatmatters Editorial awards
* Rider of the year
* Edit of the year
Flatmatters Online Reader Awards – seven categories for you to vote!
1-Rider of the year
2-Edit of the year
3-Brand of the year
4-Innovation of the year
5-Contest Run of the year
6-Most Progressive rider
7-Breakthrough rider of the year
*Only one vote per person per category.
How do you vote?
Send your votes through to: effraim@flatmattersonline.com – entitled “Flatmattersonline Awards 2016” – Please note: voting only counts via email, and you must vote in each category to be eligible. Plenty of time to go through edits and look back via the site on the highlights of the year, good luck and enjoy the process!
Who knows I may throw in another category like I did last year, time will tell.
* Look out for reminders here on the site of what went down this year throughout the remainder of this month.
Top 5 Nomineees Announced: Friday January 6th.
Winners announced: Tuesday January 10th.
Intro/Interview: Paul Chamberlain, Todd Carter, Rodney Williams, Effraim.
Photos/Trick descriptions: Manthos Ekteman & Giannis Caternellis.
Part 1 of the Giannis Caternellis Flatmattersonline interview caused a positive reaction on the site a few weeks ago. Rather than ask all the questions myself, I discussed with Giannis about asking a few riders to chime in questions. This second part of the interview is focussed on questions from Paul Chamberlain, Todd Carter and Rodney Williams, let’s do this!
Giannis with a move he calls the Michelin.
Intro/Interview: Effraim.
Photos/Trick descriptions: Manthos Ekteman & Giannis Caternellis.
Hello everyone!
It’s hard to believe that it’s been over a year since the last in-depth Flatmattersonline interview, but that sadly is a true story!
Many of you in the comments section of the site have requested an interview with Giannis, around that same time period people were asking, I was already putting wheels in motion to make that happen. Who better to bring back the interviews than Giannis Caternellis!
Who is he, where is he from, what is he all about, what’s his background? During the last 3-4 months that it took to put this together I have tried to dig as deep as possible into questions that I felt would get into Giannis personality and find out more about Giannis that I came to realise whilst making this interview, is a purist. He lives and breathes flatland, as a rider and as a fan, it’s no secret that putting these interviews is my favourite part of publishing FM. Grab a cuppa and enjoy this. Let’s get into this part 1 interview!
Day 5 is already upon us, Friday was a goooddddd day! We all met up at the Tintadome before heading down to the Expo Center, the first person I was greeted by was old school legend, Dave Nourie! Great to see him again, plenty of other riders started arriving, everyone was excited to get a ride in at the contest venue.
The McGraw household is full with flatlanders as the weekend draws nearer, yesterday we kicked out the day with breakfast at Schlotzskys. Before heading down to James’ work, upon arrival we met old school legend Robert Castillo, Gary Knecht, Tyler Gilliard and our AM BITR video winner, Salvatore Castro all the way from Chile plus many others who started arriving as the day went on.
The days are going so fast here, already on Day 3 out here for the Battle in the Rockies contest! Yesterday was by far the busiest day yet, the morning began with heading to the Tintadome to work on last minute tweaks for the event, finishing off trophies, visiting a few local bikeshops and so on.
