Category Archives: Exclusives

Lookback: April 2015 – The Flatmattersonline 2015 Year end awards

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The clocks go forward in April, and the riding level and contest season takes on more momentum as we all get psyched for the summer. What happened in April? Here are some of the highlights as I dig back in the crates at some of the key moments…


Dane Beardsley’s amazing section from Samethingdaily3 is now online mixing up flatland, trails, ditches, concrete parks, street, Dane can do it all! Flatland wise, look out for the No handed backwards death truck line at 2:20, xft shove it mccircle line at 3:47 and a whole lot more! A Good Friday treat for you from Dane Beardsley, pure BMX! A great way to start the month of April!

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Lookback: March 2015 – The Flatmattersonline 2015 Year end awards

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The month of March means Spring time for many of us, and that means an opportunity to do some outside riding after spending the winter hibernating. And that is reflected in the increase in content throughout the month.


Sakis Doumas has been killing back wheel pedal tricks for years, hit play to check out this latest edit “Leglassion” dedicated to the memory of his father. Look out for the switch foot pedal mega spin to gerator on pedal at 1:26, and the bar grab two footed backyard jump to pedal coasting backyard around the 2:51 is so good, powerful styles from another Greek shredder. Greece is blowing up at the moment, make sure you don’t miss this one!!


Most of you people would chill out after pulling the banger part on SameThingDaily3, John is not one of those people! Chances are like me you have eagerly been waiting everyday this week for John’s “Seven days seven new tricks challenge”, and watched most of these clips on instagram, even still it is certainly worth a rewind and great to watch altogether, especially Day 7 when he could barely ride after the crash Day 6! Thanks for the motivation John!

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Lookback: February 2015 – The Flatmattersonline 2015 Year end awards

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February of this year turned out to be quite a month for edits, take look through some of my highlights, I am interested to hear feedback on these lookback features, are they helpful towards voting?


The month started out with a banger, Matthieu Bonnecuelle’s “Welcome to Heresy” edit is finally dropped, self filmed and edited. From the opening backwards fork wheelie to forward steam at 00:19 you know you going to watch something a little bit special, and it continues with so many incredible original moves, two footed front yard on the forks half whip out at 00:51, the Backwards 5 on frame at 1:16 is hard to see with the sunlight but incredible balance nevertheless, from 1:48 the Binary codes kick in and everything gets a lil’ bit crazy. The no handed double whiplash at 2:17 is like the holy grail of impossible flatland tricks, now done, recorded. At 20 years old, this kids future is so bright!

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Lookback: January 2015 – The Flatmatters 2015 Year End Awards

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Voting has opened for the Flatmattersonline 2015 Year End Awards, last year I went through the Must Watch edits from the year to help remind people before they voted. Many of you of course have already voted judging my email inbox. Nevertheless,this year I thought it would be pretty cool to add in some of my personal favourites from each month leading up the nominees announcement on Monday January 5th.

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The FlatmattersOnline 2015 Year End Awards!

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Flatmatters2015 600X400
Design: Johann Chan.

Last full day on voting for the 2015 Flatmattersonline Year end awards! Stickied for the day! Voting will close at 9:30am Monday January 4th GMT.

Welcome to the 3rd annual FlatmattersOnline Year end awards! It is also time to celebrate FM being 7 years old, it’s hard to believe I have been covering what’s going on in the world of flatland for 365 days of the year for 7 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 something 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 Friday 11th December through till Monday January 4th (2016) with the final results announced the following week, Monday January 11th. 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 last year, so I’ll stick with it.

Good luck to everyone, look out for some posts related to the awards throughout the next month and a huge thank you to Johann Chan for his amazing graphic design work once again!

Flatmatters: 7 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 Flatmatters Awards 2015 – 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!

* Medals mailed out after January 11th.

Top 5 Nomineees Announced: Monday January 4th.
Winners announced: Monday January 11th.

Battle in the Rockies Day 3

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WillRedd

Yesterday was a full day at the Battle in the Rockies, pre jam day at the Evolve Skatepark in Denver, Colorado. The flatland arena as I am sure you can see from the livestream is situated in between the ramps, we are cleaning and putting soda down on the floor every few hours. The floor is a slick, smooth concrete on plates. Riders were arriving all day, Jean William Prevost, Jason Plourde, Todd Carter, Bo Wade, Alexis Desolneux, Rich Upjohn, John Yull, Luke Malone, Will Redd (who killed the jam sessions), joined the crew of riders that were already here. Good sessions all day, riders getting used to the area, good vibes here in Denver. Check out a few photos I snapped from Thursday.

Moto

MUG

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RonMonis

Battle in the Rockies – Day 2

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Joel

Yesterday was my first full day in the US, this year we are around an hour away from where the contest is at in Denver at James Mcgraw’s house in Monument, Colorado.
The first part of the day was taken up with airport pick ups, Michael Sommer, Moto Sasaki and Martti Kuoppa all arrived, during the evening we headed for a fun session at James’ Tintadome riding spot which his workplace during the day, riding spot during the night. My body clock was screaming bedtime, so I decided to take the time to shoot some photographs.

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MK

If you are following flatmatters on instagram, you will have also seen the distraction training video with James McGraw taking out Joe Cicman with a roll of paper towel, myself, Moto, Michael and Moto were all adjusting to the time change so it was pretty chilled and a good time hanging out and joking with all the riders, check out the photos I shot.
Thanks to Joel Schallhorn for the use of his camera. Today we had to Evolve skatepark in Denver for jam day. Check out a selection of photos I shot below that I feel some up the day quite well! Once again like last year, the vibe is great between the riders, looking forward to riding today! Stay tuned for more updates on FM!

Moto

JM

MS

Repo: UK Flatland Champs

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Repo: Effraim.
Photos: Matthew Dyer, Matti Hemmings, Effraim, Flatism.

A few months prior to the UK Flatland Championships, Matti Hemmings asked me if I wanted to get involved and helping him with the promotion and organisation of the event, re:Judging also. As many of you will have noticed there hasn’t been many flatland events in the UK since the King of Concrete two years ago, so it was time to put that right and get things popping off again here in the UK. With Matti’s contacts and my experience running events we made a good team going back and forth with ideas for what would work best. We felt it would be better for the scene, to work together rather than solo projects.

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Martti Kuoppa, stem 5 on his way to first place, look at the extension and also foot on the top tube stopping the bike moving. Photo: Matthew Dyer.

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Martti Kuoppa – UK Flatland Championship winning run + Interview

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Intro/Interview: Effraim.

I caught up with Martti Kuoppa to talk about his winning ride at the UK Flatland Championships, special thanks to Matthew Dyer for officially filming for the contest. Pinoski also has both runs filmed which will be dropping tomorrow, for now check out the 2:30 run from The Boss and read on to see what has to be said about his win!

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Stemroller, photo by Matti Hemmings.

Watch his winning second run right here:

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UK Flatland Championships Day 1

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Cycleshow

Day 1 here at the UK Flatland Championships at the Birmingham NEC! Today was set up day with Matti Hemmings, myself, Kieran from Oner Sign! We have the floor mopped, branded with the UK Flatland Championships sticker (with a clear grip sticker over the top so it’s not slippery), sponsors banners around the whole arena. Mark Noble at CSG also stepped in with four complete bikes from Hoffman Bikes and We the People for some flatland workshops. There was also chance of a cheeky session to try the floor out, turns out the Cycle Show organiser used to work for the Backyard jams, small world! We are just going through prizes at the hotel at the moment! Novice and AM Qualifiers and Finals tomorrow, it’s going to be a good weekend for UK Flatland!

Stay tuned for results and updates, tomorrow! Via the site and also the instagram @flatmatters

pano

UKF