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Wicked Webb Whips To Win In Birmingham
BMX Street Finals
By Bart de Jong
The park course was shared with skateboarding, inline skating and BMX. This made for an interesting set-up for BMX as it had quite a few flat bank obstacles but also transfer lines for those who found them.
Axel Juergens (Argentina) was one of the first riders up and he did find some lines and threw down some amazing tricks. The barrel-roll fly-out and 3-whip stand out but it’s the little moves the Argentinean does that gives him his own style. A bent sprocket ended his second run early giving him 10th.
Dave Osato (Canada) knows how to party and also knows how to recover in time to pull off some insane tricks. 540 nosepicks aren’t easy but he pulled that one in both of his runs. The course had a tall weird obstacle and Dave did over-tooth picks on it. He would have fallen down 12 feet if he had misjudged his speed but it was all good.
With so many awesome riders in the final, it’s not strange to see good riders in 8th. Kye Forte (UK) finished there. He had the speed and the lines and did huge flairs on the quarterpipe. Colin Mackay (Australia) had a better 2nd run that he started off with a quarter-to-quarter transfer line that no one else did. To indicate how crazy the riding got at this point, Colin pulled a clean double tailwhip over the box. He was the only one to do a wallride to tailwhip and finished run 2 with a 540 on thequarterpipe.
It gets crazier. Enter Bas Keep. The Brit had two really solid runs where most had a good one and a bad one. With only the best run counting Bas ended up 6th. He did opposite 360s over the spine, a manual down the ledge and a super high full speed no-hander out of the tall, strange wall.
Ben Wallace (UK) is another rider that you will hear about more often in the future. He rides with speed so you can expect some air from Ben. After going huge on the quarter, he used this speed to turn-down flip over the box and downside whipped the monster ramp, flaired left and right and pulled a double whip for fifth.
In fourth place, we have the ever-consistent Tom Haugen (USA). Tom had planned out his runs and pretty much pulled everything. He’s all over the course and does a lot of tricks that involve either a barspin or a tailwhip. He’s got those down. The best combo was the tailwhip to 180 over the spine, or was it the 360 double whip over the box? You decide.
First rider to step on the podium was Ryan Nyquist (USA). He’s a trick machine and opens that throttle as soon as he rolls in with back-to-back amazing moves. If there was one highlight in his riding, it was the 720 with a barspin but Ryan did that trick in his second run which came to an end too soon. He probably would have ended up even higher had he pulled this in his first run.
Second went to Tobias Wicke (Germany). He had his own moves that included a no-handed fronty over the box and a tailwhip drop to flat bank. And first place went to Mark Webb (UK). It’s hard to start his trick list here but he has everything down and makes everything look so easy. Make sure to catch the LG Birmingham round on TV and look out for Mark.
