Getting on the BMX Radar: Morgan Wade

Ciao!

Well, here's where we say good-bye. This will be the final entry in the Morgan Wade blog for the 2006 Panasonic Open, Louisville, KY (Dew Tour stop #1). In the end Wade did not rank as highly as any of us had guessed, or as I'm sure he'd hoped, but there's one thing for sure, you knew that Morgan Wade was here. He certainly had a loud presence (generated entirely without speech, simply by his caliber of riding) and that is very important when we are talking respect (which we are, aren't we?)

Morgan placed first in BMX Park Prelims on Thursday and, in my opinion, changed completely the way other riders looked at the park & it's features. Today Morgan rode well in the BMX Dirt Prelims, but unfortunately, not well enough to qualify for the finals. I however, was very impressed with his superman seat-grabs on the first hit, and I was surprised when didn't qualify. It was tough competition.

In the end, the least you can say is: Morgan rode well and reconstructed any prior notions of where the bar was set. He made it so that every rider had to push themselves and in turn, everyone else. Steve Prefontaine once said "If I loose forcing the pace all the way, well at least I can live with myself."

I think Morgan will live with himself quite nicely tonight.

Ciao.


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Photos!

Photos from BMX Finals!  I told you we'd have them for you, and here they are.

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How'd We Do?

Well, there's not much to say except we didn't see that one coming & we completely slept on Scotty Cranmer. I'll just say that the tail whip up the giant step up gap to start it off, well it woke me up. The frontflip over the table to flare on the wall was even more shocking, and the rest of the run...well...it was pretty crazy. The double tail-whip 360 was slightly unexpected to say the least.

Mirra put together a solid run, but there weren't any backflip drop-ins (yeah, you read that correctly, backflip drop-ins) like he pulled in qualifiers. There was some other crazy flippin' & gapping, but unfortunately one small mistake ended Mirra's run early. After transferring up a little crooked step up and manualling to drop in on the ramp on the other side, once on the ground again, he just got a little too close to the edge, and caught a beg or a pedal or something of the sort, on the fencing grate that was there, and took a tumble that, at very least, ended his run.

And then there's Wade. Well, he used the course amazingly again - I'll say that. But unfortunately he did very little with his creativity, he did some impressive tricks up certain gaps, etc. but then he'd just air over other ones where other people were doing flares or tailwhips. Then to add to it, there's no way you're going to compete with frontflips & double tailwhip 360s unless you are doing bigger, better frontflips & tailwhip 360s.

Overall the competition was great - and there were highlights in nearly all the runs, but Cranmer rode the best. I don't think there's any debating that. It was pretty phenomenal.




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BMX Park Finals!

The hard thing about being creative and groundbreaking is that once you've done something it's out in the open for everyone else to do. And just because you do something first, doesn't necessarily mean you'll do it best, forever. So now, twenty-four hours after Morgan Wade took the BMX Street Course apart and reconstructed it into his own symphony like Frank Gehry sketching out his buildings, other people have seen what is possible and have acted on it.

So Morgan hold his place in finals tonight, like he did when he qualified in first place yesterday? Or have the others taken what he's done, built on it, and brought a whole new aspect to it? Did Dave Mirra put together two unbelievable runs like he usually does and completely destroy everybody while looking like he's barely trying? Did it come down to a second run showdown between Mirra, Wade, and - let's just say - an unidentified & unexpected third party?  Well, my fair-feathered friends, you'll have to tune in to the USA Network tonight to find all of this out. Sorry, no spoilers.

I'll tell you this, it is absolutely worth watching.  I've always loved when the top qualifier goes last in each run because it forces the whole field to work for amazing second runs - no sleeping when the top seat is yet to ride.

So...don't front. word. peace.

(p.s. photos up later tonight!)

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June 23, 2006 - BMX Park Finals Today!

Morning came fast today, it rolled through Louisville like a bat out of hell, or maybe like Morgan Wade tearing apart the street course yesterday (oh that was lame) and qualifying in the upper ranks with what were arguably the most creative runs of the competition thus far. Morgan will be riding again tonight in the BMX Park Finals at 8:00PM (eastern standard time), and I will of course be there watching as a fan & a writer, and trying my best not to think too hard while he rides.

Meanwhile, check out this gallery of pictures from the BMX Park Qualifiers yesterday - I have a feeling there is an amazing one in there of a very, very successful look-back, executed gorgeously & hugely by Mr. Wade amongst other solid snapshots.


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June 22, 2006 - Update!

Ten minutes ago, I stepped out from behind my computer, which is currently located in a medium sized concrete room that looks as though it were made to house several rather small nuclear bombs as opposed to the press corps of an action sports event, and I walked into the main room of the Louisville Expo Center. There I found a comfortable seat in the balcony, in a row nearly all to myself and watched a very good bicyclist take his run in the BMX Park Prelims at the 2006 Panasonic Open.

Morgan Wade dropped in at a peculiar place in the park, or rather, it looked like a perfectly good place to drop in, but even if he cleared the channel he'd encounter before he could actually enter the course, there was simply nothing he could hit after landing. This feeling of intrigue was a constant throughout his run, as I would over and over again find myself completely confused. Dumbfounded. Every time he'd land I'd look at where he was going and say "well, there we go, he's just done a perfectly amazing trick and now has absolutely nothing to link it with" and before I knew it, he'd be jumping over some quarter pipe, or some hip or some camera man. Right when you'd think you had him figured out, that you knew where he was going next, he'd find some way to blow your mind completely. My favorite moment of his run (that's a joke, there's no way I could pick a favorite moment of that run) was when I got to see the camera man shoot about five seconds worth of the ceiling beams, because he was so sure that Morgan was going to air out of the corner, when in fact he did something else entirely (and again, something you would never expect).

The one indisputable fact in my mind after seeing this excellent display of creativity is that Morgan Wade will never get sick of riding his bike. You can see that he has enough humility to know that he will never have thought of all the possibilities which lay in front of him on his bike. So the next time you get a chance to watch Morgan ride, try not to think too much, because no matter how hard you try, you're not going to be able to guess where he's going next.

 

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June 20, 2006

 

How many times can a pro BMX rider break and still come back for more? Making a name for himself over the past four years on the competition circuit, pro BMX rider Morgan Wade is one of the sport’s most promising talents, but also one of its most injury-prone. Gregarious, fun-loving and aggressive in the park, the 22-year-old has been garnered significant media attention and become a prominent fixture in the BMX arena. Wade’s successes, however, have been hampered by staggered but consistent injuries that have likely slowed his momentum both as an athlete and as a personage in the public eye.

 

While he has fallen and quickly bounced back numerous times, his most recent setback—a broken collarbone, thanks to a botched 720 over a volcano in early spring—comes during the summer pre-season, when expos are going and most of his biking colleagues are getting their practice on ahead of events like the Dew Tour, X Games and Gravity Games. Wade has enough personality cells, grip on reality and industry stature to at least have a sense of humor about the latest breakage. Soon after the accident, he even did an article with Transworld’s bmxonline.com called “Ten Things To Do When You’re Off the BMX, With Morgan Wade.” Good thing Wade likes to text message, update his iPod and keep up with his sponsors.

 

Good thing Wade also had practice being on the DL, too. For a young rider, Wade has probably accumulated as many industry kudos as hospital bills during his short tenure as a pro. In 2001, just as his life as a pro was getting underway, for example, Wade broke his leg and dislocated his foot—at the same time. Since that time, Wade has also been battling a recurring staph infection in his knee. In one instance, when he went to see a doctor to treat it, he was told waiting one more day would’ve cost him his life.

Given these kinds of painful episodes, it’s a tribute to Wade’s ubiquity on the contest circuit, medical care and excessive talent that he has remained as present on the public radar as he has. Since his first moments on a bike as a pro, Wade has been traveling consistently across the US and recently in Europe, entering in as many comps as he can, with fun at the center of his biking philosophy. Young, aggressive and willing to go huge, he burst onto the BMX scene in the 2000 movie ‘Road Fools 5,’ which was shot on his home turf of Tyler, Texas. Exemplifying the attitude he would become known for, Wade’s first trick on the shoot was an alley-oop 540.

 

Since then, Wade has gone on to win several major contests, including the 2004 Roots Jam, and CFB pro park comps in 2004 and 2005. That same year, Wade won the World Championships in Prague, where he got a real foothold in the international arena—not to mention some magazine covers. Wade’s talent and potential as a long-term BMX heavyweight was also evident in one of the last events he rode in before his latest spill. In the Toronto Metro Jam in March 2006, 22 year old Wade placed just two spots behind Dave Mirra, who has logged a lot more time on his bike than this up-and-comer.

 

But while injuries are a fact of life as a pro athlete, Wade’s emergence into the next phase of his career deserves some consistent time on the circuit, sans face-plants and stitch-free.