The Dew Tour Does BMX Right

A prediction: Of the three sports featured on the Dew Tour, BMX will benefit most from the increased exposure. Here’s why:

 

1. The BMX Park designs are awesome, and keep getting better. At each stop on the tour, the course is completely redesigned, forcing riders to spend their practice time adapting and evolving to the new terrain. Roundwall elements inspired by the modern skatepark revolution break up the linear back-and-forth / up-and-down lines you’ve grown accustomed to, and send riders careening around the course. Giant step-up/step-down gaps are inspiring madness – yesterday I was blown away to see a rider throw a front flip up and over the thing and into a blind landing up top. 

 

2. Ditto for BMX dirt. Here in San Jose, the traditional three jumps in a straight line got a dimensional overhaul. The result: Riders like last night’s champ Ryan Guettler launching a double-whip over a left-facing hip and straight into an over-rotated 720 to make it around the corner on a right-facing hip. Suddenly it’s as if you’re watching a whole new sport.

 

3. The Vert ramp’s physical dimensions don’t change from stop to stop, but Jamie Bestwick, Chad Kagy, Kevin Robinson, and Simon Tabron are leading a revolution that pushes the sport forward by leaps and bounds every time they get together: In one Final event last night, crowds were treated to Tabron’s 900, Kagy’s whip flair, and Bestwick blowing them both away all the same. Robinson, not wanting to be left out of the highlight reels, dropped in after the competition and hucked a double flair just for kicks.

 

4. FMX is a spectacle to behold, but most viewers can’t relate in an “I could be doing that” kind of way. Vert ramps are increasingly hard to come by in the current skatepark landscape, and the Skate Park contests are starting feel like kind of a drag – in large part because the course designs pale in comparison to recent advances in the modern skatepark revolutions (and in comparison to the tour’s awesome BMX Park designs). But just about any kid who comes out see a Dew Tour event or watches on TV can then head out on their bike and start living the dream.

 

Raise a toast to the future of BMX.

 

 

– Colin Bane