etnies

Taj's Empire Details

Posted by: Alex | Wednesday, August 6, 2008 | 1 comment

Taj reports from the Red Bull Empire of Dirt:

Just back from the Empire of Dirt contest over in the UK. The whole time I was there I kept thinking how lucky I was to be there! What an amazing event to get to be a part of. You dream about getting to ride a course like that and I'm so honored that I got invited over to take part.

Riding the course was a rush. It was so long that I found it pretty intense to even make it the bottom, let alone remembering to try and do tricks on the way. The course was built down a big hillside so that it was always going downhill. It started off with a drop off from a starting deck and then 4 normal-ish dirt jumps. Then a big roller into a dirt half pipe section that you would get 2 good hits in during most lines. The halfpipe section ended with a jump into a small, laid back curved wallride. From here you dropped down a big hill and the speed started picking up. First a bigger curved wallride to the right, and then you really started going super fast. That shot you into a monster-sized wallride to the left. After landing from that I felt like I was going way, way too fast to hit anything! If you kept your speed going though you could jump a gap up on to a deck that led to a street spine. Don't fall though, because as soon as you jump the spine you have only about 10 feet and then you have to bunny hop another gap. There was a bunch of funny crashes where people would disappear after the spine landing into the pit of the gap. From here things get complicated. You could split off a few different ways once you stepped up onto a quarter pipe. Any way you went, though, there was small step down that you had to brake like hell for (as the hill starts to get a lot steeper here). Then a decent sized double that feels like a curb because you're going so fast, and finally a huge mega-sized hip that you can hit to the right or left, or if you're a beast you could jump it straight (only Ben Hennon jumped it straight). Whew! I'm exhausted from even writing all that. Whenever I reached the bottom still rolling I was so happy. It was awesome just to make it down there.

We had a few days of practice out there and that was great. Just long days of riding jumps down a big hill with friends and not many people around. The brakeless riders all figured out that they needed brakes for the lower section and the rest of us slowly picked away at the course 'til we made it to the bottom (the 2nd big curved wallride to the left gave Adam Baker and I loads of trouble at first).

Red Bull also organized late sessions at a mini ramp in a barn and another awesome session at Decoy trails. The Decoy trails were a huge highlight for me. After all the intensity of riding the the big Empire course I was stoked to just be riding normal straight forward trails. I say normal, but I don't mean they were ordinary. The Decoy trails were better then last year and extremely fun. There's one 28 footer set with a huge lip that is especially amazing. I haven't spent enough time jumping big jumps that scare the shit of me like that in a while. It was good. I think I was the dirtiest, sweatiest kid out there because I rode so much, and after Toby Forte and I did some shoulder buzzing griz-air trains through the jumps I had even more dirt to spread all over my face. No worries though, it was fun! Tony Cardona won the Rider's Rider award out at the trail session thanks in part to a can-can 360 over the big doubles while wearing a chicken suit.

For qualifying on the Empire of Dirt course each rider got 2 runs down the hill. It worked out pretty good, but I felt some sympathy for the judges who must have had a hard time working out scores on such a long and different style course. I spent some time talking with Achim (the head judge) after the contest and I told him I thought that for the most part the scores were really pretty fair. It is such a unique and interesting course, scores were based in large part on just how the rider rode the course, a single trick over a double didn't seem tomatter much on a course like that when there would still be a 1/4 mile of BMX to go after the rider landed. I think it was pretty low pressure for most of the riders too. If something did go wrong and you fell there were a lot of places in the course where you could pick back up and keep going (thanks to how downhill the course was).

I was close to making the qualifying cut but I stomped my foot hard on the last jump and didn't ride my second qualifying run. It was so hard to watch from the sidelines because I really wanted to see what I was capable of on that course. Ruben Alcantara rode the course as only Ruben could, even though all he did is flow down the course not so much doing a single trick. He was having a good time and didn't seem bothered with worrying about the contest. Sergio rocked that course and had for sure the most stylish looking lines in the halfpipe. It's a mystery to me how he could make it look so smooth when I always felt like a ton of bricks landing in that part of the course.

Leo Forte and Scott Edgeworth had a super gnarly head-on collision during practice over one of the gaps in the course. The collision echoed through the hillside like a car crash and they were both pretty out of it and taken to the hospital. At the very end of the contest
Leo made it back and caught his last qualifying run. With no practice and no warm up (and just back from a crash that left him coughing up blood) he had one of the most exciting qualifying runs of the day. Just going super high and fast through the course, and he managed to make finals too!

Finals day was pretty chill for me since I was mostly just limping around and reduced to being a spectator. The contest was actually kind of strange to spectate since the course was so long you couldn't see the whole thing from any one point. I spent most of the time near the top watching the first 4 jumps and then turning to the TV monitors so I could watch the rest of the riding. Catfish did a really good job announcing and the sound was surprisingly really clear even though it was being broadcast down a mountain side. Kyle Forte, Gary Young, Corey Bohan and Dane Searls were the top 4 guys and so they had to ride a high pressure single run to determine the winner. Actually, given the situation, I don't think any of them felt too much pressure. The contest was pretty laid back and I think everyone felt a bit like me in that just making it to the bottom was cool enough. Still, they all threw down and did some incredible riding on the spot, knowing that this was there one and only run.

In the end I think if I rode course like that all the time I might wear a bit more safety gear. Going that fast can get out of hand quick and not having any pads on might leave you hurting most of the time. But, for once a year it ended up being a real treat. The whole
event was like a test of your ability to adapt to riding things in a way you never really have before. Like, I've ridden plenty of street spines, but never one I had to gap up to going 100 mph and then land well enough to hop another gap right off the end. It was fun, kind of
like being in a video game or something.

To the Forte brothers, all the builders and organizers thanks so much!

What a cool experiment to get to be a part of. -Taj

Catfish

Gary

Hunt

Hunt

Sergio