etnies

BMX

Nina Buitrago is one of the top up-and-coming women of BMX freestyle. As the sport grows, she continues to progress and do whatever she can to help pave the way for more girls to follow in her footsteps.

Nina is a natural daredevil who always tries new things and pushes the limits, so it is no surprise that she found BMX freestyle. After spotting a friend riding a BMX bike to some trails in her hometown of Port Washington, N.Y., around the same time that a photography project was due, she started out taking photos of kids on bikes. She soon decided that it looked way too fun just to sit back watch. That, combined with some car troubles, helped Nina to decide to invest in a bike of her own. In the middle of attending Manhattanville College for Music and Management, running her school's radio station, holding down two jobs and an internship, and taking an average of 23 credits per semester, Nina still made time for her new addiction to traveling and riding.

Nina's first few months of riding included some crashing, but the one crash no one has forgotten is her "brake lever incident." In all of her friends' years of bike riding, none of them had ever seen such a gnarly x-ray as the one that was taken after her brake lever somehow managed to inexplicably impale itself in her thigh against her femur, just missing her femoral artery. After eight hours and two hospitals later, it was only two short months and she was back on the bike. Proving her true commitment and love for riding, she still gets up from a crash with a smile.

Not realizing at the time (about five years ago) that there were only a few girls who rode freestyle, Nina stuck with riding and began to enter contests with the guys. She continues to move up in the ranks, recently making the finals in some of the more challenging competitions out there. In her travels she's been happy to discover more and more girls getting into freestyle. To accommodate the need for more girl events, she has helped to organize some of the first girls' classes offered in contests, along with jams and road trips, and has even started her own homemade 'zine, Emerald Nation, to help cover and inspire girl riders from all over the world. Nina, who recently finished college, can be found just about anywhere distributing her 'zine and ripping it up on the streets with her best friend and fellow shredder and teammate, Stacey Mulligan.