Sun-Days with Stirrups: The South German Mountainboard Champs

Whatsuppppp gnarly dirt shredders from all over the world!

Here’s another sun-day with stirrups for you people to take your mind of this busy period with exams, or exhausting jobs. Luckily the sun is shining as the summer unfolds and more and more lush events are being hold.

On the last weekend of march i was at such an event in South Germany. It was held at the fourcross bikepark of Sulzbach-Laufen and can be described as one of the best organized competitions i’ve been to. The South German mountainboard open were held in combination with a mountainbike 4cross event which attracted a lot of people. This made it a very vivid event with a lot of spectators that created a lot of exposure for our lovely sport. At one side of the bikepark a big white tent was situated where you could order drinks, food and watch the bikepark.

It took a long trip by car to South Germany on friday, but luckily we got to do a lil bit of riding before the sun went down. After a shred, meeting the locals and old mountainboard friends we went to the campsite for a BBQ. That night all round Swiss legend Marco Daehler showed up and put down his ATBA Switserland tent/house. The night was pretty mellow with sweet music, amazing German food and drinks.

On saturday the Polish lot showed up and let us know why they run the Master of the Hill competition. The first competition was the boardercross competition where they worked with a 2 man race knockout system. As i am living in a flat country i had a lot of trouble racing with these mountain-borns. Marco was super fast as usual and gave us quite a show in the finals with racing the polish Lord. Marco got first, Lord Szaman got second and i managed to gain third place.

After the Boardercross it was time for the freestyle competition. It was Marco’s first session back on board in ’11, but after a few jumps it looked like he was warmed up for his big tricks. My highlights were the big tricks of polish rider Krzysztof Dybczak and a kid that was riding dirt jumps for the first time, but through mental bs and fs 360’s. In the half hour jam session i saw big airs from Torben and Philip, backflips from Marco and Krzysztof, stylish 3’s and even a fs 7 attempt from Krzysztof. Marco also though a beastly huge bs corcked 5, but bailed it by just a bit.

After the half hour jam session the organisation decided to have a small quarterpipe session to gain some extra points. This turned out to be a fun progression session where everybody threw in their last energy. Marco was doing mental lip tricks and Krzysztof was doing high airs. I tried two mc twists, but unluckily did not stomp them. The results can be found HERE!

That night there was a big party in the white tent and all the mountainboarders and mountainbikers were there to enjoy it. Philip and Marco were wearing beer bottle belts and Patrick got my girlfriend drunk. I enjoyed the night with a little bit of back to back DJing with some German Dj’s. Thanks everybody for an amazing weekend!

Here’s the little edit i made. Unluckily it is just a short one due to the lack of proper footage. Enjoy.

All photos by Robin Wendrock and Philipp Elnieh!

 

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Nicky G Mountainboard Boxing

Turns out Nicky G sucks at boxing.

If only he had a full face helmet. Remember kids, wear protection. Especially if you’re going to use your face as a brake after doing a rodeo/900/tindy.

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Early Season Euro Roadtrip(ish)

So I’ve come to Holland to visit Nicky G for a few days, after he took me round Amsterdam and his hometown of Haarlem he declared “I hate Holland” and told me we were leaving to go on an off the cuff road trip. Who am I to turn this down? So we headed north across the Closing Dyke to Groningen Bikepark .

Geert Wilders – probably why Nicky hates Holland, google him, he’s a dick. Geert Wilders that is, not Nicky. He’s a great guy.

We met up with two local riders Max and Oscar and rode some of the jumps and trails. Our jumpers got thrown in a muddy puddle by someone, which sucked. After finishing in Groningen we headed to Billerbeck in Germany to ride a concrete snake run we saw on the internet. The clutch on the car exploded as we arrived and we stood in the street and pretended we understood what was wrong.

Nickys house.

We checked out the skatepark in the morning, it was pretty fun, Nicky did some sweet frontboards on a down rail. We then left Billerbeck and headed to a garage in eastern Holland where we learned what was wrong with the car. So we ended up back in Haarlem to exchange Nickys dad’s broken car for Nickys mum’s (yet) to be broken one. Now we are heading to Maastricht to see some dude called Arno VDV and then on to Brussells and Wyani with Evan Carlson…

Evan Carlson planting some hands

Bye for now
Martyn

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Summer Shred Vid

Sup lovely fellow riders!

It’s the ashamed slacking stirrups again. Now writing you from the cold and flat Netherlands which i had to trade with the lovely life in Annecy.

Been a while since i wrote the last Sunday’s with Stirrups and since i am suffering from a severe editing block with the hours of footage i have from the Adrenalin Games in Moscow i decided share with you my profile vid from the summer.

Enjoy and see you guys for the next Sun-days with stirrups

x Stips

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Sun-Days with Stirrups – Adventures in the far south (of Holland)

If you’ve been unlucky enough to have your snowman stolen, we’ve brought you the second installment of Sun-Days with Stirrups to warm you up and make you feel all summery again. So please dont ring 999 about your snowman, just turn the heating up, put a pair of board shorts on and check out what Nicky G got up to on some random Sun-Days this summer…

Hey!

Hopefully all of you are enjoying the winter as much as I am here in Annecy! Knee deep snow in the city, powder that melts your heart and cold that makes you wish it was summer again. Unluckily due the amount of snow that fell so quickly I did’nt have the chance to end the year with one last proper dirt session. Non the less snowboarding seems to be a pretty good replacement.

Snow-Days with stirrups…

With this snow I had some more time on my hands to go through the footage to bring you another Sun-Days with Stirrups. This time a Double Dutch one. Where I live in Holland it is almost completely flat and except from grassy hills that were created by former garbage dumps and dunes there is not much challenging going on Freeride wise.

The biggest hill in Holland

2 hours South of me, good friends of mine live who I met during a mountainboard camp a couple of years ago. They became completely hooked on the sport and they started their own mountainboard crew and organisation. The main thing they organise are demo days where they give learn to rides and events at their Freestyle park.

To me these guys have been a big importance in creating the Dutch scene and supporting major Dutch mountainboard events. They made the first Dutch demoramp that made our first demo in 2007 possible. They provided several jumps and a landing to make the Dutch open of 2007 possible. They also made the first genuine Dutch mountainboard park which keeps on getting bigger and gnarlier.

The first event they had last year was a Freeride event in Bunde (NL). It was 100% free and the Dirtryders brought boards for everybody to ride on. The donations that the people did give went immediately in new boards and new features for the park.

Loads of people came out to ride, some of them who never rode before, some of them who rode a bit before and of course experienced riders. It was a good day and seeing new faces always makes me exited when it comes to Dutch mountainboarders. The weather was being random with some heavy rain and times when the sun came out, but that didn’t keep anyone from riding hard. We had some dig action to create a small jump and just went nuts.

Thanks everybody that came out. Enjoy the video:

On the weekend of 19th and 20th of June  (the longest day of the year) the Annual midsummer park opening was held. Since 2007 this park has been slowly getting bigger and better. This year there were 2 roll-ins perfectly hand made by the dirtriders who have got great skill in making constructions made out of metal material, 3 Kickers with dirt landings, a down rail, a flat rail and a wall.

Parklife

I arrived on a friday night and as always the grassy lawn next to the park was littered with tents and a Party tent where light and music was coming from. A mountainboarder that has always been someone I looked up to showed up to chill with us that day. Belgian legend Arno VDV who drove his awesome small car all the way from Belgium land. Since MBS just hooked me up with new parts I couldn’t resist having a night ride on the small jumps. With camera flashes that were blinding you it wasn’t the best ride ever, but it was great to ride again with Arno.

Unluckily Arno had to leave, so I went to sleep in my shotgunned Caravan behind the roll-ins.The next morning we woke up with pretty ok weather for Dutch standards and began our morning shred. The day was filled with progression and loads of people coming out to the event. One of the good things of the event is the food. Egg and Bacon sandwiches in the morning and a mega BBQ for dinner.

Luckily the weather was great and everybody was stoked on the solstice; the longest day of the year.

A huge big up to Dirtryders for organizing these events and please do come out next year as it will only get better. www.dirtryders.nl

x Stirrups

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Sun-Days with Stirrups – the RTH Vert Jam

BONJOUR! We’re happy to bring you a new regular feature from our dutch pal Nicky Stirrups Geerse.

As the nights get longer, the weather gets rubbish and we all start to go crazy watching christmas adverts on TV we thought we’d bring you a reminder of all those lovely, warm, summer shred days that we all miss so much. Sun-Days with Stirrups will fill you in with all the antics that MBS and BFC pro rider Nicky G got up to over the summer, here’s his first Sun-Day which kicks off right at the start of year with the RTH and BFC vert jam!

Check out the write up and enjoy the video….

Whatsup!

This year has been an amazing year for me. I finally was able to get back on board and definitely made the most of it. Before the summer of 2010 i spent as time with my buddys from dirtryders.nl in the south of Holland freeriding and riding their local park. I headed to Moscow to the Adrenalin Games before i teamed up with all time Hustler Dylan Warren to ride in the UK, Holland, Belgium, Germany, the UK again and the final stop being the United States of America.

It was a difficult journey before i was able to get back on board and enjoy as in the old days (check the footy in our own DVD “Like This”) As some of you know almost 3 years ago while snowboarding i suffered a knee trauma which resulted in a torn ACL. At first it would only require 6 months of recovery after the operation, but to be able to ride again properly it took 2 years and 3 surgeries.

Stirrups’ new robo leg knee brace

Missing out on riding sucked, but luckily i still went to some events to see my friends. That is whats kept me trying to ride again and again, because this isn’t just a sport it’s my life and the friends i’ve made are some of the best friends I have. Equipped with a full aluminium knee brace, a new HD camera, loads of time off and some faith in my knee i started shredding full on in 2010!

After a couple of ride session i had enough trust in my knee to attend a competition. After talking to Andy Packer the choice was made to come to the Ride the hill vert jam at XBP in Redhill. The event was full of familiar faces and tricks got down!

On this ridiculous hot April day the turnout was great and it was good to see that riders from every level having fun and throwing crazy tricks. The most breath taking tricks were Rory’s 270 frontboard, Ryan’s stalls, Gary’s flips, Anything from Brind, the MJ from Toney and Dave scalping his thumb. The biggest surprise were the 2010 World Sweetcase Championships. If you want to get more info watch the video and read the writeups!

Check the writeup on the world sweetcase championship and the full vert jam write up on remolition.com!

On the next update write ups and video’s from the Dirtryders Freeride event and the annual midsummer park opening!

Till next time, xx Stirrups

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