It has been a while because the summer has been so great and filled with riding and adventure.

Crankworx was as fun and crazy as ever. I had my own event during this time called, "RICHIE'S RALLY". It was an enduro event that had the riders climb to the top of the trail with out being timed and then the clock started on the descent. We did this 3 times on three different trails. People really enjoyed the race and we will grow it into a bigger event each year to come.
I was 4th place in the event, which I was happy with. In total, it was 4 hours of riding. Thanks to Conti, Marzocchi and Whistler Brewery for their support.

I have been doing a bunch of shooting with Alexandro here in Whistler and will work next week with Mattias Fredrikson on a feature.

Next stop is Eurobike and some photo stories with Manfred Stromberg in Switzerland for Mountain Bike Germany.
After that Interbike and a position at the TV and internet host for the Redbull Rampage.

I am sure I will see you all along the way.
Thanks for your support.
Until next time.
Richie

Photos by Ale Di Lullo

Sometimes it takes a lot of patience and work to create an official spot. In Berlin, the "52grad" crew gathered to build a pumptrack in the middle of Berlin. Official and open for everyones personal use.

The whole thing didn't come out of nowhere of course, so the history of the pumptrack and its development was captured in a video. The footage was recorded in 24 hours, the time it took to build the new pumptrack. Only one day later it was ready to use, which certainly wouldn't have been possible without all the helpers. At this point, I want to thank everyone involved.

I just got back from a two week trip to Whistler for coaching at the camp of champions. It was one of the best trips I’ve been on because we got to ride everyday from sunrise to sunset with kids that were stoked on riding and learning new things.

The camp of champions setup is unreal. Every kid that signed up for camp got to demo world cup level downhill bikes to ride whistler’s mountain bike park while the camp photographer and videographer documented it everyday. After riding downhill for the first part of the day we would go up to the camp of champions private compound. The compound was any kids dream. It had a huge tent filled with a half pipe, big screen tv's, video games and ping pong tables. On the outside they had two big roll ins and a street skate park. One of the roll ins went into a huge airbag for learning new tricks. The airbag was kinda like a foam pit but way easier to get out. The second roll in was for a set of jumps ending with a soft mulch landing. With the mulch landing there it made it a soft landing that you could still ride out of. Since it was a soft landing it made kids more comfortable to try there new tricks they just learned on the airbag. It was so rad to help the kids learn new tricks on the airbag and then watch them take it to the mulch landing. I’m sure by now all the kids are doing those tricks at their local jumps.

Thanks to Marin at the end of camps I got to give out a new Marin Alcatraz to the camper I thought had progressed the most. All the campers were learning so much it was a hard decision but at the end I picked Sam Redman from Corte Madera, CA. I picked Sam because he came into the camps with a xc background and didn't have much dirt jumping skills, but by the end of the camp he jumping like it was natural. He seemed real eager to jump and learn new tricks so I figured he would take the bike home and get the most use out of it. Who knows maybe he be ready for the showdown later this year.

After an awesome couple of weeks I’m already looking forward to next year at the camp of champions!

AT

This Challenge in the garden of Joscha’s parents became a huge success. Not only the weather played along - also the eager teams did so; unique course and perfect organisation helped creating videos and pictures of impressing quality.

Shortly after the video presentation, the winner-video was selected by the audience via voting. The award for the best video went to Team FELT. With atmospheric pictures, nice tricks and impressive camera-runs the team around cameraman Martin Hanisch was able to convince the audience. The decision wasn’t easy though. Every video has its very own character and has such a high filming and riding level that every single one of them could have been the winner-video.

The winner-video as well as the videos of three further teams are going to be officially presented one by one each day on the News page http://mtbisokay.de in the next four days.

The photo contest consisted of the following categories:

"Best Action Shot"

"Best Lifestyle Shot"

"Best Black&White Shot"

"Best Yard Impression"

Every team photographer had to hand in three pictures of each category.

At this very moment a photo-jury consisting of Timo Pritzel (MTB-Pro), Christoph Leib (photo- & videography), Michael Eibes (photographer & graphic designer), as well as Daniel Geiger (photographer) is evaluating the huge amount of impressive photographs.

Each category’s winners will also shortly be presented on www.mtbisokay.de officially.

The teams were arranged as follows:

Team Adiridas:

Cameraman: Lukas Tielke (GER/ thinkbig-productions.com)

Photographer: Daniel Roos (GER)

Riders: Marius Hoppensack (GER), Niki Leitner (A), Tobias Wrobel (GER)

Team Felt:

Cameraman: Martin Hanisch (GER/ action-shot.tv)

Photographer: Viktor Strasse (GER)

Riders: Simon Bonicel (FR), Josef Woitella (GER), Joscha Forstreuter (GER)

Team Rock Metal:

Cameraman: Ralf Schupp (GER/ vimeo.com/user673543)

Photographer: Lars-Kjeld Riedel

Riders: Pierre-Edouard Ferry (FR), Anthony Rocci (FR), Thomas Bibiloni (FR)

Team MTBisokay:

Cameraman: Andi Schlumprecht (GER/ crowny-entertainment.com)

Photographer: Sebastian Schieck (GER)

Riders: Carlo Dieckmann (GER), Simon Pfister (GER), Felix Rosendahl (GER)

The "Back In My Yard"-Team thanks everyone involved for the awesome performances, its sponsors FELT and ADIDAS for the great backup and especially the Forstreuter family for their hospitality and the wonderful garden.

Pictures by Sebastian Schieck and Lars-Kjeld Riedel

26TRIX at the Out of Bound Festival
Leogang (AUT), June 24-26th

Chatel Mountain Style
Chatel (FRA), July 2nd-4th

MBUK BikeRadar Live Invitational Dirt Jump Contest
Kent (GBR), July 10-11th (SILVER EVENT)

BIG IN BAVARIA at the BIKE EXPO Tradeshow
Munich (GER), July 22nd-25th (GOLD EVENT)

Monster Energy Slopestyle at the Kokanee Crankworx
Whistler (CAN), August 7-15th (DIAMOND EVENT)

As far as location jumping goes, to go from the West Coast lush forest to the red and brown rocks of Moab, Utah, is about as extremely different as you can get.

I left Whistler's wet slippery spring riding with my new Rotwild X2 (carbon) all mountain bike with a Marzocchi 55 fork, full XTR, DT EXC 1550 wheels and Crankbrothers cockpit, to present and ride the latest sweet tires from Continental to the sales reps, in Moab: the X-King and the new Mountain King.

The riding was awesome: beautiful scenery, challenging terrain and a whole lot of fun.

I had the chance to ride and laugh with all of the reps, the boss Brett Hahn, the fun guides from Wester Spirit Biking Adventures (Simon and Garfunkle) and funniest of all Greg Herbold.

After a couple of big rides, some sweet camping and some windy, snowy camping, I headed back to the green lush of my home. Once home, I did some loonie races, some rides riding with Wade Simmons, Andreas Hestler and taught my first RS adventure camp of the year. People were super stoked about what they learned and Wade and I were happy to share some of our stoke with them.

Another week here in Whistler, waiting for my new protection from IXS and I am off to Europe for 3.5 weeks, for a bunch of exciting adventures. Check http://www.richieschley.com for my schedule and future camp dates.

For some more photos, click here!

Until next time.

Get Outside!    

I just got home from an awesome three week trip through Europe for a couple of contest and a team trip for adidas. I started out the trip in the South of France at the FISE Festival which is a huge extreme sports festival with bmx, wakeboarding, skating, and mountain biking in Montpellier. Practice on the first couple of days was good, but on the day of finals it was super windy so they decided to hold the contest on the bottom half of the course. Even though we only rode a drop and a couple of jumps it was still fun and I ended up taking 5th.


After FISE, I had a couple of days off so on my way up to the adidas I stopped in Paris and got to check out some tourist spots. After a couple days of sightseeing I drove the rest of the way up to Herzogenaurach where adidas has their headquarters and I met up with some of the other freeride athletes. While we were there we got everything dialed in for the trip and got to meet some of the cross country guys from South Africa. Since there were so many athletes there we all got a tour of the campus and later that night they took us to real Bavarian feast.


The next day, we all head up to Winterberg for the DirtMasters festival. It's one of Germany’s biggest bike festival’s with downhill racing, super d, 4x and slopestyle. Since the slopestyle contest took place in the bike park, it was really laid back and fun. The bike park was so cool, it had tons of jumps, drops and berms. For the contest I had a good qualifying run, but then in my final run I ended up crashing half way through. Even though it didn't go the best for me it was still such a rad weekend of riding and hanging out with all the riders.


For my last week in Germany we all headed up to Berlin and got on a houseboat for the team trip. I don’t want to give too much away, but the trip was amazing and I'm stoked on how it turned out. In the next few months you should see it popping up in the mags and online. 


Now I’m headed to the Teva Mountain Games in Vail, Colorado for the slopestyle and dual stunt so if your in the area come check it out, its always a good comp!

Hi guys, 

here's a link to the "fenwick jam" we hold every year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDmtJYCPOZY

I was going to miss the jam this year, but we have one at the end of the season so I would make that one instead. But since I broke my foot and couldn't go to Europe, I made the best out of my situation and sponsored the jam. I showed up to the park with a BBQ, a cooler full of soda and 100 hotdogs and said that Haro and adidas were sponsoring the jam. My buddy I film with came out to make a video for me. There were about 60 riders that showed up and I got to play chef/mechanic and chill on the back of my truck and watch.

It was a great day other than I couldn't ride.. 

I hurt myself at this same park last Friday, right before a long trip to Europe (I was planning to go to FISE). I did a downside tailwhip on the hip and slipped my forward pedal and my foot slammed forward into the ground and I rolled over it. Something I have done several times before, but this time was different. There was a really hot burning pain that I hadn't had for a long time and I knew it was bad. When I went to the doctor he said the bone pretty much exploded. Telling me there were about 8 bits of broken bone and cartilage, but it wasn't out of place so he stuck me in a boot (which I customized) and said I should be back in a few months as long as I take it easy in the mean time..

Here are a few pics of my foot and the scanner I had to go in and my new signature adidas boot...

Last weekend was the first ever Upsidedown and Underground at Jamie Goldmanʼs house in Bend, OR. So Greg Watts, Tyler McCaul and myself drove up from Santa Cruz for the contest. Our buddy Jaymo hooked us up a sweet condo with some amazing views at Mt. Bachelor Village Resort for the weekend so it was easy living.

Unfortunately the first couple days were super windy out at Jamieʼs so we didnʼt get much practice on the contest jumps but we did get to check out some other cool riding spots near town and that gave me some downtime to film a “how to bar spin” video for real.com/bike. We started the how to at the skatepark and then went to some fun jumps near the slalom course on the edge of town. Since the first few days were windy Jamie decided to hold the contest off until Sunday and luckily when it was time for the comp the wind was gone and the jumps were ready to shred. The contest was really laid back so we started practice in the morning and rode until everyone decided they had enough practice and it was time to get it done. The format was three runs best of the three counts for your final score. I was stoked my first run went how I wanted and put me in the top five so for the second I wanted to up my run. I upped the score on my second run and still kept me in the top 5. I knew for my final run I had to step it up so I went for a trick off the first drop and ended up losing my speed to trick the next jump so that meant I would use my second run score. After everyone had finished their runs the judges tallied the scores the final result for the top seven guys were 

1st Jamie Goldman

2nd Eric Lawrenuk

3rd Paul Basagotia

4th Grahm Aggasizz

5th Me

6th Greg Watts

7th Tyler McCaul

To end the trip we met up with the Marin guys on the way home at Bobʼs Cycle Center in Fair Oaks, CA to welcome them as a new dealer for Marin and show off all the sweet rides from Marin. It was cool because the shop was huge and all the guys that worked there seemed stoked to have Marin in their shop.

Overall it was a good weekend in Bend and an awesome contest thanks to Jamie and everyone else that helped out. Now Iʼm home filming for “Barred for Life 2” until Iʼm off to the France for the Fise contest in Montpellier. Should be another awesome trip!

AT

by Andrew Taylor

Monday, April 20, after Sea Otter was the post office jam in Aptos. All the dirt jumpers, and even some of the racers that were at sea otter, made there way over to hangout and shred the jumps.

It was a good turn out with tons of riders and even more spectators. The weather was good besides a little bit of wind so the session went all day from noon and didn't finish until we couldn't see the jumps anymore. Most of the rider wore a GoPro POV camera's throughout the day for the GoPro/pinkbike.com contest. The idea for the contest is each rider will have there own video on pinkbike.com in a few days and pinkbike users will vote for there favorite video and winner takes $500. Everyone was getting creative with the cameras and killing it on the jumps so there should be some awesome videos so check out the website in a few days and vote for your favorite video.

For now here are a few photos from the Jam.