Jason Moriarty - Interview

At the circus that is the Masters of Dirt, Jason Moriarty stands out among the crowds. The big six foot-plus South African isn’t the guy with head-to-foot tattoos or wild clothing, that’s not why he stands out. You’ll usually find him by the riders’ entrance to the arena - calm but alert, sensibly dressed and, most of all, clearly in charge of what’s going on when the riders are on track. All the riders listen to what he says and the respect they show him is immediately apparent.

If you haven’t followed the FMX scene outside South Africa he may not be a name you’re be familiar with. Yet in the world of FMX, as head judge of the biggest show in town, Red Bull X-Fighters, and an integral part of the team for Masters of Dirt, he’s someone people listen to. His CV is almost too long to list: pro FMX rider, high-flying ad exec, event promoter, riding instructor, contest judge, track builder, entrepreneur... We were lucky enough to sit down with him and get talking about mountain biking, judging contests and making a career out of the sport he loves.


No tattoos, piercings or wild clothing. (Photo courtesy of Alex Boyce)

Tell us a bit about yourself:
I’m Jason Moriarty, originally from Johannesburg, South Africa, which is one of the big cities over there.

What was it like growing up over there?
I grew up in a small mining town just outside Johannesburg where there were all these hillbilly BMX trails through the woods, forest and bush. I grew up watching the other kids riding, eventually got one myself and ended up going to hospital a lot. After a year or so of trying to ride BMX my parents gave it away, or hid it, or told me it had been stolen... So I get home and there’s a racer, with curved handlebars and they told me: “that’s your new mode of transport.” I quickly learned to do drop-offs and jumps on it - I could wheelie that thing down the road! So that didn’t really work for my parents. I turned the bars up and went and found hills to bomb, I ended up having even bigger crashes. I took some pretty big wipeouts on that...

My dad had bought us dirt bikes when we were little, but after three months and a handful of rides they were "stolen" out of our garage too. None the less the bug had bit. Eventually in my teens, my brother and I bought a cheap MX bike and it just sort of went from there and we got back into it. By our mid-teens we were racing and we got my dad into it. So my dad, my brother and I used to go all over the country racing MX and enduros, and as we progressed we all did pretty well. I did quite well at supercross and MX in South Africa until I was maybe in my early twenties, but then I had a couple of injuries once I started getting towards a pro-level. I won a few local races and championships before stopping though.


His parents probably didn't realise what they were getting themselves when they bought him his first moto... (Righthand photos courtesy of Gotmilk Photography and Marcus Maschwitz)

Did getting hurt change things for you?
Between those injuries and realising I needed to do more than just ride dirt bikes, I took a sabbatical, if you can call it that, and went and studied. I did a Bachelor of Arts which was focused in English and Communication. I then did a post-graduate specialisation in advertising and worked for five years in global ad agencies. I worked on really big brands, like the Nikes of the world. I was involved with some really cool brands and big campaigns. For a while I thought that was amazing, but then I realised that my passion wasn’t for coming up with a new headline for a headache tablet... I was more and more missing riding my dirt bike, riding my mountain bike. I got back into racing mountain bikes, I started racing downhill and dual slalom as 4X wasn't really around then.

When was this?
It was around the late 90s, early 2000. I got a dirt bike again too, and I started freeriding and jumping. The two kind of went parallel, when I branched into freestyle I was doing the downhill-type stuff on my mountain bike.

Was that about the time you went pro?
That was about 2001, so I was in my late 20s.

You became an FMX pro in your late 20s?
Yeah. You shouldn’t. It’s theoretically not likely, but there are exceptions... One of the early guys was “Mad” Mike Jones, who became a pro in his mid-thirties. I only seriously started riding freestyle when I was 29, before the years leading up to that we didn’t know what freestyle was. It didn’t exist as a sport, so we were just going out, buggering around and finding big jumps to do in quarries and trying to make stuff to hit. Kinda like the freestyle mountain bikers do with the Rampage-style stuff - we were trying to do that on dirt bikes. I got broken quite badly, quite a few times. One of them... I very nearly killed myself.

There seems to be a theme with you and hospitals...
Yeah, I had to promise my family that I’d quit riding and go back and be responsible. But after about six months of healing and living back in the corporate world, I decided “screw that.” I handed in my resignation, sold everything I owned and put my money into a backpack and travel money. I came to Europe trying to meet people. Freestyle was just a little bud then, it wasn’t a full-blown industry or sport. There were a few shows and it had only just started happening. By luck, I cruised around and met people. I got invited to build some courses, to judge some contests...


A fully extended cliffhanger, racing in 2007, and lake jumping (and yes, that is a mullet). (Moto photos courtesy of Marcus Maschwitz and BMX photo courtesy of Jimmy Reynolds)

You started off building?
At that stage nobody knew who I was, they’d never heard of a freestyle rider from South Africa – it couldn’t be possible. So I first got into building some courses, then judging. I started commuting back and forth between Europe and South Africa, because I still wanted to ride and I knew there was huge opportunities there. I started working with some other, younger guys who I knew were motivated. That’s where the South African freestyle thing exploded from. We got a whole bunch of good, young riders through and I started bringing the guys over to Europe with me.

Were you promoting events too at that time?
I was doing everything... I was riding, trying to market the sport because it just didn’t exist, I was trying to be a jack-of-all-trades. We experimented with mobile landings because there was no such thing at that stage. After a few attempts we eventually built a pretty good one. Myself and two other guys started a company and we built it into a really big brand. It grew into a chain of action sports stores and a clothing brand in South Africa. Between flying overseas to judge events, riding shows in Europe, riding shows in South Africa, running my shops, riding myself, helping younger riders... Eventually it was a bit much, so we sold off the shops and the mobile demos. Friends of ours in South Africa bought them and they are still running them today. Pretty shortly after that my wife and I re-located to the UK... In the course of my freestyle career I had some pretty bad injuries. The worst one was 2007, I injured my back really badly and had some nerve damage which needed surgery.

Was that a turning point for you?
Yeah by the time I hurt myself badly in 2007 I was old enough to realise my days as a pro freestyler were over. I was tired of hospital food and being in pain all the time. So I transitioned into full-time judging at some of the bigger contests and other things.


The view from inside and outside the judging box at Red Bull X-Fighters in Rome. (Photos courtesy of Alex Boyce)

You must have been judging for ten years now?
At least ten years now. I’ve been judging X-Fighters, world championship events and Masters of Dirt, which used to be a contest too. Because I’m a bit more mature, I have a lot of experience... I don’t know, how do you put it without patronising the other freestyle guys? Maybe I’ve got my shit together a bit more than some of them? I have been able to make a niche for myself and help people in various ways. Some of the brands have needed help with PR, some people have needed help choreographing shows and organising stuff – like I’m doing here at Masters of Dirt. So it’s been really good, it’s created a role for me where I can work this industry that I love and I can still use some of my professional, formal background to make a living. Rather than having to put on a suit and be a slave once more...

Do you feel your professional experience has helped you make a living out of the sport you love?
It has – it’s obviously a double-edged sword though. To do well at these sports - mountain biking, BMX or freestyle – to do really well at those sports it’s a bit of a gamble. I think in terms of helping me forge a long-term career in the sport it has helped, it’s made me multi-skilled and created a little niche where there aren’t a lot of people who have the same combination of skills. I’ve got the insights that the riders have got, but I also understand what the marketers, the media, the event promoters want. That’s probably why, for example, the guys here at Masters of Dirt think that I’m a good guy to help choreograph the show and manage the riders. I understand their objectives for the audience, but also what is practical for the riders, what we can realistically do. I don’t regret my choices, I’m happy I’ve gone that way, but having taken those few years off to study and get that professional experience, I missed that window of opportunity to see how far I could have gone in this sport. With these kinds of sports, you need the youthful exuberance, not just the enthusiasm and the energy, but you recover that much quicker. You’re less likely to get injured as these sports are really rough on your body. So, yeah... I missed the window, do I regret it? No. I’m happy with what I’ve done and I’ve met some amazing people riding, got to travel all over the world and have been involved with some of the best events in the world...

With the judging, what are you looking for?
We have slightly different systems at each series as they are all structured slightly differently. If you can think of the difference between a slopestyle contest and a downhill race – you’re looking at different criteria. For example, at X-Fighters we have five judges and each judge is looking at different criteria. So they are equally balanced and there is equal weight between the criteria. I think it’s pretty interesting and because it’s head-to-head it’s a bit more strategic, and it makes the contests more interesting. You don’t see the guys doing the same routine with the same tricks in the same order. They have to be dynamic to suit the course, to suit the opposition, which is the direction I’d like to see freestyle go in. More like the BMX or mountain bike stuff you’re starting to see now – where’s it a combination of high and low-speed skills. It’s not just jumping, it’s hips, it’s wallrides, that kind of thing. That’s the way I’d like to see freestylers evolving – as all-round riders. For me as a judge, whichever series I’m judging, I’m going to be looking for an all-round skilled rider. Not just the guys who can bang out the big tricks. Obviously I can’t be too biased, but just in my own preference and way of evaluating things I always hold an overall flow and overall riding skill as something I look for, rather than someone who can do four or five big tricks, but he’s a bit of a squid the rest of the time.

Do you always look for the same thing, or change for each show?
At Redbull X-Fighters we rotate to make sure the judges are sharp and don’t favour certain things. For a while we had specialist judges and we realised it wasn’t working too well. We were almost pushing the riders in a certain direction. Riders would plan their runs and say “well, that’s the style judge and I read in an article in a magazine that he doesn’t the colour red...” So we said the judges shouldn’t shape the sport, the sport should shape the judges. That’s the nice thing that’s happened with the major contests I’m involved in. They’ve worked really hard on the judging and we do judging workshops all over the world. We have a pretty big pool, not just of judges, but people who contribute to that process and give us feedback. It’s evolved really nicely and we’re trying to push the sport in a more free direction. It’s basically letting the riders drive the sport, rather than the judging drive the tricks they learn.


Jason has been riding mountain bikes for more years than he cares to let on... (Photos courtesy of John Maaliepaard and Justin Crewe Brown)

What do you ride yourself these days?
I do a bit of motocross – I run riding schools across in Europe, in Malta, Cyprus and Norway. The Norway one I sometimes do twice a year because it’s really fun. I like riding with the dudes, for me I don’t miss the flash, the rockstar-wannabe vibe of doing big shows. Having all these tarty girls hanging round and people wanting autographs... That’s not what I was into the sport for, I was into it because I loved the riding, whether it’s on a mountain bike or a dirt bike. It’s the same with me these days, most of the times when I go riding it’s with my mates that I know appreciate it a lot more. If I go riding with pro dudes, they’re often so spoilt and so out of touch with why they're riding that it’s not really fun for me. It’s way more fun if I go with my mates who are hackers and going out there and just trying stuff. The guy maybe doesn’t have the latest bike, or whatever, but just going out there and having a blast and a barbeque after the ride... that kind of thing.

These days I ride mountain bikes a lot more than I do motorcycles. In England it’s a lot easier and I live pretty much in Swinley Forest, so there are miles and miles of riding and different terrain right there. I’ve got a Giant STP dirt jumper, a Gary Fisher hardtail and I had a downhill bike before I moved to England, but I don’t have one at the moment. I’m saving up for YT Industries Wicked 150 as they’re pretty cool bikes. I don’t have any ambitions of being a hardcore downhill racer any more as that sport has evolved so ridiculously, those guys are so skilled and the terrain is so gnarly. But I still like to have a bit of a challenge and I think I want a bike with some suspension and to do a bit of the Gravity Enduro-type stuff and a bit of freeriding, which is the kind of stuff I really enjoy.

Finally, could you still go out there and backflip a moto? You know if we said now, you have to go out and there and do it..
Yeah, I probably could. Whether I could land safely and ride away is 50/50 as it’s been a good few years since I flipped to dirt. About a year ago I was dared by some mates to flip into a foampit, just to see if I could do it. I got on a bike I’d never ridden before and spot landed into the foampit. I was happy with that. I have huge respect for what the guys do and I don’t want to diminish how hard it is... but there are a lot of tricks that are much more difficult than a backflip, to be honest, but the backflip is obviously the wow factor for a lot of people.

Red Bull X-Fighters
Masters of Dirt