Video: Russian Skate Park Love
Everybody knows that Russia is huge, but not everybody knows that it is full of great riding spots. Despite high levels of corruption and lack of support of the government, there are lots of enthusiasts that push the spirit of our sport.
One of the riding hot spots in Russia is region in the south located around Sochi, dubbed Sochifornia, with a great warm climate and a huge amount of spots to ride. This is the destination that Ivan Popov (rider) and Andrey Kot (filmmaker) have chosen as the spot to shoot their video.
 | I was always dreaming to have a filming trip. Like 1 bike, 1 camera, two ambitious people -- that's enough to have couple weeks of absolute fun |
They did not have any budget or exact plan but had ideas.
One month exploring famous spots from all the Moscow web videos (like "The Pit" - the birthplace of Russian dirt jumping, or "Sadovniki" - pure fun concrete pool), they turned their focus on moving forward to the south of Russia, where the weather is warm during the whole year, parks are dry, and the flow is limitless.
Rosa Khutor is a unique place in the mountains 1170 meters above the sea level. It's only about 50 km from the Black Sea. Loaded with lots of activities after the Olympics in 2014, this place looks like a small Disneyland, with toy-building, rocks covered with snow, and lots of forests all around. That was our base for the next couple weeks. We would like to thank everybody who hosted us, helped with digging, filming or just chilled together. That was the moment that we understood the power of being part of the biking family, when the one and only thing that you need is the wish, and everything else is possible.
Our next stop was in Adler, near the sea coast, where the "Olympic skatepark" is situated. The place was specially built to host a Russian BMX Championship, it's not the biggest park, but definitely one of the funniest. Transfers, air jumps, street sections that's all in one.
We ended the trip in Sochi - a huge touristic city that is pretty noisy, dirty but still cosy and full of XSA skateparks. After all, we felt some kind of unfinished feeling inside. Like we were glad to shoot all this stuff and put it all together in a video, but absolutely not satisfied with it.
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Basically just had no shop in the mountains =)
this was highly entertaining, and im usually bored to death by anything remotely technical in riding. the one handed triple bar spins were something else. fast plant front flip? noice.
Superb riding in this vid.
Super impressive vid & bag of tricks though