Video: Biggest Attempted Front Flip in Mountain Bike History
Tom van Steenbergen is becoming the king of the front flip. He went for it again at Red Bull Rampage, although unsuccessful, was still impressive. Who else would try it? We asked Tom about his attempt and how was able to build up the courage to attempt it.
This is Tom's successful attempt, the largest landed front flip ever, while filming for Anthill's upcoming movie, Unreal
 | It scares the crap out of me committing to do a front flip that big. The one I did for the Unreal Movie definitely gave me a lot of confidence for the one I tried in Rampage. Though they were about the same size, they were two completely different jumps. The Canyon gap was a slight stepdown and easy to overshoot from my run in. I just slowed down the rotation too early because I thought I was going to overshoot. Not being able to spot your landing makes it twice as hard too. - Tom Van Steenbergen |
This is Tom's successful attempt, the largest landed front flip ever, while filming for Anthill's upcoming movie, Unreal
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1. You mellow out the lip, making it easier to hit the landing more consistently, but rendering it practically un-trickable. (There are only a few people in the world who would consider that jump trickable as it was.)
2. Build the landing bigger. If you take a look at how many sandbags are already in it, you can get an idea of how much more time and labor it would have taken to build it bigger. I'd say they did a great job with what they had in that spot.
I also don't understand why the guy's spontaneous exuberance was edited out of the second video. We are mostly adults here, even young kids know how to swear these days. Obviously, foul language is no big deal to us riders, so I can only assume the edited expletives are for the benefit of advertisers, and who gives a flying f*ck about them? -- even our posts are automatically edited now! WTF is this shit?!
And to frontflip a canyon? Man.... Scary!!!
Astronomical proportions!!!
Great entertainment but I do hope he didn't do serious damage.
Last I heard he was going to the hospital when crossed into Canada with a very swollen hip.
Seriously, with all due respect; the announcers probably sound just fine to the NBC audience not familiar with mtb or freeride very much, but I found their comments to be inaccurate. But, this is nothing new for network tv broadcasting, I think I can remember similar things going on when Wide World of Sports used to air. They had a handful of hosts, who probably had little to no experience in whatever it was they were covering. Most people probably never knew the difference. I just find it sad, when a sport has articulate, informed, and energetic talent who could comment on such a landmark event (Tippie, Warner, even Claudio... and others)- but get passed for people who probably couldn't change a tire.
Maybe others don't see a problem with that... maybe there isn't a "problem", but it rubs me the wrong way.
Coincidence?