Late to the Party

"Hi, my name is Europe. What were mountain bikers doing ten years ago in North America? Cool, I'll do that."

Sorry, I realize generalizations like that can be offensive. Mike Kinrade was doing the handful-of-dust-slow-mo-toss like 15 years ago.





One of our TEAM ROBOT readers summed it up perfectly:

"Meanwhile, the 34th place rider in the last WC DH race you watched on Redbull-- the one you skipped past to get to the "fast" guys-- rides 7,346,981 times faster than you when he's hungover and/or not trying.

But speed = dirt bombs exploding in berms, so you'd never know."

I did a little research to see who got 34th at Meribel, and it was some French guy you've never heard of named Faustin Figaret. I'm not saying these are the best videos in the world (they're not), but the riding is easily 1000 times better than anything in the POS Europe Kamloops lovechild featured above:

[EDITOR'S NOTE: I have no idea what results I was looking at yesterday, but in fact Faustin Figaret finished 26th at Meribel. Wyn Masters finished 34th. Mistake corrected, but either way I'd rather have Wyn or Faustin featured in "web edits" instead of the same no-talent chads who always show up]





Great use of "Sirius" by TAPP by the way. Take literally any shitty brown pow web edit from the last 18 months, and instead of running another interior BC bro who put on his best set of Stroker Mags and cut the sleeves off his freshest Dakine flannel, replace snowboard bro with Faustin Figaret. I would rather watch 1000 web edits of Faustin Figaret riding in BC than watch another brown pow bro brah sesh edit. His turns look better, his jumps look better, his whips look better, it looks like he's going faster.

In fact, the real question is how anyone who doesn't race even makes it into film parts. Racers are the best bike riders. Period. They turn better. They go faster. They jump farther. They pump better. And any of the freeride guys who can ride? They all raced.

Jordie Lunn and Kyle Strait raced.

 Cam Zink raced.

Thomas Vanderham raced.

Martin Soderstrom raced.

Tyler McCaul raced.

Nico Vink raced, for what seems like forever.

And Andreu Lacondeguy. Berrecloth showed up to a NW Cup and smoked a bunch of the locals, including me- I crashed, so I almost have an excuse, but not really. Wade Simmons and Richie Schley raced. And, and, and... they all raced.


If you haven't raced yet, you're blowing it, and I never want to watch a video of you riding because I already know you suck.