Friends like these

I was pretty excited about this photo from the downhill race at Beacon Hill last weekend, taken by longtime DO NOT KILL LIST member Ben Tobin. This might be the best photo I've ever had, and after another disappointing race performance in a long and colorful disappointing race career it was a welcome pick me up.

Here's what Tim Zimmerman thought of my photo:

"Panning at 1/15th of a second can make an earthworm look fast."

Humans: I give you Eliot Jackson

That is all.

Sam's new Mavic kit

"No, I love it."

That moment

Turn those bars into the landing and pray. And yes, he rode it out, somehow.


http://www.pinkbike.com/news/win-spank-prizes-crx-nz-whip-off-champs-peoples-choice-award-2015.html

TEAM ROBOT interviews

When reached for comment, Andrew Neethling is "so excited" to be riding Box components and to be off full Blackbox support at all the races.

He added he was "over the moon" about the switch from Schwalbe to Kenda, as well as being "really proud" of Hutchison UR's totally not cheesy team launch video from New Zealand:

Killer hold music during this part of the video, too.


[Editor's note: my error, it's not the "Hutchison United Ride Team" anymore. Now they are the "Island of Misfit Toys United Ride Team"]

Jelly

Wish I was in NZ with a downhill bike right now:



Looks so good. Off camber at 1:26 looks horrendous. Nine years since World Champs and still looking good.

Everything is horrible

In formal terms that Brannigan video was horrible. The composition of the shots was terrible, the film guy cuts the rider's head off or misses the rider completely in half the shots, the video was probably shot in the middle of the day and the light is terrible, going from blown out hot spots to big dark shadows, the rider's out of focus most of the time, the colors are flat and brown, and the clip sequence doesn't make any sense. Even the logo at the end looks like 240p as seen through a kaleidoscope.

Basically it's perfect. I'll take a painfully Kiwi mate holding an out of focus handicam shielding his hangover from the brackish noon-day light with dark sunglasses over an unironic self-serious "artistic" BC freeride bro any day.


Here's the formula:

1. Give a video camera to someone. Anyone, really.
2. Have them point that camera in the general direction of a racer as that dude goes completely apeshit with their riding.
3. Motorhead.

Compare that two minutes of Brannigan to this two minutes of his Trek teammate Brook, also in NZ. Roughly the same length, same location (New Zealand is all one place in my brain), and basically the same rider:

Brook MacDonald Charging - #notbad from Anthill Films on Vimeo.


I've watched that Brannigan video five times already, but getting me to watch that Brook MacDonald video again would look like this:

Listen to Blopes say "dampener"

You don't have to wait long, it's pretty much the first thing he says in the video.

Collabo

Good Tips with Team Robot. from Cory Tepper on Vimeo.

In hip new media speak, this is TEAM ROBOT X CORY TEPPER COLLABO.