We’ll open this week’s Midweek Movies off with Saint rider Thomas Vanderham being more whippy than all the ice cream trucks in the world. We’ll follow that up by saying BOOOOOM! It just seems fitting.
Here’s a really nice, in depth video about the history of the trails at Queen Elizabeth Country Park in the South Downs. Through interviews and old footage, it describes why the trails were built in the early years, with national level races being held on them before the ‘quiet time’ since then when the park was overtaken by the progression of the sport and development of other trail centres, and the recent activity by a group of volunteers bringing the trails back up to date and the return of racing to the park. Featuring interviews with the legendary Phill Liggett, Rob Warner and Tony ‘Jedi’ Doyle.
As you’d expect in the weeks following the Fort William World Cup, the team edits are rolling in. Here we’ve got the mixed emotions of the Santa Cruz Syndicate team, with the highs of Josh ‘Ratboy’ Bryceland’s 5th place result being countered by the lows of Steve Peat’s hamstring tearing injury.
Fort William winner Aaron Gwin gives away the biscuit-ey secrets of success in this rather cool video from the Trek World Racing team. The helmet-cam footage – see here – of his practice run is madness. The fastest man in Scotland still gets beaten up by rocks for shy of five minutes.
Ahh, cycle messengers. Arguably it’s their fault that the main buyers of fixed gear bicycles are tight trouser wearers rather than hard-as-nails 70yr old roadies. The traffic light jumping antics of some of their number also make Daily Mail readers lump city cyclists in with the other things they hate, such as people not working or the wrong sort of people working. Anyway, recoil in horror as they almost go under cars numerous, numerous times in this trailer for Lucas Brunelle’s Line Of Sight messenger racing film.
It’s usually quite tedious when people say “Oooh, things aren’t what they used to be” when everything nowadays is vastly better than it was, eg bikes, computers and life in general. The only case where they may have a point is with rally cars, where the 1980s Group B class was basically motorised, repeated death avoidance on wheels. Chris Harris gets to live out a petrolhead fantasy in this video, being driven in some classic Group B cars (Lancia 037 and Delta S4 amongst them, plus the utterly insane 800bhp ECV) with a pair of legendary Finnish drivers in the form of Markku Alen and Juha Kankkunen, never mind the utterly insane six-time Italian rally champion Paolo Andreucci. We’ve yet to experience a bike press launch as mad as this…
Matt’s Arts and Crafts Corner
After a slight hiatus, Matt is back:
Check Chad Muska’s super retro Skate board and THE BEST front side blunt slide ever at 1.23!
NYC MAGIC: SUPRA IN THE CITY from SUPRA Footwear on Vimeo.
Thanks to everyone that sent in videos this week – if you’ve seen or made anything you reckon should be up here then send it to newsdesk@singletrackworld.com…
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Not sure about the “most skilled urban riders” bit but that deviant fixie death wish video looks pretty good!
the riding in line of sight looks mental. some balls doing that
Crumbs! The riders in line of sight are utterly nuts!
Line of sight? pile of sh*te!
I’m gonna make it my mission in life to run down as many bike messengers as possible after seing that trailer. “The most idiotic, inconsiderate, downright dickhead urban riders in the world”
I’m lovin the car porn 🙂
I’m gonna make it my mission in life to run down as many bike messengers as possible
Shame anyone on this site would say that joking or not .
It’s true all of the things you said ( Idiotic and inconsiderate) are true – But I imagine , exciting , energising, and life affirming also apply.
Its a shame that part of the biking community feel the need to act like berks on bikes and give the rest a bad name. Riding your bike down trails, away from cars and folk as fast as you can is also exciting, energising and life affirming and your not causing mass havoc on the streets, your putting no ones life in danger but your own. I dont see why this sort of behaviour should be encouraged.
That tyre test. I need to be sponged down!!
I’m with @dabble on this.
It’s all fun an games until someone smashes into a pregnant woman just trying to cross the road, then just cycles off because they’re too cool to apologise. When I used to commute to work – it was those people who made it dangerous, more so than car drivers. Would you show a video of people behaving as irresponsibly in cars in heavily pedestrian areas? You shouldn’t ‘affirm’ your own life at the expense of others. Otherwise great vids.
I have been a bike messenger for 4 years, I have done my fair bit of stupid things and reckless riding, but the “Line of sight” video is in my eyes a pretty clear celebration of disrespectful, idiotic, stupid and antisocial behaviour. In my own experience the kind of messengers behaving like the ones portrayed in this video where the rich, spoilt, arrogant and cocky kids that were doing this job because it was “cool”. The rest of us who couldn’t afford long term injuries and long time off work were behaving in a relatively civilized way. Watching this makes me angry and sad. Bunch of idiots.
Here here
OMG, that stratos video is Lancia heaven. The sound of that Stratos is really well miked (Ferrari V6)a truly great watch. At 12:15, that Italian driver with shades on – So funny.
I miss my Integrale now!
Line of Sight – what a bunch of pr!cks.