After last week’s instalment getting lost due to something to do with nationwide boozing and the monarchy, followed by the mass exodus of staff to be fed to midges at the Fort William World Cup, you’re well overdue a tasty portion of Midweek Movies. Think of it as the lovely crispy bits they scoop out from the chippy fryer – won’t do anything for high cholesterol but incredibly more-ish.
Have we mentioned the Shimano Singletrack Weekender lately? Yes, yes we have – but with good reason. Time draws close for what’s been described as the best all-round event out there and we need more hardened competitors (well, preferably normal people out for a weekend of bike riding and laughs) to come and sign up. It’s taking place on the 14-15th July at Lee Quarry in Lancashire and this video from last year’s event should give you a little taste of the event, though this year we promise not to have any weird weather…
Brandon Semenuk and friend’s mini series continues with a trip to the States and the home of big air, Woodward West. They hook up with Kyle Strait – on a regime of 50% riding, 50% fitness and pressups between dirt trail runs – do some sweet jumps and then finish off with an American staple; no, not massive burgers, but the sweet smell of cordite and roar of gunfire.
While SheGNARnigans may have a name that calls to mind an Irish themed bar for flat peaked and bestickered baseball cap wearers, it’s nothing of the sort. It’s actually a multi-national collection of bike riders that are split between Whistler and New Zealand that do a good line in videos documenting their exploit. We like this one because they’ve managed to do the girls-riding-bikes-hard thing without any trite, look-at-them-they’re-doing-so-well nonsense and a brilliant soundtrack from the Joy Formidable.
Compression tune boundary pusher and slackest bike in the business rider hook up to go ride bikes with engines on a proper boy’s adventure in the desert. Chris Porter and Fabien Barel do the Tuareg Rally…
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You don’t often realise how much riding you do through the year or the sheer variety of terrain, conditions and people you do it with, but Nick’s year worth of video footage gave us a nice warm feeling as we thought about our last year on bikes…
Here’s rather cool look behind the scenes of Yeti Cycle’s R&D department. It’s basically four minutes of framebuilding porn.
Some BMX madness now with Drew Bezanson. It will blow your mind.
The mountain biking Jedi that is Tony Doyle of UK Bike Skills returns with his regular video blog on coaching, bike riding and the satisfaction of seeing people progress…
Thanks to everyone that sent in videos this week – if you’ve seen anything you reckon should be up here then send it into newsdesk@singletrackworld.com..
Comments (14)
Comments Closed
something’s gone wrong
I’d agree
It seems that either Vimeo or our back end are playing silly buggers. Should be sorted now, let us know if it isn’t.
Hmmm. sheGNARnigans? Overbiked? Do we still say that? I’m with you on the need to iron out interweb shorts of girls-doin’-well-for-girls type movies. After all it’s all just bikes and riders. But I don’t give a monkeys if they are dudes, chicks or LBGTG-can’t-make-my-mind-up-yets, they were not riding ‘hard’ for anyones standards. I’m sure they were having fun but if you call that riding hard then it’s a bit patronising is it not? and sort of defeats the point.
Liked the song though
Jedi speaketh the truth.
I watched all of shegnarnigans, I got bored at about a minute into push irons in jockland (even worse name for a clip than shegnarnigans)
Brilliant. I made a clear point in my comment. The video was described as ‘hard riding thats happens to be by girls’. I didn’t think it showed hard riding, therefore in my view the ‘happens to be by girls bit’ was a bit patronising.
Jon – If you think my point was ‘i’m better than them’ then you need to re-read my post. You have missed the mark by quite some distance.
‘Push irons in jockland’ was a video made simply for the enjoyment of my buddies on that trip. End of. It never claims to be a video of ‘hard riding’ so attempting to use as exhibit A in STW defence of my point is a bit silly. I’m not surprised in the slightest if a) The public think sheGNARnigans shows harder riding or B) Matthew H got bored. It isn’t harder!I AND it wasn’t made to appeal Matthew H!. Neither was the title – it was a quote from the trip – you had to be there.
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Does that bloke at Yeti have the best job in the world? He can weld a bit, too…
I nearly had a ‘crisis’ watchning that Yeti vid.
What I wouldn’t give t ogwet my hands on all that kit & knowq what to do with it.
Thumbs up for Tonys attitude to riding and having fun, and lets face it, in not too many years time his daughter is going to be able to kick most of our buts without even breaking sweat on a bike….. 😉
Hi Matt, sorry for the late response, I was out shooting video for the Weekender yesterday.
Anyway, I think the riding depicted in that video is hard and that regardless of gender, they appear to be skilled, aggressive riders and the video worthy of being put in Midweek Movies.
I’d mount the same defence if someone claimed in the comments that the riders were ‘overbiked’ and the riding ‘not that hard’ in a video that featured anyone else – because I think that’s untrue.
You obviously disagree, which is fair enough. You have your opinion, I have mine. You’ve got my email address, feel free to contact me directly if you want to discuss it further…
Who is setting the criteria for “riding hard” anyway?
It’s not a discussion on what constitutes hard riding. It’s one of patronising sexism in mountain biking movies. One that STW started here, I supported but then got shot down for supporting. Go figure.
Matt, I think you are creating a problem that don’t exist here. I don’t think there was any intentional form of “patronising sexism” from Jon, and personally I think the video caption actually claims exactly the opposite. In those words I read: “finally a video that doesn’t patronise female riders”. If there is a comment that could sound patronising, that is yours I’m afraid! … Sorry. It would be great to hear a womans opinion on this one.