PNE plays host to roster of pro BMX riders
First-time pro BMX rider Zach Newman watched his sport live as a youngster when he was at the Kentucky State Fair.
Now Newman, who is fresh off a bronze-medal-winning performance at X Games Minneapolis, Minn., is on a roster of riders piquing interest among the next generation during daily performances at this year’s Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver. “That’s what really got me hooked. Yeah, you can watch it on TV, it blows you away and it’s really interesting. But seeing it in person?” Newman said earlier this week, a few hours before his first scheduled performance.
“Every single year I went back and watched that. It’s crazy that I’m that guy now. I try to tell kids in the show that I saw this in the fair at your age and now I’m doing it for you. So in 20 years you may be doing it for someone else. Or if they ’re better than me they ’ll do it in 10 years.”
Newman won his X Games medal in BMX vert, one of the extreme sport’s most challenging and dangerous forms of competition. His winning performance featured a pair of 540s, each being 1½ rotations in the air after going vertical off the lip of a halfpipe.
Riders at the PNE are performing on a very similar ramp to what Newman saw riders perform on in his home state of Kentucky. His runs start with grinds: double-peg, feeble and smith, for those keeping tabs.
“That ramp throws you in the air, but you can slide and ride on the edge and do a bunch of very technical things as well. But specifically, I would say I’m the 540 guy.”
Newman counted among his inspirations Jamie Bestwick and late BMX legend Dave Mirra. “I betcha Dave Mirra got half of the people in the sport into it … I think someone was quoted as saying Dave might not have created the trick, but Dave made it look good.”
Newman is at the PNE with Action Sports World Tour, which is putting on two shows daily at the Pacific Coliseum at 4:30 and 8 p.m.
The PNE gig brought Newman to Vancouver and Canada for the first time.
He said he has been riding at spots around the area “a little too hard,” name-dropping Seylynn Bowl in North Vancouver, the Hastings Skatepark and the DIY spot Leeside Tunnel.
“The first day we were like kids in a candy store,” he said. “Getting to see the city has been awesome.”