The first Maltese to land a back flip

On Friday 17 February, Karl Naja became the first Maltese to land a back flip with a BMX bike at the Indoor Skate Park at Pembroke.

Karl Naja is 27 years old and has been riding BMX since 2004. Since he was a young boy he always liked riding a bike but it was only when his friends took him to the BMX track in Pembroke for the first time that he fell in love with BMX. After that he immediately started saving up money to buy a proper BMX Bike. Once he got hands on his Haro, he was at the track 3-4 times a week, and used to ride it from Sliema to Pembroke every time.

About four years later he got closer with BMX President and Founder John Zammit and all the community there and this opened doors to many opportunities with his bike.

Karl Naja first went abroad with his BMX bike when he was 18 to Barcelona, and then many more trips followed after that. In 2015, he competed in the BRAAAB amateur competition at the 040 BMX Park in Eindhoven, Holland. In this same skate park he recently learned the back flip. During the competition he managed to pass on to the Finals where the last 16 out of 49 riders competed for the podium, and he finished in the top 10.

After that event, Malta BMX stayed in good contact with the people of the skate park, including Dutch best BMX rider Daniel Wedijmier who competed in Malta’s first International BMX Competition in 2014. Daniel was the actual organiser of the BRAAAB event.

Recently he himself and another local rider Gianni Zahra went to train at the 040 Skate Park thanks to the locals at the park and Malta BMX.

It was during this trip where Naja learnt how to back flip, as he first practised it on a foam pit, which is a ramp where you jump into a pool of foam.

Once he got a good idea of the trick, he moved to a resi ramp, which is a ramp with a soft landing. On his second attempt, he managed to learn the trick. This undoubtedly was a big step as it gave him all the confidence to try it a couple of times more before he came back to Malta to land in on an actual ramp first go.