BLOWING UP BERMS
Take some pro 4X racers, add a load of explosives and you’ve got a dual slalom race that’s going to go off with a bang!
A couple of soldiers stationed in Bosnia wrote to tell us that the area around their camp contained some of the most amazing riding terrain they’d ever seen. The problem was that the whole place was littered with unexploded mines – not the ideal place for a Sunday spin! Their story set the brain cogs whirring though, and that’s how, back in August 2000, we came to organise the first – and almost certainly last – MBUK landmine dual slalom.
We were at the pub (no surprises there), planning how to pull it off, when our conversation was earwigged by a couple of guys who worked in TV special effects. A few pints later, and these pyromaniacs agreed to look after the explosives for us. We hoodwinked some pro 4X riders into coming along and, once they’d signed their lives away, they lined up at the start, with no idea what was about to happen.
When the gate dropped they sprinted into the first jump and, BOOM!, the take-off exploded in a cloud of dust. Emerging from the debris with terrified expressions, suddenly no one seemed keen to take the lead into the next double. A well-aimed grenade from our explosion experts soon got them pedalling though. As they bombed down the hill and into the biggest jump, we waited until they were airborne before letting off the next charge. The blast knocked them clean off their bikes and into a chaos of smoke, tumbling metal and rubber, and flailing limbs.
Two of the riders were down and out, and the remaining pair staggered to their bikes, with just one scarily steep chute left between them and the safety of the finish line. Lewis King gripped the bar and dropped in as yet another charge detonated. As the smoke cleared he emerged, arms aloft. He’d celebrated too soon though, and a final grenade whistled in to land right by his feet. That day no one was getting out alive!