THE MAN WITH A PLAN

How did you go from downhill racer to freerider?

“I always just wanted to progress my riding, and working on fitness wasn’t really my thing. At my last World Cup in Fort William in 2013, I flatted in qualifiers. When I heard the air coming out of my tyre I thought: “I’m so glad I didn’t spend all winter in the gym!” From that moment on I did my own thing, building trails with huge jumps and berms. I became a full-time freerider, which worked out well."

How did Loosefest come about? “When I did my first project at Royal Hills in 2013 I invited Makken [Mads Haugen]. In turn, he invited me to Huckfest in Norway, together with Aggy [Graham Agassiz], Sam Reynolds, Andreu Lacondeguy and more. We thought it was the best week of our lives, so we decided I’d do an event in Belgium, Aggy would do one in Kamloops, Kurt in Retallack, and so on. The host sets a date, invites the riders, builds a line, hires a film crew and we ride.”

What’s on your mind when you’re hitting these huge jumps? “The most important thing is that everything on the bike works flawlessly and that the jumps are built the right way. If not, it can get a littly hairy. It’s scary to jump a line for the first time, I don’t really know why we do it! You have the idea that you can go a bit further than the previous time. You’re convinced it’ll work, otherwise you wouldn’t do it. But it’s not without risk, for sure.”

What drives you to do it? “Well, you start to ride as a kid and you jump over a ghetto jump made from a beer crate and a piece of wood. You jump as far as you can. Then your buddy shows up and says he can jump over your bike. Next, you’re jumping five or six bikes. You start to ride BMX, trails, motocross. Every jump starts to feel small and you’re afraid of nothing any more. Then you think: ‘Let’s go bigger because I’m chilling on these jumps!’ So, the drive is that you know you can do it and that it’ll give you that good feeling. It’s like a drug, it’s an addiction.”