Matt Jones’s mission to land three world-first tricks Dan Atherton Women racers who led the charge Bike security Pro snapper Sven Martin New bikes from Trek and Propain
What happened when Matt Jones tried to boost his bag of world-first tricks?
Matt Jones threw down the gauntlet when he announced that he wanted to land three world-first tricks. It’s no mean feat to conceive and conquer even one, when you consider the ridiculously high level that pro freestyle riding has reached. Matt’s ideas were inspired by previous world-first tricks that he’d pulled in competitions, and his Frames of Mind edit for Red Bull. His goal was to land a 720 no-hander to barspin, a running gainer, and a backflip to hitching post to frontflip. For real.
While these tricks had been in Matt’s imagination for some
time, they hadn’t come to fruition because he didn’t have the right jumps and facilities to pull them off. When he teamed up with BMX legend Kye Forte and his trail/jump-building services, Kye was able to construct the perfect features to attempt such a challenging feat.
The running gainer
Originating from diving, the ‘gainer’ is a move where you rotate backwards while jumping forwards (as opposed to a backflip, where you rotate backwards while jumping backwards, or a frontflip, where you rotate forwards while jumping forwards). Matt started off by learning the trick in a (public!) swimming pool with a foam-padded bike without wheels. After gaining confidence in the pool, he headed to the airbag for hundreds of practice attempts, where he only landed and rode away once, the day before taking it to the dirt. We’re baffled by the coordination needed to climb on a bike, getting both feet and one hand to land on the pedals and bar, while spinning upside-down and falling off a three-metre drop.
“The trick is pure hell, but landing it feels unbelievable,” says Matt in the Design and Conquer video chronicling his challenge, produced by Red Bull in partnership with Ford. “I’ve never worked as consistently hard for any trick. That single second of footage is worth all the crashing, all the chaos. I’m stoked!”
The hitching post
This trick involves Matt backflipping onto a raised post, landing on his feet, then jumping off into a frontflip and landing back on the bike. The accuracy and commitment needed to pull this off are off-the-scale, and it took far more attempts than Matt anticipated to land it successfully. Days and weeks passed without success, pushing him to his mental and physical limit. Still, his perseverance paid off, and Matt finally landed the trick and rolled away to claim his second new world-first.
“That one second when I knew my feet were on the pedals, I snapped and popped as hard as I could. I felt that if I just held on, it would work,” he says. “As a slopestyle rider, that’s everything for me – progression, breaking new ground and doing things I thought were impossible. I’ve had that buzz before but never like this.”
720 no-hander to barspin
The one that got away. Matt never got around to pulling this trick after prioritising the first two. However, he said he’d do it, so watch this space.
“THE TRICK IS PURE HELL, BUT LANDING IT FEELS UNBELIEVABLE. THAT SINGLE SECOND OF FOOTAGE IS WORTH ALL THE CRASHING, ALL THE CHAOS. I’ M STOKED !”