Wow. Just fucking wow.
A backwards bunnyhop won real street at Rincon, over the rail, down the big drop. Fucking wow.
I learned backwards bunnyhops in 1988, because I was a dork, and knew I couldn't hang in flatland anymore, once the locomotive and whiplash were invented. And by "hang" I mean place in the middle of the pack, in a class of fifty 17& over intermediates, in flatland at an AFA Masters comp.
So I started trying a bunch of weird bunnyhop tricks, just seeing what was possible. Since I rode with skateboarders every weekend at the Huntington Beach Pier, I learned a few skate tricks on my bike, like half-Cabs (roolback to 180 bunnyhop) and no complys (footplant to 180 on flat), backside bonelesses (can-can footplant on a bank), and nollies (nosewheelie into a speed bump to hop).
In the freestyle world at the time, those weren't even tricks. Pretty much no one else did them. Eddie Roman did footplants to 360's, along with dozens of other weird, hard, and innovative tricks. So goofing around on my own, I got to where I could do 6-7 foot backwards bunnyhops on flat, 6-7 foot half-Cabs (on a freewheel, not freecoaster, so I could launch farther) and full Cabs (rollback to 360 bunnyhop, only landed a few). I tried a bunch of other bunnyhop tricks, and famously spent years trying to pull a bunnyhop tailwhop, but never landed a single one. None of those things were even considered tricks at the time.
Then, 15-20 years later, with stronger bikes, and when street riding had progressed a lot, riders discovered those old skate-inspired tricks, and took them to gaps, drops, ledges, and banks. They kept pushing them to new levels. So as a complete dork of a rider from the 80's and 90's, I'm stoked to see an completely fucking insane, HUGE backwards bunnyhop win Real Street at the X-Games. I never even dreamed something like that would be possible. Mad props to Colin Varanyak, and all these riders.
My favorite part of all the X-Games footage I've seen was the cutaway shot during the dirt jumping comp. The camera panned over to Cory Nastazio, standing near a pole, watching the action, and just goes, "Wow." Yeah... Wow.
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