Flatlands

Today was all about the flatlands for us at Glasgow Green.  Probably one of the smaller competitions of the week, but no less awesome or skillfull.  The riders compete to do their best tricks, and the longer they can go without both wheels touching the ground, and the more tricks they can do during that time, the higher they score. 

My job for the day way being a 'wayfinder' which basically meant roaming the site and seeing if anyone needed anything.  The main thing people needed was a pair of hands to take photos all-together so that was pretty pleasant!

Wholesome moment of the day goes to Matt Wilhelm who is the USA's top flatland BMXer.  After his run today, he was hanging around in the atheletes area and got spotted by a bunch of kids who started shouting his name excitedly.  He came over to the barriers and let them take photos - I was there so offered to take the pictures with a load of beaming kids and a very talented athlete.  He was great with them, really engaged, asked them if they rode and if they were enjoying themselves.  The kids were super hyped.

Blip is of the warm up for the final round where you can see the current top-three ranked atheletes in the world.  In the foreground is Masato Ito (third), to the rear doing tricks is Moto Sasaki (first), then just off to the side there's  Kio HayaKawa (second) who qualified first today with some incredible tricks.  I had no idea a bike could even move like that. 

Tomorrow we have the women's qualifiers on flatlands and the Teams Trials event - really excited for Trials and hoping that Danny Macaskill might come down to see what all the fuss is about...

Edit: really wishing I could bring the big camera into the arena with me, the phone doesn't do justice to the subject matter!