Reynolds sends a one-footed euro table (what he calls a “dogpisser”) over a hip at Portsmouth Pyramids
MTB street sound violent, but this is like scrap metal crashing down a mineshaft. <strong>The</strong>y rush to his aid, but he’s OK – kind of. “He slipped a foot and broke his saddle with his balls,” says Brettle, incredulously. It’s no joke – the saddle’s metal rails are both neatly sheared in half. It’s suddenly obvious why the riders favour a distinctly old-school set-up of overbuilt aluminium frames, 26in (66cm) wheels and downhill tyres, running at 40psi, rather than trail pressures of 25psi, with extra spacers in their suspension. “<strong>The</strong> bikes take a beating,” says Matthews. “You need something that’s super-burly to take the impacts, because it isn’t like riding dirt – you’re landing on solid concrete.” Brettle is getting a new frame custom-built for his style – by Frome-based bespoke bike-makers BTR Fabrications – because the modern trend for low, slack and long wheelbase bikes is unsuited to the short, brutal landings of the street. “I ride an aluminium bike, 26in wheels, old-school – just has to be hardcore.” Even within the world of mountain biking, these guys are iconoclasts. As it turns out, they all have very practical day jobs, from carpenter to carbon-fibre engineer, so they’re familiar with breaking points. <strong>The</strong>y know what it is to push metal, bone, carbon fibre and sinew to the limit – and past it. “That’s the end of my day,” grimaces Matthews, who walks like John Wayne for the next few hours. If they’re shaken by his crash, the other riders don’t show it. <strong>The</strong>y’re focused on the finale: another ramp jump, this time off a 3m wall, over a pavement and onto a banking in the car park below. <strong>The</strong> run-up is along tarmac to a gravel path and then grass. <strong>The</strong> ramp makes it possible, but the run-in is “sub-optimal enough” for Henry Durman to have a high-speed wash-out on the lumpy grass, just before the ramp. Picking himself up, the 23-year-old marine engineer and rigger shouts down from the top of the wall, “Aah! I’m shaking like a sick dog!” It’s another high-consequence jump with a tiny landing zone. Get it wrong and you could land flat on unyielding tarmac and detonate your knees, or go nose in and be ejected straight off the bike into something pitilessly solid. You can’t see the landing from the top, so the riders are having to line themselves up by looking at a distant lamppost as they jump. As Reynolds launches off the ramp, he doesn’t seem phased – he whips his hands off the bar to throw his arms behind him and land a ‘suicide nohander’. <strong>The</strong> landing is the hardest of the day: every millimetre of his downhill bike’s 180mm suspension is called upon as his arms and legs fight to absorb the rest of the impact. After a flurry of fist bumps, he dismounts and demonstrates his commitment by taking off his shoe to adjust the brace he’s wearing, following recent surgery on both ankles. Despite his scare, Durman sends the next jump, landing with a whoop. He also races downhill, but for him the buzz you get from a street jump can’t be beaten off-road. “With street, you’ve only got one chance to get it right, which is so exhilarating. <strong>The</strong>re’s so much adrenalin coursing through your system, you’re up there just shaking, waiting to drop in.” What makes MTB street so liberating for these riders is the very fact that it hasn’t been built for them. “With street [riding], you’ve only got one chance to get it right“ Durman scopes out steps as he sets up near Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court Downhill and enduro tracks have big jumps, but they are designed to be predictable and safe. “<strong>The</strong> distance between where you take off and land is a nice smooth arc,” says Reynolds. “But with street, if you’re jumping off a wall, you go up but there’s still 10-15ft [3-5m] to drop – the arc is lopsided.” <strong>The</strong> consequences of getting it wrong are greater, but so too are the rewards. It’s this process of overcoming obstacles from dramatic new angles that seems to define how MTB street riders interact with their environment. Urban worlds can seem compressed, buckling under external strains and internal angst. Normally, in a world under siege from itself, options narrow, possibilities are blocked, and self-expression is stifled. For minds under pressure, streets are recast as prisons. But for the street rider, stairs become launch pads, walls become roads, and obstacles become old friends. Perhaps being able to see your street from a radically new perspective does a hard reset on your relationship to it. Who knows, it could even set you free. THE RED BULLETIN 63
Change language