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Best GoPro BMX Videos

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The remarkable thing about BMX biking is that it takes an activity that almost anyone can do – riding a bike – and transforms it into this difficult, fantastical, gravity-defying extreme sport. You may never be able to trick out with the best BMX riders, but with these GoPro videos, at least you can see what it looks like from their perspective.

BMX Game of Bike 2010

Everyone learns how to ride a bike at some point, but very few people learn how to ride a bike like this. One of the most interesting things about BMX biking as an extreme sport is that, compared to, say, skateboarding or snowboarding, you have an incredibly big vehicle; the bike itself is huge, and much larger than most other similar devices. This limits the amount of tricks and maneuvers you can pull off but also, in many ways, makes them more impressive. What’s better: spinning a thin piece of wood underneath your feet in a 360, or spinning a huge bike that way, after you climb off it in midair and climb back on before touching the ground again?

Mike Montgomery At Crankworx Whistler

Oh, you like roller coasters? You might never need to ride another one again after watching this video, because it’s pretty much the same experience. Mike Montgomery takes his bike up and over a number of large ramps on a downhill slope at the Crankworx Whistler, spinning and flipping through the air. You have to marvel at the fact that he manages to land all of these movements and the strength it takes to not only start a bike spinning in that direction, but then also to stop it when you return to the ground. If you hit the ground with the wheels pointed the wrong way, you’ll go flying. Riders need the bike to be flush with the slope and angle that they’re landing on. For the riders capable of runs like this, that’s just par for the course.

Darren Berrecloth At Red Bull Rampage

Caution: this video is actually kind of frightening. As the rider hurtles down the mountain, you have the constant feeling that he’s going to crash in an incredibly painful and dangerous way. Somehow, however, he doesn’t. Instead, he hurtles down the rocky surface in huge jumps and swerving patters, showing a superhuman level of control over the vehicle and terrain. At one point, he’s headed straight for a huge rock wall, but instead of either stopping the bike or attempting to pilot himself around it, he manages to tap the bikes wheels off the rock, which is amazing. Just keeping himself upright on this course is insane, so when he tosses in the little 360 at the end, it’s pretty hard not to stand up and start cheering.

Luke Peeters POV

Pivoting from crazy displays of balance on rocky, Mars-like terrain, let’s head to a more common, urban street. Here, Luke Peeters displays remarkable speed, flying down the road seemingly as fast as a car, and you get a good idea of how ridiculously fast these bikes can sometimes go. Then he takes to a bike park, and we get a reminder of the impressive balance and footwork that’s required to be an effective BMX rider. Between balancing on the edges of ramps and constantly repositioning the bike after yet another spin or change of direction, the riding here is almost like ballet. Toss in those moments when he starts pedaling backward and it’s pretty clear that this has about as much to do with regular bike-riding as quantum physics does with multiplication tables.

Mike Montgomery At TEVA Mountain Games

The type of riding in this video is called slopestyle, and this is about as good as it gets. Just wait for the halfway point: flying toward a jump, you expect the same sort of normal 360 or 540 out of the rider, but instead, he pulls off an almost incomprehensible backflip with his bike, landing perfectly. This was a first-place run at one of the largest outdoors competitions in the world, and it’s not hard to understand why — he casually flipped his bike backward, as though he were on a trampoline. Not only are skills and technique essential here, obviously; these guys have to be fearless.

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