Fest Series 2015 Preview

May 14th, 2015

Freeride revival

Last year a band of the world best mountain bikers broke loose and created their own event series, featuring huge jumps, breakthrough sessions and wild parties. As Graham Agassiz’s Reunion – part of the Fest Series 2015 – kicks off in Kamloops BC, we caught up with the man himself to chat about the revival of Freeride…

“The Fest Series is more or less just a group of good friends that decided to create something fresh and creative. We want to ride our DH bikes on massive jump lines, get as rowdy as possible and celebrate like coyotes on a fresh kill”

Aggy’s wild side comes out in the way he rides, the way he speaks, the way he lives. This good group of friends he speaks of consists of Nico Vink, Mads ‘Makken’ Haugen, Nic Pescetto, Andreu and Lluis Lacondeguy, Kyle Jameson and a handful of others. Together they pooled what they were passionate about, removed the shit they felt was unnecessary and created something fresh, new, with soul and fire.

Aggy’s Reunion was the first stop of the tour in it’s inaugural year and, to use an over-used parlance of our times, it ‘broke the internet’. A collection of the most stylish riders, in a stunning location, with 70ft+ big-bike jumps and no judges. Perfection.

“Last year was our first year, and the response we got from not only the MTB community but other action sports industries alike, was that everyone seems to really support what were doing!”

“We still have a lot to do to make it better but we know what we have and we’re taking things one step at a time. For 2015 it’s just going to get more and more ridiculous with the magnitude of the jumps and the progression of our sport. Shooting with our favourite film crews and photographers, producing high grade content from each stop on the tour.”

As the first stop kicks off in Santa Cruz – Northern California, it’s hard to think how much bigger they can go this year. I shot photos at Nico Vink’s Fest Series event, Loosefest, in Belgium last year and it was like watching a video game, or perhaps early pioneers of the aeroplane taking flight for the first time and not knowing whether it would come good or not…

The line Nico had built consisted of two berm to berm transfers and a berm-press step down, then the line really got going with the first left hip measuring in at 21 metres/68 feet. After the hang time from this jump the riders then charged into the second 22 metre straight-jump before coming face to face with the last, 25 metre/70 ft super-hip to the right.

These were the largest jumps mountain bikes had hit at the time, and Nico built them from scratch, eyeballing the distances. In the end his estimations of length were only cm’s out. Andreu Lacondeguy flipped the last jump – a jump so big that only a handful of riders even cleared it during the event. At the time, although not official, it was the largest backflip ever done on a bike. It has since been preceded by Cam Zink’s prime-time-tv flip in the states, but certainly had a raw edge that can’t be repeated.

There is a level of anarchy in the ranks of the Fest Series main men, a kind of ‘fuck-you-pay-me’ style of we do what we want. No bright colours for cameras, black on black, beers and parties. We asked Aggy whether he felt the Fest Series was perhaps anti-FWT (Freeride World Tour), as it’s the complete opposite in terms of rider appeal.

“I don’t see it as the anti FWT at all. They have their thing and we have ours. I guess you could say that they sort of pushed out a lot of extremely talented mountain bikers – courses became smaller and so did the bikes. Not a whole lot of companies even make Freeride bikes anymore!”
“What we’ve started is something that showcases these athletes skills in a better venue for their riding style – and bringing Freeride back to it’s roots!”. Seeing both spectacles live you do get the feeling that, if your preference was to go big with style there is not much room for you in the FWT anymore. More gymnasts than mountain bikers the technical skill of the FWT winners is mind blowing, but there is room in our sport for the go-big-or-go-home cowboy approach that brought us to where we are now”