Freeride riders demonstrate their talent on the ground and in the air in Prague. We lay down under the wheels of one of them

“We started half an hour ago, we’re still warming up,” Daniel Miler, one of the featured bikers and promoter of adrenaline shows, tells us. We stand with him on an eight-meter-high tower with a ramp called Big Air, from which the riders start. They drive onto smaller ramps opposite, which take them up to ten meters into the air.

Although less than a dozen athletes have barely started training, they are already performing great tricks in the air. “Some do tricks more gymnastic, some more stylish,” explains Miler.

“They are somersaults in front, behind, various points to the side, letting go of the handlebars, ‘supermans’, it depends on what gravity allows us,” enumerates another of the riders, Zdeněk Pešek. “There’s a lot to do here because we have a lot of time in the air,” laughs this freestyle BMX rider (abbreviation from the English bicycle motocross – editor’s note) rider.

PHOTO: Flips and tricks on the giant ramp. Bikers at the Exhibition Center fly like supermen

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“I’ve been doing it for 21 years, but I have to say that it’s really such a diverse sport that I still enjoy it, and that keeps me from constantly improving and having fun with the sport and enjoying it,” he says freeride MTB (abbreviation from the English mountain bike – editor’s note) rider and traveler Tomáš Zejda.

Despite his experience, he is said to be nervous at times when driving. “I think one should be a little afraid and approach it responsibly so that nothing happens. But at the same time, of course, trying to move so that the audience gets the best possible show,” says Zejda, who also has recent mountain descents in Nepal and Africa.

As all three bikers confirm to us, in addition to adrenaline, injuries are part of their activities.

“We’re all broken, it’s part of it like any sport. It won’t do without some fractures. We have a soft inflatable impact here at Bike Fest now, so that reduces the risk, nothing serious should happen to us,” Miler points into the distance to the inflatable track opposite.

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For 27 years, Václav Kolář has been dedicated to bike trial, a sports discipline in which a rider on a special bike overcomes various artificial and natural obstacles. He performed what he called “lighter stunts” for our cameras, but he promised even better tricks for the weekend show.

He performs these, in contrast to his “disruptive” colleagues next to him, mainly on the ground. He jumps, for example, on the roofs of cars or balances on the front or rear wheel. He is already proud of twelve world champion titles in bike trial.

“It’s about the training, what kind of shape you keep yourself in. Because once a person learns something, it doesn’t stay with him, he has to keep renewing it and keep training over and over to keep mastering it,” he thinks.

The editor of Novinek believed in his abilities so much that she served Václav Kolář as an extra – lying on the ground, a rider on a bicycle jumped over her, jumping only a few tens of centimeters from her head. “Hands to your body and don’t move,” he ordered before the demonstration.

“Bunny hop (by throwing the bike into the air – editor’s note) it’s simple, you just need to be able to do it,” the biker explains that the initial jumps were not that difficult for him.

“But when the rider then jumps over a person in a very trial-like manner and quickly, then it’s all about accuracy so that I don’t do anything to him. And I believed in myself today,” Kolář smiles contentedly.

The biker tried a trick that worked out great. But completely different than he wanted

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