2011 Winterjam, Belgium. Report by BdJ

Mar 01, 2011

Written by Bart de Jong

Read 4355 times

Having an indoor spot to ride during the wintertime is so good. And Peter Geys over in Eksel, Belgium has one. It's in the back of his 900 shop which gives him a sweet place to ride, and also his customers. Not only do they ride there, Peter does BMX courses teaching the kids how to do certain tricks. He makes them feel comfortable on the bike and when a rider wants to learn something, the bike devil will point them in the right direction. But on Saturday it was all about the Winterjam, the third event at the BMX park.

When we got in, loads of riders were waiting their turn to get a run in. It had a smaller section for the beginners, a section with a box jump and two quarters, and the spine miniramp. It doesn't take too many people to fill the place up but riders took their turn and showed what they got. Every rider who paid the 5 Euros to session was given a piece of paper where they had to fill in three names that they thought should make the 8-man final later on. At 4pm a little break was on the program for the Bunny Hop contest.

The bar was set low to start off. 20cm. Everyone cleared that. It went up with 10 centimeters at a time and at 90 centimeters the group was getting small. Everyone got one scratch and in the end it was Bart Mol who cleared the 100 centimeters. He got a check of 100 Euros and a set of Total handlebars for his efforts.

All this time Peter Geys' shop was running at full speed and also the party section looked good. Beer on draft (of course) and lots of food to choose from. After the bunny hop comp and a little snack, it was back to riding if you could get a run in. The final 8 riders battled it out for the prize money that was up for grabs. The final top three results look like this:

Results BMX Winterjam, Belgium:
1. Jimmy van Belle
2. Bram de Laat
3. Gwen Geyskens