FATBMX Your Online BMX News Resource Since 1998

The 30th Annual Grand National has come and gone, and around the corner is the kick off to the 2008 season. Camp Woodward will start the season out right as the host of this year's Supercross National and NE Regional Championship. A weekend of racing will take place on the pristine Woodward Camp facilities. To start the season off with a BANG, the NBL will introduce new class structures, points system, and the North East Regional Championship!

The upcoming season will be host to a lot of exciting and history making events. The NBL announces several new and improved modifications to the national class and point structure for the 2008 season. Added to the schedule are classes like the new 41 and Over group, which will prove to be a battle of the ages. The over populated 17-24 classes have undergone some heavy sectioning, adding groups like 17-18, 19-25, 26-34, and 35-40 to the men's classes. 

The dirt part of the Dew Tour was pretty sick. Fuzzy and his crew had brought in the premiere dirt and it was good. The course had a drop off for a start where some people did a little variation before hitting the first big set. After that three sets of big hips followed which made for a good course. The crowd during prelims and the finals was big which added to the pressure for the riders. The comp was held at night when the win had slowed down. The generators that provided energy for the extra lights were more poluting than anything I've seen. They even warmed up the Friends and Family stage with black smoke. A big difference between the Dew Tour and European events is that it was not posible to drink alcohol during the contest in the crowd. Some backpack beer runs and Rockstar drink bottles helped out during the dirt finals. The sign said: "Alcohol Violators Will Be Ejected" but if there's a will, there's a way. The State of Utah is kinda strange when it comes to drinking anyway with their maximum of 3.2% alcohol in beers and membership rules for the clubs which have to close at 1am on every night. It was definitely not the favorite state of the Hardcore Drinking Team. 

Yeah yeah we're late with this one and actually all of the Dew Tour Utah updates but cut us some slack. We've been partying, checking in with friends, visited Matt Beringer's house and had a barbeque there, flew to Las Vegas and this week will be more of the above. Good times for sure and we'll get you what you've been waiting for but it might just take a few extra days. The party life started off in Salt Lake City's Hilton Hotel with the Red Bull party. 

The Dew Tour also hosted a UCI BMX Supercross race. The starting hill and the jumps on the track were very impressive. It's good to see that they're stepping up giving the best riders in the world a challenging track. The way thing are run are as follows. Plenty of practice time, followed by a time trial to determine starting positions and then the race starting with 1/8th finals. Teams from Italy, Holland, Belgium, Colombia, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Argentina, Venezuela, Australia, New Zealand, France and some other countries raced against Americans to score points for future Olympic selections.

When you are on the road you seem to end up at the craziest places. It was the surprise Red Bull party on day one (report soon) and it was a boxing game last night. Boxing? Sander, Bern, Andy, Paul and I were walking back to our overcrowded hotel room when we noticed a church that had a boxing game going on. We tried to take a quick photo but the security wasn't having it. The Press from Holland trick didn't work either and we weren't going to pay the entry fee to watch a full game.

Jamie Bestwick moved closer to a third straight Dew Cup by winning the BMX vert finals and James Foster claimed his first AST Dew Tour victory in the BMX dirt finals Friday night at the Toyota Challenge. Bestwick, 36, scored 94.00 points to beat the 92.50 of fellow Briton Simon Tabron. Australia's Steven McCann was third with 91.00 points. Bestwick has won at 11 of 14 Dew Tour stops since 2005.

"I have a few good things I've been working on that I plan to showcase in Orlando in the finals," Bestwick said. "There's a lot on the line next month. I'm going to work on the things that I couldn't get done here and try to give it to the fans in Florida."

Foster, 21, of Redlands, Calif., clinched the victory with a highly technical flawless final run to finish with a 93.25 average score. Foster's previous best finish this season was seventh. 

Jamie Cameron and his crew are organizing a jam next week to raise money for the Pepi Winder Memorial Fund. Pepi, who passed away quite recently at home in Horsham, England, was an early pro on the U.K. BMX scene, riding and competing in events since the early '80s. He rode for Skyway and Vincent amongst others, and was still riding as hard as ever in the current age, attending contests and jams throughout the U.K. and riding his local skatepark weekly.

As things stand, Pepi will be cremated and put in an unmarked shared grave. However, according to Jamie, if they can raise around £1,200 by the end of next week, then they can bury him in Horsham, which is what he always wanted.

In order to raise money for the fund, Jamie is organizing a light hearted jam at Pepi's local park in Horsham, England. 

Oh boy, it was a good day yesterday that didn't seem to end. I like it when things are going good an it doesn't seem to end. It just got better and better and Colton Satterfield and his friend were down for a litle street session for the drunken FATBMX camera. They knew about some stairs around the corner and 2 minutes later we were there. Colton's friend started off with a clean 180 down the stairs and repeated the trick for another shot. Colton stepped it up and did a clean 180 barspin down the stairs first try. The session took 5 minutes and I promised them they would be on the site the next day. 6 hours later and they're online before any of the other Dew Tour coverage. Colton said he had a photo on FATBMX before and I remembered the photo he was talking about. I looked it up just to spell his name right. Cool session guys, let's hook up after the party tonight for some more.

Our buddy Ralf Maier is inviting BMX-ers, skaters, skatepark interested people and locals for a gathering on 21 September at the People's Store in Cologne, Germany. Ralf will have a skatepark model available and will answer skatepark building questions to those who have them. 

Hi, I am now back from Denver after an emotional week with Stephen. To carry on from my last posting Stephen had horrendous neck pain after his teeth extractions. His neck muscles locked and he had to have a sheepskin collar and heat massage to loosen up the muscles alongside his pain medication.

He had a very sleepless night on Thursday and so Friday he was extremely tired and a bit down. He hadn't managed to do any physio or occupational therapy all week and it seemed as though he couldn't progress forwards at all.