Playing
with fire
Interview: Ben Robert Richardson
Pictures: Julien Grimard
Matt Macduff has never been one to hold back from trying something
new but a recent and not-quite-prepared-enough attempt at the
world’s biggest bicycle loop saw him break bones instead of records
I
revisited the Kickstarter
page for the loop project last
night and watched the into
video again - man, it made me
laugh. Where did the passion come
from for that project? How long
have you had that idea? [Anyone
who hasn’t seen it should check
out the Kickstarter page for Raise
the Loop]
Probably since Project Breathe Easy.
Everything kind of slowly snowballed
– it started in Nova Scotia, building all
the jumps, but once it was all done it
felt like I was contained there by the
size of everything. I felt restricted.
I felt like all these ramps and stuff,
they’re really cool, but this isn’t my
full potential. Everything needed
to be twice as big, and that was it.
Basically, Nova Scotia was a lab and
we were just mixing stuff up and
seeing what worked and what didn’t. I
decided once I maxed out there it was
time to take it to a whole new level.
Would you say that’s one of your
defining traits? With your tendency
to move around - you push it to the
max then move on?
I’m not sure, man. That’s something
you’d have to ask my friends!
My whole thing is just living to the
fullest and creating stuff. It doesn’t
have to be a forty-foot tall loop - it
could be anything. It’s about having
an idea and working really hard to
bring it to life.
And a forty-foot loop’s a pretty
crazy idea. Why a loop in
particular?
I saw the loop de loops and I wanted
to make my own. I started researching
these things - I got on the Internet for
days just researching this stuff - and I
came across these guys doing them a
hundred years ago. At first I thought it
was fake, but after a bit more digging
I was like wow, this is actually the
birth of freestyle mountain biking. This
is action sports. These guys were
some of the first guys to get paid to
ride bicycles.
It’s crazy when you think about it.
Tricks have progressed so much,
but that one hasn’t…
Yeah, well the problem was death,
man. Really, really it was.
It’s such a crazy story. Around the turn
of the century this American guy, Allo
Diavolo, tried a roller coaster loop and
thought it was lame – so he decided
to build his own for his bike.
He got picked up by the circus and
was in high demand. His solution was
to clone himself – train other guys
who could go all over the world and
be the famous Diavolo. The problem
was they weren’t as good as him – a
lot of them would crash and a lot
of them would die. Crashes can be
pretty entertaining but not when
they’re all the time – so the circuses
dropped the act.
There was another one called the
Loop of Death, which lived up to its
name by killing four people in one
week. Then Europe banned the act
and that was it – the loop just kind of
disappeared.
That’s interesting – especially how
it lines up with action sports at the
moment. With freestyle motocross
in particular, being the best is now
so dangerous that mainstream
brands are starting to shift their
support from it…
It’s so true, and I’ve kind of realized
it with what I’m doing. Where do you
draw the line? Where does the fun
end, you know? There’s also a weird
point where it’s not just about proving
you can do it, it’s about proving it’s
possible for a human at all.
And you can get emotionally
attached to it that...
Yeah, you just want to prove to the
world how awesome FMX is, or how
awesome mountain biking is, you
know. I think each extreme sport’s
kind of fighting with each other u
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