Red Bull X-Fighters 2017
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gonna do my best, and hopefully I
can stay safe and then go to X Games
and do the exact same thing there.
Try my best, be safe, and hopefully
get up on the podium, you know?
How do you fancy your chances?
This year Madrid’s gonna be tough.
Especially for me, personally, having
been off the bike for so long. It feels
like it’s gonna be a hard one, but
every event is different, and every run
is different, so you don’t know what
can happen out there. That’s what’s
so exciting about freestyle motocross.
Especially the X-Fighters where you
go head-to-head against the other
competitors. We’ll just have to see
where it goes. I’m just gonna go out
there and do my best and see where
I end up.
What do you think of the weather?
First rain we’ve seen at Madrid
X-Fighters in 16 years!
In Australia at the moment it’s winter,
and it’s been really dry. We haven’t
had rain for a month. I come over here
to Madrid expecting 30, 40 degrees.
Sun just smashing me. It was like that
the first day or two being here, and
now today we’ve just been struck
with some rain, and it’s been so much
the course is pretty flooded.
They’re constantly trying to keep it
dry out there, and we’re just gonna
have to wait, and hopefully mother
nature gives us some sunshine and
lets us compete.
How much of a pain is the wet?
The worst part about the rain is the
slick run-ups. If you’re coming at the
ramp and your tyre is just spinning,
you can’t really slow down to get
traction, because once you slow
down you’ll have no speed to clear
the jump.
Even on the ramp, if it’s a little bit
slippery and you go to do a whip,
and the back wheel slips out - or if
you’re just doing a normal trick and
the back-wheel slips - it’s going to
definitely throw you off in the air.
You’re not 100% going to crash, but
it’s going to change the way the bike
flies, and makes it definitely a lot
more dangerous.
How clear will it need to be?
For us to ride out there, there needs
to be dry boards. So, all the in runs
need to be dry. The take offs need
to be dry. Really, we just don’t need
any puddles. Because once you
ride through a puddle and your
tyres are wet, and then you ride on
the wooden boards. You know, wet
rubber, wooden boards, it just doesn’t
really mix too good. So, if there’s no
puddles- t