T
hirty-six-year-old André
Villa has always had an
infectious enthusiasm and zeal,
not just for FMX, but for life in
general. A conversation with
the deceptively tall Norwegian
will almost invariably leave you feeling
stoked and uplifted; he’s never afraid
to call a spade a spade, but that
honesty has helped him become one
of the most respected, universally-
liked riders in the industry.
However, after stellar career
contesting for wins and podiums on
the world’s biggest FMX and speed
and style stages, André quietly slipped
out of the spotlight. He and his girl
Rachel had a son (now two) called
Storm, he sold his house in California
and moved back to Norway where
he’s working ungodly hours as an
event promoter.
The biggest feather in his cap – so
far – was the incredible Ullevaal
Xtreme action sports contest in Oslo
in June. The inaugural day-long event
was a wild concoction of Nitro Circus
Live, X Games, AMA Supercross
and a muscle car show in a huge
football stadium stuffed with tens of
thousands of screaming fans.
Right off the bat, Villa’s Ullevaal
Xtreme has established itself as
one of the biggest, most exciting,
revolutionary high-profile contests on
the planet and fills a much-needed
void left by the withdrawal of Red Bull
X-Fighters in 2018.
With the excitement dying down and
Villa catching his breath after the
biggest event of his life, we decided to
contact him and find out more about
his new direction, and his relentless
pursuit of making other people happy.
André, thanks for the chat, man.
You’ve been fairly busy lately by the
sounds of it.
[laughs] Yeah, just a little! I’ve moved
back to Norway and focused on life
after professional riding. As an athlete,
you live a very selfish life, and while
it’s good, I needed to move in a new
direction now that I have a family. But
now I’m probably busier as a promoter
than I was as an athlete, although I’m
not travelling as much.
66 | FreestyleXtreme.com
Tell us a bit about how Ullevaal
Xtreme took shape. What was the
thinking behind it?
I worked on this project for about a
year, and the event was at the national
soccer stadium in Norway [Ullevaal
Stadion in Oslo]. They actually came
to me and asked if we could do
something together, so I didn’t have to
rent the arena or anything.
It was a huge project with a lot of
people involved. We wanted to make
a solid freestyle motocross and
speed-and-style contest, and Red
Bull X-Fighters was dropping off and
there were rumours that the Nitro
World Games was either changing
dramatically or wouldn’t be held. That
meant that there was only X Games
with a professionally built track with
competitive riders, and these contests
are what keep them motivated and the
sport progressing.
We had almost 30 riders with
Tom Pages, Josh Sheehan, Edgar
Torrenteras, Maikel Melero, Libor
Podmol, Pat Bowden in FMX, and
some of the biggest names across
all the other sports like Josh Hill, Jaie
Toohey and Ryan Williams.
I heard that you turned down the
opportunity for live TV coverage as
well. What was your thinking there?
While contests are the one thing that
keeps our sport alive, the audience
also has to be pleased. The show
needs to be amazing, exciting and
make them want to come back
and see it again. So we aimed to
customize our show for the audience
experience and make it the best event
in the history of extreme sports.
Even though we had a 12-camera
production and big screens, I said ‘no’
to live TV, because – and all credit to
X Games as they’ve done so much
for our sport, and we need them –
but for the audience that are there,
when there’s a commercial break
the commentator barely talks to the
audience. It’s completely built for TV.
On my journey over the past 15 years,
I’ve taken all the good stuff I’ve seen
and tried to create something that
emphasized all those good things. u