Awesome. You briefly touched on
judging just now, but I heard you
introduced a new judging format as
well. How did that work?
It seems everyone – X-Fighters, Nitro
Circus, IFMXF, X Games – has their
own judging systems, but I want to
standardize how the sport is judged in
a way that people understand.
We decided we needed to eliminate
the variables and agree on what a trick
is worth, then add style and execution
scores.
So we made a list of all the tricks, then
the judges set scores for each up to
100 before we went to the riders and
asked them for their thoughts. We took
the average from all the riders and all
the judges, and that confirmed the
difficulty score for each trick.
The only things the judges judged was
style points and overall impression.
That score scale will be optimised after
a few events.
I think it’s cool you involved the
riders in that process. You know
probably better than anyone which
tricks are harder than others, but
you still went back to get the riders’
thoughts.
You have to. But what’s exciting is what
we can do in the future. This year is
just version 1.0 with Stact [the app]. In
version 2.0 there’s potential for both
the crowd and the riders themselves to
be additional judges by using the Stact
app on their mobile phones. In version
3.0, we can have people judging from
their couch from home.
Another cool feature with Stact is a
chip you can install on each bike and a
camera following the rider around, so
the judges and the audience at home,
or at the arena can scroll back on the
replay of a trick or a crash.
That’s amazing. It’s exciting to think
how technology will be able to help
remove the variables in judging, but
also involve the crowd.
Live entertainment desperately needs a
way to interact with the audience. Hell,
they’re on their phones anyway so why
not give them something to do on it?
So leading up to Ullevaal Xtreme,
now many events have you
promoted?
I’ve done about 30-40 events of
different sizes. I just love the sport, but
I’m 36, I have 1.5 meters of steel in my
body and 30 broken bones. I couldn’t
keep doing contests, and I chose another
road to stay in the sport longer. I love
the creative part of being a promoter
– my passion’s gone from trying to be
the best in the world to trying to please
an audience and give everyone a great
experience.
Norway seems like a fairl y interesting
place to try and make a living out
of promoting action sports events
though.
Oh, it’s been a fight. Norway’s a small
country of 4.5 million people and I’m
going against all the odds here. There
have been tough times where I haven’t
made much money at all, but I’ve kept
at it because I believed in it, the word is
spreading and the product we have is
making people excited.
Was this part of your plan, to build up
to something like Ullevaal Xtreme?
I knew one day I’d invite riders to an
event like this. That was my goal and
I’m confident enough to say that I’ve got
really good at it. With my experience as
an athlete and enthusiasm for the shows,
after this I’ll be ready to take on new
challenges as well.
There needs to be more people like
me doing this, as we need as many big
events as possible to keep our sport
existing and progressing. If there are no
events, the riders have nothing to push
for.
When did you quit competing in FMX
and why?
You know, it’s a story I’ve never told
internationally and people probably
wonder why I quit.
First of all, I accomplished much, much
more than I thought I ever would, but
you’re always chasing more medals and
more wins. Then when I broke my femur
in Poland in that horrific crash [in 2011],
I thought I was going to die. I broke my
pelvis in seven places, my femur was just
f**ked, and I was in a wheelchair for six
weeks. I decided to come back after that
– it wasn’t going to be my end.
So against all the doctors’ orders, I
came back to ride X-Fighters in Dubai,
which was my first contest back. After
everything I’d just been through, I didn’t
even know if I could ride again, but I
qualified second. u