People trying to get back in the swing of things are commonly
told,
”
It’s just like riding a bike.
”
Gilroy – People trying to get back in the swing of things are commonly told, “It’s just like riding a bike.”
Well, if that is advice is coming from Gilroy’s Chad Kagy, you may want to think twice.
The average ride for Kagy usually involves cruising around on his BMX bike before barreling towards a 13-foot Vert ramp that vaults him twice as high over the ground. And then there is the whole coming down part.
“Whatever you do on the weekends for fun, spending all week working for, that’s what my daily workout is,” Kagy said by phone Friday night. “I just have fun throughout the week and ride my bike.”
Kagy is participating in the second stop of the AST Dew Tour in Cleveland this weekend and will be competing in the finals of the BMX Vert competition, which will air at 11:30am on NBC on Sunday.
Kagy finished last season’s Dew Tour second in the standings to Englishman Jamie Bestwick. The two are currently in the exact same position of this year’s standings, and a healthy competition is being waged at each event.
“It’s a friendly rivalry amongst everybody, with a little more edge with the Jamie Bestwick battle,” Kagy said. “It’s never bad, it’s just the battle is always there. He’s always regarded as the best Vert rider with the best skills in the world. He’s got a quite a few years on me on the Vert ramp. Maybe when I’m 34-35 I’ll be the best Vert rider.”
The 28-year-old Kagy shows no lack of confidence in his ability – which only makes sense considering the risk he takes with each event – and said he is trying to bring something new to the sport with each trick.
“My entire career, my goal was to be different from everyone else,” Kagy said. “I try to be an original.”
The trick Kagy is most known for is certainly original, if not outright crazy.
In the Superman Seat Grab, Kagy holds on to his feet with one hand while the other hand spins the handlebars all the way around.
“I’m ten feet over a 13-foot ramp, 23 feet above the ground,” Kagy said.
Showing such courage and flair is probably what made Kagy stand out to MTV producers, who picked him out of a group of 20 riders to be in a one-time reality show airing over the next six weeks.
Now living in State College, Penn., to be near the renowned BMX park Camp Woodward, Kagy still sometimes finds himself in shock that he gets to do what he loves for a living.
“A lot of the guys I’m competing against, that I looked up to and still look up to, (are) guys I was reading about in magazines in high school,” Kagy said. “And now I’m friends with them, going to their house to ride on their ramps, learning stuff from them and teach them something. It seems a little different than other sports, everybody’s friendly.”
That is until the competition starts. Kagy will be doing his best this weekend to cut into Bestwick’s points lead for the Tour. And then there’s the X-Games, the biggest extreme sports event of the year, coming up in two weeks in Los Angeles. All of the events riders participate in throughout the year effect who is selected to compete in the X Games.
“X games is almost a TV event now, hand chosen athletes, no qualifying rounds,” Kagy said. “The Dew tour and X games are almost in totally different worlds.”
Coming from someone whose job is to hold onto a bike for dear life while flying twenty-five feet above the ground, you can trust he knows something about different worlds.
