Rain had been predicted for the whole weekend so it looked like the Fool Jam in Kortrijk was going to get washed away, but Saturday morning it looked like a very nice day out. I checked the weather forecast to see what was up and it stated there would be some clouds but the rain got postponed to the late evening. After reading this good news, I packed my gear and headed to the station to catch a train.

Like every BMX contest I’ve ever been to, they weren’t going according the schedule. In this case it was a good thing, though. I arrived there little after Amateur was supposed to have started, but since they were still putting together the heats, I still had some time to say hi to everyone and take some test shots.

Kid carving the vert section of the bowl

The contest went by pretty quick altogether. Despite the heavily overcast sky and a few drops of rain, it practically stayed dry the whole day, like predicted. Everyone rode really well. As in the rest of the world, the level of riding in Belgium is going up quite a bit every year. It’s also really cool to see that kids these days not all just go for the craziest tricks, but care about style as well. The old-school racing style has totally made it’s comeback. Which is nice.

The old-school racing style has totally made it’s comeback. Which is nice.

Contest results, additional info and some videos can be found on www.fooljam.be and kemobmx.com. Thanks Jelle and crew for putting this event together! And Sami, a speedy recovery to you!

Greg Van Tulder with a huge table air.

After the contest was over, I went along with the Evolution crew from Brussels to the new skatepark in Roeselare. I didn’t take any pictures there, except for this one of an invert that Willem (Van Gansen) asked me to shoot for his sponsor Hangloose, an all-BMX shop in Brussels, but it didn’t turn out that great so we’ll probably do that again somewhere else on an other day. Although you couldn’t ride with pegs and the park was real slippery and most of the ramps were kind of steep with the coping sticking out, it ended up being a really cool session. Thanks again to Jimmy (Van Belle) and the guys of Evolution to drop me of in Ghent afterwards!

I also linked a gallery to this post with more pictures shot at this occasion. Click one off the thumbnails to jump to that picture or click here to jump to the gallery itself.

UPDATE – I put a more extensive gallery up on Facebook. If you like tagging al your friends in pictures, you should check that out here.