It’s been a couple of years now that I travel to Cologne with a bunch of friends for the BMX Masters. We usually leave with a couple of cars Thursday morning so we can ride a bit before the masses arrive, but this year I couldn’t make that departure. I only got Friday off so the only choice I had was to take the train Thursday evening after work and meet up with the rest of the group in Cologne. Usually travelling by train isn’t so bad. I do it all the time. And we have a direct Thalys line from Brussels to Cologne that if you book early even isn’t that expensive. Great! I couldn’t make the last Thalys though so I had to take four different smaller trains and in stead of a relaxed ride of about 3 hours, I jumped from one train on to the other for over five hours. But I did eventually get there and that really is al that mattered to me.

I’m sure that you guys already saw a ton of coverage of the event and read a lot of articles about the insane stuff that went down there, so I’m not going to hurt my brains trying to recall some stories somebody else probably already told anyway. If you would like to see a glimpse of the weekend how I saw it, though, I would like to invite you to look at my pictures.

Amazing turndown three. Nicely clicked, bike completely vertical.

What I do want to get off my chest however, is the fact that the organization this year the whole weekend only allowed competing riders on the courses. And yes I know this is the case at most bigger contests these days, but that was the best part of the Masters for me. Previous years as a visitor you brought your bike along, watched your favourite riders go completely nuts and right after that you could get on the course yourself and have a little session with them. Or a chill early mourning session. After a long night of street riding in the city you hit the showers, caught some sleep and got back up a few hours later to get back on your bike for a run or two before the course got to crowded again. That’s how addicted most of us are.

Brett Banasiewicz did these double tailwhips and made it seem easier than just airing over the damned thing.

This year on the other hand on our first early mourning session on friday I got kicked of the park seconds after I ended my first warm-up run, even though only five other riders were on it. Why the hell was that necessary? I do understand that when you ride in the contest you want some room to practice and that previous years the park was a zoo all the time because non-competitors just kept riding even when asked to leave the course.

Kick them off during scheduled practice runs and please do so aggressively if needed. But keep the courses open when nothing is planned.

But there is a golden middle road here. Kick them off during scheduled practice runs and please do so aggressively if needed. But keep the courses open when nothing is planned. Or even plan a jam session or two in there on these moments if you absolutely want to keep control over who’s riding when, but please let us normal visitors ride a little as well. That’s what we like to do and after getting so excited by the amazing riding during the contests not being able to get that energy out afterwards is really frustrating. Please do this differently next year!

Mark Webb who simply refused to ride in super-ramp, did kill it in park. Here is one of his great invert threes.

Freecaster has some nice movies online, but you’ve probably seen them already. The event’s website is the place to look for the results and the press-releases if can’t remember or just lived under a rock this summer. Other articles you can google for, I bet ‘BMX Masters 2010′ as search query returns you some interesting results.

See you next year!

UPDATE – A whole lot more pictures went up on facebook today. See them here and here. Let the tagging begin!