En 1997, il n'y avait aucune série de contests au Japon. En fait, il y avait bien quelque chose, une sorte de championnat mais trop de problèmes d'organisation en ont écourté l'existence. M.Nakayama, Takashi Ito et Kotaro Tanaka ont alors commencé leur propre série de contests.
Medias : Inside #2, www.agoride.com, ...
Place : Tokyo, The Rox Place (terrain de foot en salle).
120 inscrits.
Thomas Bernard, www.agoride.com : Bien que simple streeter à deux pegs, je ne pouvais rater l’opportunité de partir 10 jours au Japon pour assister à l’un des plus importants contest de flat au monde. Bref me voilà parti dans un monstrueux Boeing 747 pour 10 heures de vol, avec 40 cm pour caser mes longues jambes. Vers 19h local time, arrivée à Tokyo pour 10 jours au pays du soleil levant. Premiers jours, et premières galères.
DAY 00. Takashi Ito vient nous chercher pour nous amener chez Richard, un gars aux yeux bridés et aux monstrueuses dreads. Première galère, les portes au Japon mesurent 1m80 de haut, et je fais 1m85; je me suis donc éclaté la tête.
DAYS 01. Yuho vient nous chercher, direction l’unique shop de bmx du Japon. Puis, bonne session de flat dans un pur spot à l’entrée du métro, avec carrelage bien plat. Des Américains de passage, l’un avec des grands pieds et une voix de canard et l’autre plus typé indien. Le premier rentrait un tomawak 360 whip to tomahawk, alors que le deuxième prénommé Anthony se permettait de sortir des death truck en turbine avec la clope au bec. Un local prénommé Shinosuki avec un style bien perso, fait une sorte de inside squeak to 360 body varial to funky.
Days 02. Deuxième galère : plus de tunes et surtout, il n’y a pas moyen d’en retirer même avec une " carte visa mastercard gold sans plomb 16 soupapes ". Bref, 2 heures de voiture pour prendre 2000 francs. Au Japon, évitez la voiture : c’est long, c’est dur et surtout c’est cher, genre 140 francs pour 1h15 dans un parking. Le contest King Of Ground. Direction The Rox Place, le site du king of ground qui est en fait un terrain de foot en salle (rappelons que Tokyo accueille des épreuves du mondial de foot 2002). Sur le spot 20 gars qui practicent fort alors qu’il est 23h. Ce sont des découpeurs de vaches folles : un niveau que je n’avais vu auparavant.
DAYS 05. THE KOG DAY. Dès 8h du mat, c’est déjà blindé devant les portes. À 12 h le chiffre tombe : 120 inscrits pour un contest de flat. Les novices sont les premiers à passer. A ce moment, j’ai pris la claque de ma vie, car le niveau des novices égalait, voire surclassait, le niveau de certains de nos experts français. Le premier attaque fort avec un hitchiker whip. Les novices japonnais attendent beaucoup avant de faire des contests. Le plus surprenant entre les riders, c’est la bonne ambiance qu’il y a entre eux, beaucoup plus cool qu’en France.
Au tour des experts, c’est Akira qui prend le micro pour deux heures de tchatch et là, 2ème claque. Certains experts sont bien meilleurs que certains de nos pros. Les turbines, les changements de pieds, les bunny hop tailwhip n’ont plus de secrets pour eux, et le public commence à devenir chaud. Les Japonais aiment la vitesse, tous leurs tricks sont faits à vive allure, à l’image de Wuki Maehata, qui roule trop vite pour moi. Je n’ai pas réussi à prendre un barwhip en photo tellement sa vitesse frôlait le mur du son, ou alors les gars restent tellement peu de temps sur leurs tricks que ça tient plus du tricot.
En matant les pros j’ai changé d’avis sur le flat, mais je n’ai encore rien vu. Le public était déjà excité mais le pire restait à venir quand Richard prit le micro pour enflammer la salle. J’aurais bien voulu savoir ce qu’il racontait car ça avait l’air drôle. Ce gars se mouchait, toussait, crachait ou bien rotait et tout ça avec un public en délire.
En pro il y avait : Takashi "le sex symbol", Akira, "playmobil" Steingraber. Il y a un moment où le niveau est tellement haut qu’il est difficile pour moi simple streeter à 2 pegs de comprendre et expliquer leurs tricks.
DAYS 06. Riding à Sinjuku, un pur spot malgré un sol un peu trop agressif pour les pneus. Puis directions le bowling pour une partie très animée. La peur du caissier quand nous sommes arrivés à 30 riders bien excités et prêts à foutre la merde. Vers 4 heures du mat la sécurité nous fait évacuer.
DAYS 07. shopping
DAYS 08. La journée débute par une session à Jinjuku pour les flateux, personnellement je suis parti voir un peu les spots de street histoire de... Pour moi, la défense, c’est déjà un must ! Mais là !!! Des purs gaps, des feebles à kick, des rails par centaines. De la folie… La soirée en boîte, l’un des moments de ce séjour. Ahhh le Asia Club : une boite très sympa avec des filles et des garçons, des gros et des maigres, des petits et … des petits ! Le Show de la soirée fut une démo de flat sur un sol recouvert de confettis et de bières et surtout 6m sur 4m pour rouler ce qui n’a pas empêché les Japonais de rentrer toutes les figures. Vers 6 heures du mat, visite du mont Fuji et photos avec des peloches Fuji bien sûr.
Le dur retour... DAYS 09. Couché vers 7 h du mat, levé vers 14 h, nous partons à Yokohama à trois heures de route pour visiter. Finalement direction l’aéroport pour rentrer en France. Un grand séjour au Japon duquel je repars la tête pleine de choses et le sac plein de pellicules. Un grand merci à Takashi et ces parents, Akira, Yuho, Artzone pour avoir trouvé les billets, Gougoule, et tous les riders du japon.
Rox3 multi court, Asakusa, Tokyo, November 10th, 2002.
Medias : Cream #19 january 2003, www.agoride.com
Report, results.
1.Ryoji Yamamoto (yanmar), 2.Akira Okamura 3.Yoshihiro Shinde 4.Yasusi Tanabe 5.Takahiro Enoki 6.Kotaro Tanaka 7.Takasi Ito 8.Eiichirou Watanabe 9.Makoto Sezaki 10.Shinichiro Hara 11.Yosuke Suzuki 12.Tomoaki Nakatuji 13.Hideki Kawai 14.Takuma Kawamura 15.Yutaka Tamaki 16.Yuji Shirai 17.Kazuma Nakajima 18.Yosuke Sakuma 19.Seiji Sakata 20.Kenji Horikawa 21.Yuhou Azuma 22.Terry Adams 23.Viki Gomez 24.Alex Jumelin 25.Michel Steingraber 26.Hiroya Morisaki 26.Cory Stratycheck 28.Travis Colier 29.Alexis Desolneux 30.Filipp Frueh 31.Magrow James 32.Frank Lucas 33.Gabe Kadmiri 34.Jeff Desroche 34.Cédric Borghi 36.Brian Tunney 37.Raphaël Chiquet 38.Armin Batoumeni 39.Christophe Dassié 40.Leif Valin
April 20th, Asakusa Rox3 multi courte, Tokyo
Round 2
June 28th, 29th (2 days), Oasis 21, Nagoya
Round 3
September 7th, TWIN 21, Osaka
Round 4
November 15th, 16th., Asakusa Rox 3 multi courte, Tokyo
May 29-30, 2004, Oasis 21, Nagoya, Japan.
August 1st, 2004, Nigata phase, Nigata, Japan.
23 et 24 octobre ROX 3, Tokyo, Japon
2005 King Of Ground Flatland #1, National arthritic meeting memorial gymnastic hall, Fukushima, Fukusima pref, Japan. Start: Sunday April 24, 2005. End: Sunday April 24, 2005.
Medias : Cream magazine #13, www.fatbmx.com, ...
www.fatbmx.com : The King of Ground contest series over in Japan has started. The KGB crew flew over from Europe to do some damage. Kuoppa finished in 11th but Gomez got 4th and newest KGB member Alexandre Jumelin grabbed the win. The Japanese filled in the rest of the spots.
Hyogo pref, Kobe city, Horbor land, July 30th and 31st.
Day 1 for novice and expert and day 2 for pro.
Entry fee : Pro 5500 yen, Expert 3500 yen , Novice 2500 yen.
Bobby K. Carter, www.global-flat.com, august 2005 : I`m back in Japan, this time at KOG Round 2 in KOBE. I`m wiritng this on the fly from a bike shop in Yokosuka called Cycle Cave. (Thanks Jun for the use of the laptop!) Thanks to Ken-san and his JYKK tour bus, we able to travel across the island from Yokosuka to Kobe. After about 8 or 9 hours we parked at Kobe docks at about 2:30am. In celebration, we decided to session a little bit before crashing out. The contest venue was at a large mall with about 5 levels. There were people on every level watching the riders battle it out.
EVERYBODY that I had seen at last year`s KOG in Nagoya had progressed. This year there were about 6 girl riders entering and many more spectating. One girl was nine years old, rocking firehydrants! The future of flatland is going to be crazy.
There were a wide range of skill levels in the novice and expert classes. Some of the novice class riders were at expert skill level. The winner of the expert class was riding at pro level and did some crazy back wheel combos with his foot on the seat post. After winning expert, he proceeded to make it to the finals in pro the next day.
The level of the pro class is skyrocketing. It`s amazing to see these riders and think about the time everyone has dedicated to mastering their art. A Tokyo rider named Yohei Uchino took the gold medal. He was on fire as he owned all turbine halfpacker variations. The guy can pump turbine any trick. He looks like he`s dancing on his bike. Omedeto! (Congatulations!) to this swimming instructor.
MC Sharlee and his partner held it down with their colorful conversations about flatland and kept the crowd hyped for two days straight. Going to one of these competitions is always motivating. The diverse styles and dedication are sure to pump anyone up!
Expert : 1.Hirokazu Miura 2.Keisuke Tanigawa 3.Akira Okamura 4.Yousuke Yamaguchi 5.Akihiro Matsuura 6.Takayuki Iwa 7.Yasunori Nakano 8.Yuki Takeuchi 9.Keiji Nakamura 10.Yorimitsu Miyata
Novice : 1.Syunsuke Komatsu 2.Tasuya Fujii 3.Go Wakai 4.Kensaku Nishino 5.Kenjiro Okada 6.Daisuke Miyazaki 7.Kazuhiko Hamasaki 8.Takahiro Seki 9.Raiki Yonehara 10.Kenzo Harada
Tokyo , Asakusa, ROX3 multi court, Oct 22nd and 23rd.
Day 1 for pro and day 2 for novice and expert.
Entry fee : Pro 5500 yen, Expert 3500 yen , Novice 2500 yen.
www.global-flat.com : Whatever you thought you knew about Flatland contests or Flatland in general, if you have not been to one of the King of Ground contests in Japan, in the best case the finals of the three contests a year series, you might have to think again. As far as I have experienced it, it seems in Europe and the USA, too many riders do mostly the same tricks. Sure, everybody has their own style, some do tricks that are a little more difficult, some even do really, really hard stuff. But in the end, only a few riders stand out, the rest pretty much looks the same to me.
At this years KOG finals in Tokyo, my mind was once again opened to how beautiful a thing Flatland can be. It was a two day event, with 194 riders in total. When I got to the venue at 9:15 Saturday morning, riders stood next to one another along the barriers surrounding the contest area, leaving no gap for another rider. But only four of them were riding at a time, giving each other enough space to try their tricks at least a few times before the contest would start at 10 o’clock. This was the novice class, and I was impressed with the quality of riding. I had the feeling that most riders rather tried to do some tricks very well instead of doing too many tricks and pulling none. With 90 riders in this class, there was no space at all for me to ride. I went for a walk around the Asakusa area, where the contest was held in a multi sport court next to a mall called Rox. This court can be rented for events, as done by the crew around Takashi Ito, who organizes the KOG series. While I was wandering around, the contest progressed and in the early afternoon hours I came back to see the expert class riding. This class had 79 riders, many of them so good it embarrassed me to be riding pro. Earlier this year the expert class has seen York Uno and Akira Okamura, who was riding expert again at the Finals. This is the 2004 pro World Champion if anyone forgot. That seems rather strange to many, but it is simply a result of the strict rules for KOG.
Unless you are a visiting foreigner, you have to qualify for the pro class. You can either do that by winning one of the expert events on a Saturday and turning pro the next day, or by getting top three in the year end standings. Since both Akira and York did not compete in 2004, they had to qualify for the pro class for 2005. Yes, Japan can be very strict, but I think this is a result of so many people living on such a small area. If you don’t obey the rules, you will end up in total chaos all too soon.
Back to the contest: Sunday was the day for the pros. Since Akira won the expert class, that qualified him for the pro contest on Sunday. He actually had an awesome run in the expert finals, but could not repeat it in pro qualifying, so he missed the cut. Foreigners who came to ride in the KOG Finals were Art Thomason from the US, Martti Kuoppa, Alexis Desolneux and myself. Not very many compared to previous years, for reasons I don’t know. Anyway, Sunday started with some early practice, registration and then what was called the “One Touch Jam”. Whoever wanted to take part signed up for it and had a maximum of three tries to pull a difficult combo that represents his style. Before that started, I realized Martti had disappeared and not returned. He mentioned before he had some stuff to do at his Hotel. Until he came back, nobody knew what he had to do. When he returned, it was pretty obvious. He had decided to paint his face in warrior style, which earned him the nickname “Mr. Pumpkin” for the day. To me, it was a thing that one could think about, but would never have the courage to do. Martti did it and it was great! Well, 17 riders signed up for the “One Touch Jam”, and as you know the winner turned out to be Martti Kuoppa!
For the actual contest we were 29 riders in the pro class, riding the prelims in three groups, with 15 minutes practice time in between the groups. I was nervous, because you can imagine it is tough to qualify in a strong field of mostly Japanese pros. Since all amateur prelims and finals had been held on Saturday, there seemed to be a bit of a gap after the prelims with everyone wondering what was to happen next. Some riding took place and soon the finalists were announced. Long story short, Martti qualified first. I also made the cut and was happy! Everone warmed up again and as usual, the tenth place qualifier started off the finals and the number one qualifier ended the finals. In this case it was Martti, who also won the Finals.
Other stand outs were Kotaro Tanaka with a very dialled run and great showmanship and Hiroya Morisaki, with his all or nothing attitude.
I did not actually see their runs, but they must have been good, because they got third and second respectively. After the finals were over, everyone was just waiting for the trophies being handed out, the pro year end standings, which Takuma Kawamura won with Kotaro Tanaka in second and Hiroya Morisaki in third. After a closing ceremony everyone went their ways, many probably thinking of the next KOG.
Expert
1.Akira Okamura 2.Eiji Kataoka 3.Hidekazu Kuga 4.Tomokazu Morinaga 5.Yorimitsu Miyata 6.Koutarou Arai 7.Norihiko Kouno 8.Yousuke Yamaguchi 9?Kenshirou Hori
Novice
1.Masato Ito 2.Katsushi Tanaka 3.Yukiya Murata 4.Kouhei Fujii 5.Shouhei Okamoto 6.Takumi Etou 7.Kouichi Higo 8.Yuuki Sugimoto 9.Fumihisa Maeda 10.Kazuya Kuwahara
Expert Year End Standings : 1.Yousuke Yamaguchi 2.Eiji Kataoka 3.Takayuki Iwa 4.Hironao Doukou 5.Yorimitsu Miyata 6.Masataka Yamamoto 7.Yuki Takeuchi 8.Tomoyasu Nozaki 9.Keisuke Tanigawa 10.Akihiko Takahasi
Expert 1 Moto Sasaki 2 Keisuke Tanigawa 3 Hironao Doukou 4 Keiji Nakamura 5 Akihiko Takahasi 6 Yoshiki Uchino 7 Masataka Yamamoto 8 Yorimitsu Miyata 9 Ikkou Tanaka 10 Syuichi Osada 11 Tomoyasu Nozaki 12 Kazuma Nakajima 13 Shinpei Hanawa 14 Kazuma Sakou 15 Tomokazu Morinaga 16 Yoshiki Higuchi 17 Keisuke Matsumoto 18 Yoshiaki Mukai 19 Fumiya Sasagawa 20 Toshihiro Mitsuda 21 Yosuke Sakuma 22 Takeshi Hiraguri 23 Yukihiro Kurashima 24 Masato Ito 25 Tatsuya Hori 26 Ryousuke Kobayashi 27 Norihiko Kouno 28 Yousuke Shibuya 29 Taikou Kaneta 30 Keiji Sasaki 31 Masanori Takayama 32 Takahiro Abe 33 Daiki Aono 34 Kenshirou Hori 35 Kazunori Miyamoto 36 Brett Dighton 37 Michitarou Abe 38 Yuki Sakai 39 Shouhei Okamoto 40 Satoshi Ojima 41 Takahisa Mitaki 42 Kouji Touyama 43 Takashi Ishida 44 Yuki Sugimoto 45 Yorihisa Shiota 46 Takahiro Matsuo 47 Masatoshi Karino 48 Takayuki Nakamura
Pro 1 Takahiro Nishikawa 2 Kotaro Tanaka 3 Michel Steingraeber 4 Youhei Uchino 5 Takuma Kawamura 6 Hirokazu Miura 7 York Uno 8 Hideki Kawai 9 Hiroya Morizaki 10 Shintaro Misawa 10 Shinichi Kiba 12 Yoshihiro Shinde 13 Yutaka Tamaki 14 Seiji Sakata 15 Shinichiro Hara 16 Fumiaki Okayama 17 Tomoaki Nakatuji 17 Moto Sasaki 19 Junichiro Sakamoto 20 Yousuke Yamaguchi 21 Namito Watanabe 21 Takayuki Iwa
22 juillet 2007
Fukushima (Japon)
2 Hirokazu Miura *
3 Yoshihiro Shinde
4 Hiroya Morizaki
5 Yoshiki Uchino
6 Shintaro Misawa *
7 Takayuki Iwa
8 Fumiaki Okayama
9 Pichit Woraa-nan
10 Akihiko Takahasi
11 Yoshihiro Nishikawa *
12 Takuma Kawamura
13 Ryoji Yamamoto
14 Shinichi Kiba
15 Moto Sasaki
16 Shinichiro Hara
17 Junichiro Sakamoto
18 Hidekazu Kuga
19 Seiji Sakata
20 Keisuke Matsumot
1 Yoshiki Uchino
2 Hiroya Morizaki
3 Martti Kuoppa
4 Youhei Uchino
5 Ryoji Yamamoto
6 Keisuke Tanigawa
7 York Uno
8 Shintaro Misawa
9 Takuma Kawamura
10 Yoshihiro Shinde
11 Shinichi Kiba
12 Syuichi Osada
13 Akihiko Takahasi
14 Moto Sasaki
15 Sebastian Pospischil
16 Hirokazu Miura
17 Hironao Doukou
18 Hidekazu Kuga
19 Kotaro Arai
20 Seiji Sakata
21 Akira Okamura
Expert
1 Akira Okamura
2 Tsutomu Kitayama
3 Tomokazu Morinaga
4 Takahiro Ikeda
5 Eiichirou Watanabe
6 Yorimitsu Miyata
7 Makoto Sezaki
8 Hironao Doukou
9 Katushi Tanaka
10 Yuki Sakai
11 Yousuke Sakuma
12 Tomoyasu Nozaki
13 Kenji Mori
14 Yousuke Shibuya
15 Mitsuki Itou
16 Gou Takuno
17 Kousei Suzuki
18 Yoshiaki Mukai
19 Yukinobu Kamura
20 Kazuma Sakou
