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Griffin Paulson is ranked as the seventh track-style mountain biker in the world.
At just 25 years old, this is his year of celebration as a leading freerider on foreign circuits.
But if you ask the average Joe from Prince George, Paulson’s hometown, there’s little chance that many other people will know who he is or be aware of the tricks he can do on his bike.
He doesn’t hesitate to throw himself 30 feet into the air to achieve a “Look mom, no hands” jump, or to take an uncontrolled jump in a frontal turn that forces him to remove either hand from the bars. You have enough suspension time to perform 360 triple turns on the tail: 3 full horizontal rotations of your motorcycle with your feet on the pedals, and land safely. It takes courage and a lot of practice to do it safely in front of the crowd with pressure, but that’s precisely what Paulson did last time. month on the Crankworx World Tour in Innsbruck, Austria.
Paulson, the only Canadian qualified Slopestyle runner, finished tenth out of 14 athletes on the June 18 tour. He crashed into his first drive, but emerged unscathed and then controlled a set of almost the best moment.
“Canada really has a very smart reputation for having some of the most productive slopestyle riders, the freeride was born in Kamloops,” Paulson said. I dreamed of riding is amazing. It’s something I’ve been looking to do since I was young and I’m definitely proud to be the only Canadian, one of two Americans. Everyone else is European.
Paulson competed last year on a gold point occasion in Poland and finished fifth with 4 riders who already qualified for the diamond point and that opened the door for him to face the most productive runners in the world. On his first world championship occasion, he narrowly missed the podium last summer at Crankworx at the Silver Star Mountain Resort near Vernon, completing fourth place in his career, and then finished fifth in November at Crankworx in Rotorua, New Zealand. On both occasions, he was the only runner with a Canadian passport. .
“It was wonderful to have the first occasion of Crankworx in Canada and directly at Silver Star, where I went skiing as a child,” he said. “I got fourth place in the first round of the day and won very clever applause. of the crowd. It helped me accumulate points.
Paulson began riding his family’s assets southwest of Prince George’s West Lake, where he and his father Grant built a world-class educational center. trails or throwing yourself into a curve at the end of the pier on a sheet of plywood stacked on tires in the lake. He now has an airbag made of a curtain that allows the motorcycle to slide and uses it to expand his amazing new Trick. The Paulsons live at the southern end of West Lake, facing the public beach, and other people by boat avoid watching their education careers.
Paulson began participating in Red Bull events in Europe at the age of 16. Their next festival will take place from July 28 to 31 at the Silver Star Bike Park, home of the Slopestyle Crankworx Summer Series Gold Level event, which is part of the Freeride. Mountain Bike World Tour. Se plans another gold-level occasion for the grand white ski hotel near Kelowna, Aug. 4-6. of the highlights of the Crankworx Whistler Mountain Bike Festival.
“The event is that Whistler is the biggest mountain bike event, the one that has the highest prestige and in which each and every one must participate,” Paulson said. “I’ve seen it live each and every year for the last 10 years. , however, I have never been there. “
Also on the horizon for Paulson is the Red Bull District Ride on September 2 and 3 in Nuremberg, Germany. The tour will be installed in a giant public plaza on the roof of a construction site to create a 60-foot ramp that leads to other jumping elements. that stick to the cobbled streets before 80,000 spectators. It will be broadcast live on Red Bull TV. With more and more women involved in the downhill style of mountain bikes, there is tension to make it an Olympic occasion and Paulson hopes that day will come before the end of his competitive career.
COVID has been at each and every festival for nearly two years and to help make itself known within the world governance framework of the sport and qualify for Diamond-level events, Paulson hired a film team from 6ix Sigma Productions to create a video of part of his education. photographed in the field of his West Lake home, he demonstrates some of the first state-of-the-art global tricks he can now accomplish as a daredevil freeride.
You can see him perform a double backflip that becomes more complicated with a rotation of the handlebar before its momentum takes it to the time of the somersault.
Paulson grew as an athlete and played Level 1 hockey at Prince George as a forward until he was 15. He lived in Penticton his 8th and 9th years attending the Okanagan Hockey Academy, which emphasized the importance of nutrition, intellectual preparation/visualization, dry field training/gym, stretching and warming up have taken root and he uses what he learned as a hockey player to prepare for mountain bike competitions.
During the bloodless months, Paulson lives and trains at the Maple Ridge indoor skate/bike park, where he spent the last two winters. your technical skills.
“I missed a little bit of some of the skatepark rankings where you have to be a little faster and I know that going there the last two winters surely blew up my technical talent and how fast and serene I was,” he said.
Paulson wears padded braces and has been informed to absorb a fall by remaining flexible and riding on impact, such as what doubles or professional wrestlers want to know about injuries. He has had to deal with several driving-related injuries over the years: 3 damaged collarbones, a damaged hand, a damaged wrist, and an ACL knee injury.
Despite the risk, Grant Paulson says it’s less difficult over the years to watch his child do things that parents don’t like to see their children looking to ride bikes.
“It was stressful at first, but you get used to it, it’s still stressful, but you get used to it,” Grant said. “Injuries are a big component, in the back of your mind. This educational center that we have across the lake is a world-class site and you see it do it every day and you lose perspective. Then you move on to some of those great competitions and you really appreciate how well it does and what we have there. You’re a little blinded because you’re so used to it.