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King of Dirt: Wisley 2010 >>

(Click the photos to enlarge)

Lunatyk also sent us a few shots of Daryl, who actually remembered to wear a EZO shirt. (Click the images for larger versions).

Dear Mr Da Bank,

We would like to extend our utmost gratitude to you  for allowing us the pleasure of descending mob-handed upon your awesome festival for 3 days to absolutely smash up the Freesports park.

Kind regards

Henry Watson & Tom Wheeler

We arrived 7:30am Friday morning to a sleepy Lulworth Castle site, due to be populated with 25,000 excited festival goers in about 4 hours. First up – get accredited and search for a cuppa.

Cuppa tee inside, we are ready… we are always ready after a cup of tea.

The site is huge, I mean its blinkin’ mahoosive, massive tents, flags in the middle of the site like we‘re at Hogwarts, a myriad of food sellers you‘d need a month to get through em all and have Richard Bransons wallet to pay for it. Can you tell I’m not a festival regular? This might be because I have acute hay fever and sleeping on or seriously close to grass is literally my idea of a bad time. Luckily for one moaning fever sufferer Sainsbury’s’es had a special on Loratadine so I was well stocked up. I was ready for 3 days entertaining.

We had coaxed along some of the best Freestyle MTB riders in the UK to bust stunts in front of what proved to be an amazing bunch of people and not just any old crowd.
The EZO Freestyle demo team was ready, plus the guys from King of Dirt who helped us to make up the numbers and to create a stunt platoon of epic proportions – with collectively more podiums than the entire UK Olympic chess squad.
Friday was a chilled one – sorry! Traffic played havoc with arrival times but the hoards were more than entertained by the other awesome have-a-go activities happening on the Freesports park over the weekend. Climbing – on the brand new and expertly constructed wall. Free running and Parkour, Mountain boarding from the team at Ride the Hill and Jake and the team from Loco Skates taking care of the inline business.

Friday night we took in a couple of gourmet burgers, a few too many Highland Nails from the Drambuie bar, and got mad funky with the main man George Clinton and his sickening entourage (at one point we counted 19 people onstage).
Rain, leaking tent, wet hair but on the plus side at least there was no sneezing!
Saturday began like most days, with a cup of tea and 2 youths asleep on your sofa. Some cheeky young pups had infiltrated our HQ and fallen asleep on our leather sofa, most probably after some sort of delerium induced adventure the night before. A few gerrofs later and a couple of trips to the van, the EZO HQ was back to normal. Slowly but surely we saw riders struggling to come to terms with the fact they had to get up and act like regular human beings.

Our first demo was around 3pm but by mid day the riders had already drawn a whooping and clapping bunch, all sorts of ages too, the young and the young at heart. This proved to be the calm before the storm. What can I say about the actual demo apart from WOW. The spectators were amped, I’m even sure I saw a few people laughing at the nonsense I was nervously spouting whilst the riders eased into performing, before completely dominating the mega-ramp set up built expertly by our mates at xworks. Expert ramp builders and all round good beans!

The riders were nowhere near ready to stop riding after the afternoon show on Saturday. They demanded more, so be it, the evening session was created, a stunt show of severe proportions of such dusk based magnitude that not even the most beautiful sunset could detract from this awesome end to the day. More chilled than the earlier show but just as much fun – the crowd kept getting bigger as people were drawn from there tents like moths to a flamethrower.

This was a party vibe, any of the crew not seen riding, were dancing on top of the ramps and generally acting like disco-clowns for the crowd. EZO tees were thrust into the audience as reward for the best dance-based noise contributors. As the sun finally disappeared and the black crept in, we bid fare well to the aforementioned noise makers and suddenly there was silence… for about 3 seconds until Daryl started screeching and hollering like an excited St Trinian at the prospect of heading to the discotheque to drink party juice and throw all manner of shapes to sub-bass frequencies that only he can hear.

B R E A T H E

Saturday night. Madness. Bollywood tent. What’s in your bag Angelos? Slap in the face by a hippy with blue paint all over his/her hands. Goan fish curry. Dry night in tent. No sneezing… hmmm?!

Sunday morn, no youths on sofas due to the clever camouflaging. Superb coffee and sausage sarnies from the I Love Sausages crew, riders up early all super stoked about Saturdays performance and all wanting to get their pads on and get riding. No prompting needed… awesome.

Daryl kicked off the warm up on the park with an impromptu long jump sesh by moving the main kicker back, then back further hoping to smash his old record of 35ft. Oh boy oh boy he blew it out of the water. I think the final measurement was 50ft. Sick work Daryl!

Whilst Daryl was breaking records, Dexter ‘the brave’ as he is now known, was climbing the assortment of precariously placed ladders, making his way to the top of the uber ramp. Unfortunately for him there was a beast of a crowd now gathered below him… suddenly, from nowhere, a rhythmic clap started and it was all eyes on our man from Eastbourne. Time to shine Dex, do or die… 40ft gap… landed. The crowd went bananas. Only amateur on the park and he got the crowd pumped like Arnie.

The weather was looking good for the show, the wind was minimal. The last demo of the weekend was sure to be a hot one and the pressure was slightly on to out-do Saturdays performances. We knew we had the minerals but could we come correct?

OF COURSE WE COULD!

The riders absolutely smashed it to smithereens. The spectators were going bonkers, toddlers were being thrown in the air, Highland Nails were being spilled down tops. Imagine a scene from 28 days later! Luckily health and safety had ensured our safety the day before with an extra layer of riot protection barrier to keep the crowd in order.

Daryl Brown killed it with his signature no foot can and 15ft air out of the 1/4 pipe

Clinton Johns wrecked the park with a double tailwhip and flip whips to all sorts of madness on the 1/4.

Chopper took care of business with the sickest stretched superman i’ve seen.

Peran Clemmance bust out a clicked superflip.

Jack Gear executed any manner of back flip combos keeping the crowd with their hands in the air in amazement.

Gee’d up from the noise generated by the fans it was time for a ‘train’ of epic proportions. 5 bikes and their riders going upside down one after the other. 5 back flips in a row, i don’t know if i’ve seen this before. I have now and it was awesome!

More free EZO tee’s sent out into the crowd by Welsh super-dragon Danny Pace to keep the levels boosted while we set up the last and most dangerous stunt of them all. Death by 26”. Our assistant Georgia looked nervous as she laid down on the ramp. No sooner had she adjusted her sunglasses the riders were coming at her like she was Bella and they were teen-age sparkle vampires. Decapitated nearly, scared i’m sure she was. Did we break almost every safety rule  in the book? It turns out we didn’t… phew.

There is too much to tell and we have to say thank you to some amazing people in no particular order:

Andy, Phil, Badger and the X-works crew who made it all possible.

Nigel

Thanks to the guys from King of Dirt for moving a comp date especially for us. I hope you enjoyed yourselves.

Grant ‘Chopper’ Fielder, Ray Samson, James IOU (aka the fingernail-less wonder), Daryl Brown, Danny Pace, Ashley Stares, Jack Gear and Adam Williams (who we hope gets better soon – nasty, nasty stack doing the longest flip the park has ever seen), Peran Clemmence, Clinton Johns, Ed, Karl & Jam for working so hard. Anyone that came and said hi, bought a tee, hoody or cap. Simon Nieborak for the truly beautiful pictures, thanks for documenting the event. The awesome family from Brighton who, just as we were about to leave, gave us some seriously tasty meatballs and spaghetti for the long journey home.

Thank you if you cheered the riders on, we wouldn’t have enjoyed it half as much if you hadn’t!

Thank you Sainsbury for all the hayfever tablets, they really did the trick.

See you next year Camp Best-Of-All! (what say you Mr Da Bank?)

A huge shout-out to everyone who came to see us up at the Freesports park!  You helped to make our shows some of the best we have ever done! Henry (our enthusiastic commentator) is writing up a full account of our weekend in the form of a blog post which we’ll post up on the site in the next few days. Simon, our photographer has some simply amazing photos too, and we’ll be publishing the best ones in the full blog post, so make sure you check back soon to see if you can spot yourself in the crowd. He’s posted a few at the DMR Bikes website to whet your appetite.

Until then, check out our videos, find out about the team, or even visit our online store in case you didn’t get hold of what you wanted at the weekend.

Also, don’t forget to add us on facebook, and if you got any images of the shows make sure you tag them with ‘Ezo England’ so we can check them out!

Massive thanks from all the EZO crew!

No-one messes with Daryl in the style stakes. BUT we will have to reduce his salary by 21% for not wearing an EZO top.

Fresh from a tour of FMX duty in Dubai, Dave Wiggins gives us the all clear to go film some insane whip action on his home turf. Who are we to turn this one down?!

This is some behind the scenes type preview edit filmed and edited entirely on an iphone 4 (aka ‘the 4’) to get you hype for the full thing dropping in a week along with pics and a higher word count.

Dave sends some bangers on his noisy-bike. Enjoy.