The MTB Triple Backflip

Prologue
I first heard of Ethen Roberts when I saw a Facebook video of his incredible superman double backflip during a live show. My first impulse was to get in touch with him immediately and ask him if there was any way he would be interested in having a photo session at some point, but then I chickened out and postponed the email to an indefinite point in the future („tomorrow…“). Luckily, a short while later, another video popped up in my social media stream: it was Ethen again, this time sending massive double backflips and tsunami flips on a natural jump in the Utah desert. I was hooked for good: just a couple of weeks earlier, I had been at that same spot as well, while covering the Red Bull Rampage for my first time. And now this guy did these crazy new tricks in that amazing landscape. This time I wrote him a message as quickly as I could, and sure enough, just a couple of hours later we were in talks about a photo session in the spring of 2014. I had planned to go there with Antoine Bizet anyway, to shoot some photos for his upcoming interview in FREERIDE Magazine. And just like that, plans were made and a shooting date was set for the springtime desert in Virgin, Utah…

March 2014
When we met a couple of weeks later, it turned out to be one of the funniest, most progressive sessions I had ever covered. Antoine sent a couple of crazy tricks for his FREERIDE interview and Ethen seemed to be quite in is element as well. Cam McCaul and Kyle Strait showed up at one point and were pretty stoked to see Ethen send his signature Tsunami Flip as well as a couple of big bike double backflips.

When we were sitting together after the session and talking about everyone’s upcoming trips and plans, Ethen and Kollyn, his filmer friend, showed me a cellphone video of Ethen, throwing perfect Triple Flips into a foam pit in Australia. Until then, the Triple had been some kind of a dream trick – a very exclusive club of riders had thought about doing it, but no one was even close to giving it a serious effort outside of a foam pit. And now Ethen stated matter-of-factly that he was going to do it later that year, probably in summer when he had some time off from the Nitro Circus shows. I told him that I would be down to document it and with a handshake the deal was sealed. In hindsight it’s crazy to see how flawless it all went and I’m very happy about how it all went down.

June 2014
I hadn’t heard anything from Ethen for a couple of weeks and was standing on the 26TRIX dirtjump course in Leogang, Austria, when I got a text from Ethen stating that the Triple was going to go down one week later. Two days earlier, Antti Rissanen had sent the first MTB Frontflip Flair on a quarter jump we had built close to my home and on that very day, Antoine Bizet sent the first MTB Double Backflip Nohand during his run at the 26TRIX comp. And now Ethen wanted to send the Triple – the month had been absolutely incredible already and now the best seemed to be saved for last.

Some days later I found myself gazing out of a plane window, descending through scattered clouds backlit by an absolutely gorgeous sunset over the salt lakes of Utah. Salt Lake City presented itself in a breathtaking fashion and I hoped that this was a sign of great things to come in the next days. Ethen and Kollyn picked me up from the airport and we headed to Ethen’s parents‘ place to set up base camp for the upcoming project. There I was introduced to the rest of the Triple Session A Team: Ethen’s younger brother Tyler and his cousin Gavin Godfrey. I was quite stunned to hear that all three of them were planning on sending Triples to dirt – Tyler on BMX and Ethen and Gavin on 26 inchers. Three boys from the same family, all of them eager to join the very exclusive club of triple flippers, whose members at that point consisted solely of the BMXers Jed Mildon and James Foster. Quite the plot twist!!
On the next day, the boys took me to the location and showed me the beast of a takeoff that would launch them into the Utah skies. At almost 4m of height it was the biggest MTB ramp I had seen so far, and it looked scary as hell. The jump trajectory promised some serious airtime and I couldn’t wait to see how the practice jumps were going to look on photos.
The game plan for the next days was quite simple: set up a giant Bagjump airbag to practice into, send a lot of Triples onto the bag, then take the bag away, put a dirt landing in its place and stomp the trick to dirt! Easy enough.

Once the airbag was inflated, the boys didn’t lose much time with other tricks and went straight to Triple work. I have to say, I was quite intimidated by the sheer size of the entire setup. The takeoff monster catapulted the riders about 12m up in the air and about 15, 16m far. These were some serious numbers but of course, what would you expect of a jump that was suppose to provide enough airtime to get three controlled flips around…

It was pretty clear right from practice start that all three of the boys had their trick on lock. This was a huge relief, since it would have been quite sketchy had there been any major inconsistencies or other issues. On the contrary – Tyler, Ethen and Gavin looked perfectly comfortable with the Triple, even to the point of landing them on the super soft airbag and actually riding away. After a couple of practice days, it was finally time for the Grande Finale – with lots of help from Ethen’s and Gavin’s friends, we removed the Bagjump and Gavin’s brother Tanner started building the massive dirt landing…

Monday, June 24th, 2014 – T Day…
I can’t say that I slept very well during the night before Triple Day, I was definitely anxious to see the day’s outcome and of course I was scared as well. With high consequence tricks like this one, there’s always a fine line that the athletes are riding on. In order to do something that no one else has done before, they have to push their boundaries of course but at the same time, it’s absolutely clear to everyone that the slightest mistake – or even just plain bad luck with one of the many uncontrollable factors, can result in a disastrous outcome.
Tyler tried the Triple first go, without a warmup trick to test out the landing – and overshot pretty heavily, ditching his BMX after the second flip and landing on his back at the very end of the landing. He immediately held his back and started yelling that he was in serious pain, but luckily he didn’t show any signs of nerve damage. Nevertheless he was taken to the hospital to get a thorough check out done.

Scary start into the session!! Nevertheless, Ethen and Gavin were still in the game and were hungry for the world premiere. Ethen sent a warmup double flip and went for the Triple on his second jump, overrotating straight to his back and knocking the wind out of himself. After a couple of minutes he declared that he was going to take a break for a while and then decide how to proceed. Gavin broke his handlebar when he exited his own Triple attempt after the second flip, but came out of the crash landing without bodily harm. The session had come to a weird stop – with Tyler out and Ethen visibly hurting, Gavin was the only one left to claim the Triple Flip any time soon. After replacing his bars, he headed up the inrun again and then, just like that, sent the first ever Triple on a MTB and stomped it as clean as possible…

As soon as everyone was done with the first celebration of Gavin’s success, Ethen stated that he was going to go for it again. Despite being beaten up by the crash landing, he wanted to get the Triple done and out of his system. It took him another three crashes before he finally launched his own perfect one into the golden late afternoon skies and rolled away victoriously.

Two Triples on the same day, from two cousins… what were the odds of this happening.

After bringing the project to a more than successful end, it was time to celebrate of course, and the last day of my trip to Utah ended with a big barbecue for everyone involved at Ethen’s place, with lots of trampoline jumping, heaps of cake and a big screening of the video and photo footage on the (very impressive) home cinema system that was greeted by massive cheers from the entire crew. Definitely an appropriate way to finish the trip off!!

The shots were printed in FREERIDE (Ethen) and DECLINE (Gavin) and it still makes me cherish the memories I collected whenever I see the photos or think back to that session in Utah. Thanks Ethen, Gavin, Kollyn and everyone else involved! It was a blast!