It´s snowing outside now already for a couple days so things are finally quieting down... time to do a quick recap of what happened since my last entry.

Together with Gerhard Mayr and Brano Niks I did a sweet show at the Ursus Alcohol Free Track event in Cluj Napoca / ROM. Apart from the always-scary car-drive to get there everything turned out sweet being perfectly organized! Looking forward to be back next year but this time for a PROPER afterparty hahaa!

A couple days after returning home I took another 1.600km drive west to stay with my buddy Remi Bizouard. After a couple of days even Brice Izzo dropped by for some practice with the boys finishing 1st and 2nd the following weekend at the IFMXF in Riga! Needless to say the riding level was pretty wicked... :)

Merci beaucoup for the great time and practice, Remi! And congrats on the World Championship crown! Looks like you really listened to all my advice hehehe!

 

In October I was invited to ride the Night of the Jumps World Championship event in Zagreb, unfortunately the contest was cancelled a couple days before due to security reasons.

Since then I´ve been keeping myself busy pimping my compound, spending lots of time on tracks, riding enduro in Slovakia, downhilling and hitting the gym. Unfortunately the New Year´s show in Fiss ain´t gonna happen in 2009 so my next appearance will be at the Nacht der Ballone in Zell am See in January. Anyone being in the zone drop by, have some Vodka Gröbi and be happy! Til then thanks a lot to my sponsors Black Flys, DVS, Forty8.de, Ghost Bikes, GoldenTyre, Injoy Graz Ost, Mex925.cz, MP Suspension, Ogio, Roc Stompa and SixSixOne and merry X-Mas to you! Peace.

...so it´s time to fill you up on the happenings the last weeks. After the show in Grosshartmannsdorf I took some time off for vacation with my girl. Doing a road trip through Italy, France and even Monte Carlo (grazie per tutto, Davide! Sei il Presidente!! :) ) I did 1 show right next to Miki Monti´s hotel in Lido di Savio together with Miki (thanks Miki, nice work on those first mobile landing flips after your injury!), Bianco, Vanni and Carlo.

Fot the weekend after Petr Kuchar had invited me again to his annual FMX jam. Last year he had introduced a 14m radius-3.80m high-monster ramp that we jumped on 30m distance. Since I´m not so interested in straight tricks at the moment my whole goal for the weekend was to flip the big one which was pretty scary since I haven´t ever flipped in 3rd gear let alone 3rd gear wide open. This is how it went (díky moc, Robyn for the sequence shot!):

The last 2 weeks I took the time to ride my Ghost freerider down the mountains, work on my wakeboarding skills (Thanks Kaili - no broken ribs this time hehe!) and party with my buddies. Next week it´s time to spend some exciting time in the car again as I´m doing a show in Romania after that I´m planning to hit up Remi in France for some warm-weather-autumn riding!

Thanks for tuning in! Peace.

I finally took the time to finish building the sequence that Christoph took when we were riding Jan Brabec´ freeride place before the Horsefeathers Jam. Thanks for the shots, Christoph!

Peace.

Finally the spell has been broken!

For the first time this year I could actually ride at my practice compound that I´m building with my buddy Rene! The in-run and the area after the landing dry up real slow and with all the rainfalls since winter it was impossible to ride there.

Apart from that I finally took the time to hit up some nice MX tracks and even ride some enduro! Just a shame that no one anywhere near builds proper SX tracks...

Thanks to my sponsor Ghost who are supporting me with their top freeride bike (which my buddies at MP Supension worked over for me, thanks!) I finally even got into mountain bike downhill! I love it, now I´m planning on shredding that thing a lot more often!

Horsefeathers Jam... what can I say? Every year it gets radder. Definitely the icing on the cake this year (apart from the fact that we were pulling the show in the middle of Prague for the first time) was the huge party bus waiting for us to take us and everyone who was up for it to the official afterparty! Sometimes you just gotta love the Czech Pimp, Martin Korenski!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a 2-months flip break I could go upside down a couple times into Gerhard Mayr´s foam pit last Friday. Felt good right away and flipping with the steering damper for the first time I even pulled my first big nohand flip at the third attempt. Thanks a lot, Gerhard!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next day the event in my schedule was - like every year round that time - Grosshartmannsdorf. The riders field consisted of Vivian Gantner (SUI), Jader Toninello (ITA), Ilkka Salo (FIN), Gerhard Mayr (AUT), Brano Niks (SK) and myself. We changed the format this year to "Last man riding", a contest format where every round the last guy dropped out until there was just one rider left.

Unfortunately on a nofoot flip I came up a tad short and on the side of the pretty narrow safety deck of the landing, hitting the side of the landing with my rear wheel, crashing out of the contest and only ending up 4th even though no one else was flipping. Everyone was riding great though, Vivian won even in spite of riding with a cast on his foot that he had just broken days prior to the event!

Thanks to Markus and every single one in Grosshartmannsdorf for putting on a perfect event! Everyone of us riders had a blast! See you all next year but remember to get enough beer for the Crazy Fin!! Hahaa!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to all the photographers for the great shots! Check the links for a lot more!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peace.

Sorry people, I know it´s been some time... it´s been going a bit weird the last weeks and months.

2 weeks after Malta I crashed pretty hard at a show in Italy hurting my right knee, having to sit out the last day and even missing the show the next weekend near Venice.

The marathon started the Thursday after that. I had a show near Munich in front of a big crowd that was being co-organized by the same people who are putting on the show in Großhartmannsdorf every year.

Drugged with painkillers I managed to pull the first flip of the night, at 3am I was finally ready to hit the road, arriving at home at 6am, grabbing quick breakfast, the trailer with my ramp and my bro Gerhard - danke, Oida, hast mir den Arsch gerettet :) - and being on our way
to Italy an hour later.

A straight 9 hours drive later we arrived at the venue, setting up the ramp and going straight into the first show... somehow (nice thing, those painkillers...) I even survived the flips that day, had another small crash that weekend by slipping out on the mobile landing, and arrived back at my place Sunday night completely cooked.

Two days later I left for a 2 weeks chill-out and heal-up stay at my girlfriend Angy´s place in Estonia which couldn´t have been sweeter except maybe for the fact that I caught a cold and had to sit out most of the 2nd week at home...

Coming back my buddy Jason from Ride Authority had hooked me up to take some MX and FMX pictures - cheers, bru! - and I even had time to ride a bit so I´m starting to get back into the swing even though the weather ain´t making things easy around here. Not a single day goes by without some rainshowers so time on the bike is really precious right now!

Unfortunately the shows in Helsinki and Tampere got cancelled last week so I won´t visit Scandinavian soil this summer which truly sucks. Martin Koren again invited me to come and ride the Horsefeathers Jam that he´s putting on which will be killer like every year, only this year it´s changed venue and is going down right in the heart of Prague! Don´t miss this, the Czech pimp knows how to do things right both for the crowd and us riders!

Thanks to everyone involved for the good cooperation and the great shows, hope to be back with you guys in 2010!

Peace.

Only a handful of the shots I took at the Masters of Dirt in Malta last week were taken in sober condition, think I did a pretty good job anyway...

Thanks to Georgie and the whole MoD crew for the crazy trip!

Check out the gallery of my first pictures shot with my new EOS 1D here!

Next week I´ll be doing a show with my Italian friends from Daboot, filling in for Bianco who crashed pretty hard at the last IFMXF stop. Get well soon, buddy!

Look out for more pics as I get back!

Peace.

Following up the NotJ in Graz I rode a flip show with my friends Andrea Cavina and Ciccio in Italy, another one the following weekend directly on the beach of Fano with my Daboot buddies Iccio, the Doctor and for the first time Johnny "Sono il TOP io eh?!" aka Miki Monti jr. aka Tarzan!

After that we had the whole week to play in the foam - apart from the fact that foam pitting ain´t that nice for allergic persons (yo Iccio!! haha) everything went perfect and I learned Nacs, Indies, Can cans and Nofoot Can cans upside down. Not so bad for an old man...

A big grazie goes out to my friends at Daboot especially Bianco, Pippo, Iccio and Jader as they all made it possible in the first place!

Next week I should finally get my steering damper so there´s still a couple of combos to have a go at hehe! Guess if I had to ride a contest right now I wouldn´t bother to do a single right side up trick - flipping´s just too much fun!

Bianco and Pippo also took some pictures at practice so check the gallery out here!

Peace.

My friend Ingomar from Offroadforum.at just sent me the link for the fresh issue. I got the covershot and a story about my preparations for Austria´s biggest contest - the Night of the Jumps - last week, but you´ll also find interviews with e.g. Libor Podmol, Remi Bizouard, Brody Wilson and others so check it out here!

Peace.

The afterparty still hasn´t left my body completely, but enough to give you guys a quick rundown of this weekend´s happenings...

After an 8 months flip break I had done my first flips to dirt last week in Czech, also my first flip combos - nofooted and onehanded. Since all I did at Libor´s place for a week was flipping I was feeling pretty confident for the flip going into the Night of the Jumps. The big step-down seemed to be the easiest jump to flip so I already did my first whip flip on dirt in Friday´s practice session.

All I really cared about though was to ride out the superflip I had tried 10 or 12 times into the pit the week before, so I played it safe in my run on Friday, with a regular-, nofooted-, whipped- and a onehanded flip for double-up. On Saturday I felt ready to go for it on my last jump, but getting there was a bit rough as I did a couple of small mistakes in my run because all I could think of was my double-up haha!

A sold-out arena of 6.000 saw me pull my first superflip on dirt, after that memories are fading haha...

In the end I finished 10th both nights, a lot of riders crashed, fortunately it seemed no one got hurt badly.

Thanks again to Libor who paved the way for me last week and gave me all the advice I needed to pull it! Thanks to Kailstyle and Andi for all the little things that were done in the background,to Martin Koren for borrowing his flip levers to me, to Ingomar from Offroadforum.at for shooting this sweet sequence, to all my sponsors for supporting me and to all my friends, my family and you guys for being there and cheering me on!

This week my kit of flip levers, foot lever and steering damper should arrive so as soon as I get the chance to do some pit practice it´s on for nohand flips, nac flips, indy flips, nofoot can flips... haha I can´t wait! Flipping feels so sweet!

I´ll be back with news next week after the show with my friend Andrea Cavina in Italy! Til then stay tuned!

Peace.

A week ago I did a sweet show with my czech friends Petr Kuchar and Ondrej Zaruba in Pilsen. Thanks for the great time, Petr!

Check out the whole gallery here!

After that I spent an awesome week at 50rocks gangsta Libor Podmol´s house getting ready for this week´s Night of the Jumps which is kind of going down in my backyard. It looks like after a couple years of setbacks things finally are starting to go my way - díky moc to my buddy Liboroski, his family, Lenka and the whole 50rocks gang, for helping me out big time and polishing up my upside down skills!! Hope I´ll be back in the East soon to ride with you guys!

Thanks a lot also to Mylo who hooked me up with deals for Roc Stompa - the best pegs I´ve ridden so far - and Mex925 - sweet as hell mexican handcrafted silver jewellery! Check them out!

Pics to follow as soon as the NotJ Graz is history!

Peace

I´m pretty busy getting the foam out of every body opening here at Libor´s place, nevertheless I managed to put the online gallery of the MoD in Linz together. Check it out here!

More news soon.

The preparations weren´t the easiest ones but finally my good buddy Kailstyle managed to pull off the first ever FMX show in Gmunden powered by Ghost Mountainbikes. Jumping on the city plaza right next to the breathtaking Traunsee made for an awesome scenery. Unfortunately we couldn´t fit any photographer into the provided crane so no fisheye sequences from up close...

I was riding together with Ilkka and for the first time in Austria - Andrea "Capo Kavinsky" Cavina! And even though it was SNOWING on Thursday and Sunday we were lucky enough to ride our scheduled shows Friday and Saturday evening!

Thanks a lot to everyone involved and helping out and making sure no one could remember the end of the party! And thanks to Kailstyle and Hammerschmid for pulling it all together!

 

 

 

 

 

 

A week ago our friend and pitbike legend from Mexico Travis Hart had a grueling wipeout on a missed 360 at the MoD in Linz leaving him in Intensive Care Unit for a week with a 10% chance of survival. The strong little fella had Oden himself on his side though and pulled through. The lack of health insurance now leaves him with bills to pay until 2309 so...:

"if you got a some spare change in the couch throw it at me and i will love you long time!!!!

hartneedshelp@yahoo.com

thank yuou"
(Travis Hart)

We love you buddy, it´s great to have you back!

Peace

\muph/

 

 

Georgie Fechter once again put on a massive show in Vienna when it was time for the Masters of Dirt to show what can be done on pretty much anything that has more or less wheels and can be jumped close to the arena roof! I was there to document the action - check out the gallery here.

I just came back from a week´s practice with my buddy Libor [totall finish!] at Carlo Caresana´s park (mille grazie Carlo!) near Milano, where also Busty, Fabi, Luki Weis and Dennis Garhammer were staying to shake off the last remnants of our winter sleep. Busty proved goon riding ain´t his only quality and took some sweet pictures of the riding going on - check out a short article and a couple of shots on espn.com! Thanx, Busty!

Next week will see me do the first non-ice show this year along with my friends Ilkka, Vivan and for the first time in Austria - Andrea "Kavinsky"! The place will be Gmunden and my good buddy and mechanic Kaili "Kailstyle" is putting it on so expect everyone to be in good spirits for putting on a good show! If you´re near drop by and give us a good reason to show the hardest tricks we got!

Peace

-muph-

For some reason I´m having a hard time lately to keep you guys informed on what´s happening. Sorry. Here´s a quick rundown of the last 2 months.

Like in the past the days leading up to New Year´s I spent again in Fiss where - together with my buddies Ilkka Salo and Vivian Gantner - I rode the show for the big New Year celebration. As is the same with pretty much every ice setup I´ve ridden so far also this one wasn´t an easy one - with a step-down landing the same height as the ramp and so on - but we still managed to put on a good show for the couple thousands of spectators! Thanks a lot to Martin Pregenzer, the FOT and everyone else involved for making it possible and hope we´ll be back next year with an even bigger show! John took a couple of shots with my cam - check out the gallery here.

In January I accompanied Jader to the SX in Brno where he was riding the FMX show with Czech Freestyle legend Petr Kuchar and the Hungarian newcomer Peter Hujber. The SX was really cool to watch with my buddy Davide Degli Esposti taking the win both nights. The FMX show was just insane considering the boys were so close to the roof that everyone was scared to do any extended tricks - yet, Petr once again proved why he is who he is when he flipped on the last jump of the last show, saying afterwards "All I could see when I pulled were the metal bars of the roof getting closer..." To check out some of the shots I took click here.

A week later I did a show with Ilkka and Gerhard Mayr in Kaprun - somewhere on the net I found this shot, can´t remember where so no photo credits - sorry...

2 weeks ago I was shooting at the Masters of Dirt in Vienna, so look out for the full gallery in the days to come!

Peace

-muph-

Looks like Santa´s looking after me, I´m stoked to pronounce I´m now on Black Flys goggles! Thanks a lot to Magnus and Gertsch from Parlament Shop for closing the deal!

A couple days back I attented the press conference for the presentation of KTM´s "Erzberg Rodeo Special" and Erzberg Rodeo 2009 that I was invited to, together with Austrian MX legend Heinz Kinigadner, thanks to Karl Katoch! Check out the story and pictures on motorrad-reporter.at!

Peace

-muph-

Looks like the crisis isn´t taking exceptions for FMX either. Shows I was supposed to do the last couple weeks in Naples, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria were cancelled, a couple of days back I got word even Freestyle XXL in Linz met the same destiny.

Less shows mean less denaro but also - MORE TIME! I got some new shots on my photo page, new sponsor deals coming up (will post some more details soon), a week ago Martin Koren invited me to check out the Gladiator Games in Prague which were awesome (thanks to Martin and Marek for the invitation! See some photos beneath) and last weekend I had a show in Bucarest, which was just plain crazy - not because of the riding though (even though the landing WAS more soft than anything and I was hitting the ramp with a broken foot peg after I crashed for hitting the rear brake in the ramp) but for the Romanian car drivers which nearly took us out twice on the first 200km into Romania. Three times we arrived just minutes after heavy accidents, all in all just for the trip there and back I spent 40 hours on the road! Thanks to my buddy Brano for driving most of the way and bringing us back in one piece and Bart and Leo for putting together the show and getting me there!

Peace

-muph-

It´s been 2 months since my last lines on here, so I reckon I better come up with some good reasons for that, huh? Alright, here we go...

I just found out a month ago that the damage I had done to my foot at the Horsefeathers Jam was in fact not only torn ligaments but also a broken bone. So riding and flipping at the shows after that and hitting the big freeride jumps in Jan´s park didn´t exactly do it too much good. I´m still feeling a bit of pain walking but at least it IS getting better. Anyway that gave me time to work on my photography homepage, so in case you haven´t noticed the changed welcome screen yet where you can choose to go to this page here (left picture) or the photo page (right picture), surf over there and let me know what you think.

As if that wasn´t enough, together with Rene Wollinger I have rebuilt his fmx setup just 20km from my place, which turned out a bit tricky since there ain´t a plain piece of ground anywhere there, but the first sessions already took place and we´re figuring out details as we go. Thanks to Rene for letting me do my stuff there! My buddies Ilkka "The Gipsy" Salo, Bobo Holm and John BBU already checked it out and took some pics, also a British film team flew in to catch some proper riding action on film! Unfortunately the wind was too strong to do anything else but whipped tricks...

As you may have noticed as well, I´m riding my new bike already, pimped out with black frame and forks. Thanks a lot to my sponsor Moto Pitkan who helped me out with the bike as well as of course the suspension! Look out for some more pics as soon as my lazy brother J from the dark side gets my graphics back from printing =D

Next week I should be doing another show in Naples, so check back to hear what went down!

By the way, I dropped the German version of the page, as it´s just a big pain in the a$$ to write the news in 2 different versions. Thanks for the understanding.

Hail the Muschi!

-muph-

Some newspaper articles that appeared in the last couple of weeks.

-muph-

Sorry for the long break people, times have been busy...

After Martin Koren´s jam it was Großhartmannsdorf time once again! For the first time this year the event was to be held in a competition format to give young amateurs the chance to show their skills in front of a pumped up crowd. Unfortunately Mario Herzog crashed badly shattering his femur, heal up quickly, buddy!

After that we decided to just do a show for the people. I was riding pumped up to the nose with painkillers for the torn tendons in my ankle from the week before but couldn´t resist giving the Großhartmannsdorf crowd their first flip before it was over. Like always thanks a lot to everyone involved there to make the show happen for the excellent work and the family-like treatment! Next year will be even bigger!

The next 2 weeks I spent on the couch giving my foot time to heal up, last week I revisited Jan´s monster freeride park again together with Martin Koren. Thanks to Jan for having me at his place and Martin who shot the sequence over the dirt line for me.

Two days later it was time to go to Petr Kuchar´s place who had invited me for his jam. A brand new addition in his park was the 13m radius ramp monster set up on 30m! Of the 12 riders field only half were even hitting it - I just hit it for the first time in my qualification run and was stoked to reach the final of the last 6. Thanks to Petr for the invitation and for setting up the sweetest jump ever! Guess I´ll have to build one of those monsters as well =D

I´ve already started cutting the helmet camera footage and hope I can post some pics of Petr´s jam soon! Until then... stay tuned!

-muph-

Last weekend it was once more time to hit up my buddy Martin Koren to join with Libor, Kuchta, Pilat, Fusek, Cech, Busty, Fabi, Bengs, Jader, Icio and Alastair for the Horsefeathers FMX Jam... Like last year Martin had organized plenty of stuff for us little kids to keep us occupied the days before the actual event. "Napoleon" Jader got lucky this year, with Jan "Cowboy" Brabec taking his place as last man standing in line at the paintball orgy! Way to go Janski!

The definitive highlight was the trip to Jan Brabec´ freeriding park with no jump less than 3rd gear and 30m! The biggest one was a 4th gear pinned dirt double - coming from a pretty fast 3rd gear 30m step-down - that you could land at around 50m! A 30m hard 3rd gear double without any safety tabletop was the trickiest jump, as soon as I got the helmet cam footage cut and edited you can check it out here!

Check out the official site for the whole picture galleries of the jam and click on one of the two pics here for some more great shots from www.matuch.cz. Thanks a lot buddy!

At the actual jam I went down on a whip that I landed all the way in the flat, hurting my right ankle but since there was no way I would have left without getting upside down I got right back on the bike and gave the crowd what they were cheering for :) Thanks for the awesome week, Martin!

Now I´m at home resting my leg and waiting for the swelling to go down so my foot fits into my 661 boots! On Saturday it´s the first ever Austrian FMX contest in MY town Großhartmannsdorf, that I´ll be competing in with my boys Jader (ITA), Ilkka (FIN) and Alastair (BOT)! 15 riders are supposed to attend so it´s gonna be mayhem! If you´re anywhere near come join the party!

 

 

 

 

Peace.

-muph-

On Monday I finally did my first turns on a wakeboard, thanks to my buddy and mechanic Kaili, which turned out to not be so hard so I got a bit overexcited and crashed so hard on one of my first jumps that I cracked a rib. 8-O big props to all the wakeboard riders, I´d never have thought so little speed and height could make water sooo hard... as you can see on the pic the jump was not THAT huge... :)

Right now I´m taking it easy to heal up fast as I got a show coming up next week. Stay tuned.

-muph-

Last weekend I did my first flips on a mobile landing in a show with my Italian buddies Andrea Cavina and Cicio in Osoppo. I had some time to play around with my Canon too - check it out.

Grazie Capo Kavinsky!

Stay tuned.

-muph-

The Finland trip was a memorable one in every way!

A short stop at Stefan "Gangbang" Bengs´ compound near Berlin to meet Busty and the boys, on to the ferry to Helsinki, finally sober out, arrive in Helsinki, prepare the bikes, go to Tampere to do a show with Jussi "The pimp just bought a Corvette" Seljas, BIG afterparty, on to his parents´ summer house at the lake - what a place to chill... thanks bud! - and finally arrive at local Bobo "Bobby Lobster" Holm´s place near Jakobstad where the riding is supposed to go down.

Unfortunately there was still quite some work to do on the foam pit but a week later it was ready to be hit and I got the honor of the sweet defloration. It was windy quite a bit and temperatures went down as far as -5° C at night. After 2 weeks of practice (and getting some nice shots, thanks to Sami who also took some pictures out of the crane and Bobo for having us there!) it was time to catch the ferry to make it to the last stop of the trip (for me that is - Ilkka was set to go on first to France and then straight back to Finland! That´s why we call you The Crazy Fin!) and meet up with our friend Martin Koren in Prague to do a show for the opening of the new O2 arena. With only 3 hours of sleep we put on a good show and again - a PROPER after party... Thanks for the great weekend, Martin!

Now I´m just getting ready to go down to Italy to prepare for my first flip show this weekend so tune in next week to see how it turned out!

After over a week of sorting out and working on the shots I took on the trip to Finland, I finished the gallery - check it out.

Stay tuned.

-muph-

Here´s some pictures I shot of my buddy Ilkka the last couple of weeks we were riding at my place and on Stefan Bengs´ compound in Germany - check out the gallery.

Stay tuned.

-muph-

This week I did a show to advertise the Night of the Jumps in Graz next week together with Romain Izzo - this is what was broadcasted on national television (-> "Video für ADSL / Kabel" -> "Donnerstag, 10.4.2008" -> "Nigth of the Jumps").

On the weekend I did a pretty funny show in St.Andrä with my buddy Ilkka Salo - check out the gallery.

Stay tuned.

-muph-

If cemetaries are too creepy for you and you´re craving for more action... check out what my buddy Jader can do for my lenses when he´s ON his bike here.

 

Stay tuned.

-muph-

I´ve been playing around with my Canon lately - this is what I came up with when shooting my buddy Jader on a pretty creepy cemetary in the middle of the woods just before midnight... check out the whole gallery.

Stay tuned.

-muph-

In the new "Wellness for men Magazin" there´s a 4 page article about me so go check it out! Thanks to Christian for doing the interview!

Stay tuned.

-muph-

My buddy Tobi from forty8.de and smoothness.de just finished the new online issue with Jader´s sequence shot of my first big flip and the monster sequence I shot at the MoD in Vienna so check it out here!

To check out the gallery of the shots I took at the MoD in Graz click here.

Stay tuned.

-muph-

After the show at the Motomotion with Ilkka it was time to hit the BIG reset button and celebrate my 30th birthday!

After that I spent a couple of perfect days in Italy with my family, now it´s time to get ready for the Night of the Jumps in April!

Here you can find 2 articles about me - thanks, Alex!

Massive moves

Vienna blog

Stay tuned.

-muph-

Last week my buddy Ilkka Salo came to my place and since he´s had surgery on his ankle the same week that I had on my femur we´re both on the same mission - getting strong again and doing those big flips!

Following some days on the tracks we did our first ramp session this week which was going pretty good considering the 2 months break. Since we ride the show at the Motomotion together this Sunday we can practice there already. We invested a lot of time to shape the landing and let me tell you it turned out to be awesome! Hope I get the time to make some pics so you´ll understand what I´m talking about!

I´m stoked to announce from now on the muph diver will be supported by Samsung! I already got my backpack full of cool toys so if you still don´t know which wicked little gadgets to get yourself for the Easter holidays check this!

-muph-

I had a couple of bad weeks after my last update... this is what happened since then.

2 days before the surgery of taking out the 45cm metal rod in my femur I caught a cold so I was operated with slight fever already. There were some complications so after 2 hours of surgery I had to stay in hospital for nearly a week with 38 degrees, 2 bad shoulders, a completely stiff back, a broken arm and an operated leg.

Since then I´ve been busy healing up and - what probably every second rider does when he´s injured - taking pictures! To check out the ones that survived the sorting-out of over 3.000 shots I took at the Masters of Dirt in Vienna click here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-muph-

Wanted to wait with this update until I get my hands on some new photos but since everything takes ages here´s some news anyway on what´s going on in my little world.

After the show in Belgium I rode the Freestyle Kings contest in Pardubice which hosted a strong field of riders amongst them Remi Bizouard, Libor Podmol, Kota Kogimura and Luki Weiss. I rode a pretty clean and technical run, doing a clean flip for my double-up jump making it my first non-practice flip! Even though the judges must have been drunk or asleep to not vote me into the final of the last 6, I was so stoked about my 1st contest flip after not having flipped at all for a couple of weeks!

Next up was a demo on snow with my fellow riders Ilkka Salo and Martin Koren in Fiss. Thanks a lot to Martin Pregenzer who made sure everything was going as planned! We spent the following week partying through New Year´s taking some time to recuperate...

My first event in 2008 led me to Linz for the XXL Freestyle show, thanks to Alex Dorer who invited me as the only non-KTM rider! Again rubber was swapped for spikes and together with Ilkka and Gerhard Mayr I did a snow demo in Kaprun. Gerhard never got used to the setup and crashed his bike in practice sitting out the show and helping out the speaker. After taking down the ramp Ilkka, my friend and mechanic Kylie and me arrived at my place at 3 a.m. just to drop the ramp and my van and head another 600 km to Kosice in Slovakia where we arrived after an 8 hours drive just 1 hour before practice started. Needless to say the whole weekend was kinda ragged for all three of us...

I crashed on a 1-hand whip on the first contest day but thanks to a good dose of painkillers I was riding again the next day, only to have an even bigger crash on the same trick breaking my radius, injuring my left shoulder and bruising everything else. Here´s a video of the crash someone put on youtube. Thanks so much to Kylie Tschexxn for helping me out big-time as always!

Just an hour ago the demo in St.Andrä got cancelled due to the warm weather, next week I´ll have surgery for taking out the metal rod in my femur so I´ll have some time off from riding in February. Stay tuned...

-muph-

Last weekend I was riding a cross-over demo in Brussels/BEL with Skiers, Snowboarders, Ski-doo riders and the other FMX riders Kevin Burcklen, Brice Izzo and Nate Adams in front of a crowd of 5.000 both days. Quick recovery for Kevin who came up short on his 1st jump over the 22.5m gap and broke both his wrists and ankles!

Nate "The machine" caught food-poisoning and couldn´t ride the first day but was riding perfectly like everyone expected him to on the second day. With Ross Mercer there was the current ski-doo distance world record holder from Canada present and going big together with Kortney Hungerford and all the snowboarders and skiers!

Check the gallery!

-muph-

On Thursday I crashed on my first 22m flip on my compound but didn´t really get hurt so I did one more right away in almost complete darkness and stuck it! The next day I did 2 perfect ones so I´m on the best way to make it a safe trick!

-muph-

Still equipped with a big metal rod in my femur after breaking both my legs less than 9 months ago I successfully landed my first 20m flip on dirt today at my buddies´ (Bianco/Jader/ Pippo) place in Italy making me the 1st Austrian rider to pull it!

I wanna dedicate it to all my buddies who helped me out so much, most of all (but not only) Libor Podmol (+Lenka and his whole family!), Jader Toninello (and his mum), Luca Zironi, Martin Koren (thanx for the ass-full of flipping pro-advice, man!), Massimo Bianconcini and everyone else (you know who you are!)… and of course thanks to my family and sponsors!

Mini-Video-Link click here (12 MB)!

-muph-

Next was a show with Jader "Poor Napoleon" at the Hartberger Oktoberfest on my practice compound. Even though it was really wet we put on a good show. After the last show finally the sun came out and mylo took some sweet shots with my EOS. Cheers, buddy!

Check out the gallery!

Thanks to Markus Pfeifer who lets me use the setup as an all- year- practice place!

-muph-

This year I did the show in Großhartmannsdorf with Pippo and Jader and like every year Großhartmannsdorf was ROCKING! People were going wild and we did one of the sweetest shows in a long time... check out some nice shots by Martin Reiter and Zotter in the gallery!

Thanks to Markus and the rest of the GH Crew! Next year it´s gonna be even bigger!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tatjana and Tom asked me to do some pictures for a calender and since it was to be shot with beautiful girls and old american cars it was hard to say no...

Check out the finished calender on www.kalenderbox.at!

Thanks to T&T for hooking me up!

 

 

 

 

 

Then it was time for a little road trip trough Czech Republic with my wingman from the dark side Jader. First stop was Petr Kuchar´s Jam.

But if you got a wingman from the dark side named Jader "Der Furz" things can get complicated... since Jader prefers to travel only with his driving licence we had to get him into Czech with Petr´s passport! Jader probably wouldn´t win a look-alike contest with Petr, who happens to be one of the better-known people in Czech, but his acting skills were enough to persuade the border police to let "Petr Kuchar" enter. Never underestimate the power of the dark side!

A lot of riders got injured prior to the event so it was only Libor "Stiff- upper-lip" Podmol, David Rejsek, Jader and me riding. Unlike last year my bike didn´t give me any troubles so I had a great time! Even more so because pretty much EVERYONE except me and my wingman (we had decided to stay in the hotel and save some energy for the action to come) got into a mass fight with a Czech Van Damme the same night and were looking a bit punished the following morning...

It was time to move on to Martin Koren and Libor Podmol´s Horsefeathers Jam in Mnisek Pod Brdy. Martin had organized a big crew of riding buddies to spend the week together in Prague and do the jam as the grande finale.

Among the selected VIP crew was Libor, Busty, Fabi, Fredd Johansson, David Rejsek, Ales Liemann, Jader and me. But before the riding should start we split up into 2 teams and shot the crap out of each other in a paintball extravaganza massacre! The final resistance on our side in the Napoleon version was my poor wingman Jader, which earned him not only never-ending-glory but also some big dark red spots to show off to the czech chicks...

A summer bob-sledding track was to get punished next. The track nearly won by 2:0 when both me and Jader burned our shirts and some skin and only just making it to stay on the track...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also did a little bit of riding, though, and when the jam was over Jader and me had surprisingly won the doubles competition earning us both a medieval sword as prize.

Nothing could have been more fitting for the soldiers from the dark side...

Thanks a lot to Martin Koren and his girlfriend Monika for organizing everything and putting on one kick-ass week among friends!

 

Watch out for Part 2 of this monster update...

to be continued...

 

-muph-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time´s been flying, so much has happened to write about though there´s no time right now so I´ll have to tell you in the next update... Sorry!

For the time being I just wanna say thanks to my buddies Oli from Auto Wasch Arena and Tobi from www.smoothness.de for supporting me in many ways! Check out their sites, it´s well worth a look!

A big thank you also goes out to my sponsors MP Suspension (who once again provided me with a killer suspension!), Schruf Racing, DVS, Split, Oxtar, 661, InJoy Fitness, Crosswear.at, GoldenTyre and Forty8.de!

Letz fetz, slapka!

.muph