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-

After 6 months of countless e-mails and phone calls me, Ilkka Salo, Massimo Bianconcini and Vanni Oddera are still waiting for their price money of the Night of the Jumps in Kosice (Jan. 08). The responsible promoters are Rudolf Novak and Tomas Hanacek.

Don´t take any invitations for events from those 2 guys, chances are you´re never gonna see your money!

-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

Last weekend I did my first demo after breaking both my legs in February. Everything went smooth, the setup was good, thanks to the organizer Markus Pfeifer!

I gave Roman from Großhartmannsdorf a 3 minutes crash course for my Canon so check out in the gallery what he came up with! Thanks Roman!

This Satuday I´ll be busy riding the show in Großhartmannsdorf together with my buddies from the Daboot Pippo and Jader. It´ll be a good party so if you´re near check it out!

.muph

I spent the last week at Gerhard Mayr´s place to get back into my rhythm on the bike, using the perfect conditions to have some awesome sessions, just having fun on the bike!

Thanks a lot to Gerhard, Nina and Sepp for making sure I had everything I could ask for and to Nina and Didi - even if they turned out a bit blurry :) - for shooting some nice pics!

.muph

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I finally got myself a proper photo equipment a few weeks ago to keep me busy while I´m not riding. These are the first shots that I took at the NotJ in Graz and at a demo in Klagenfurt with my buddies Jader, Pippo and Romain Izzo...

Gallery

.muph

Hey everyone. Thought I´d give you a quick update on what´s going down here. Since I got out of hospital I´m working out in the gym like a monkey to get back on my bike ASAP. Thanks to my friend Michi Gölles, I´m now supported by the Injoy Gym just round the corner from my place! Thanks buddy!

Pictures were taken 2 weeks ago, by now the cast is already off for a week and I did my first baby steps without crutches yesterday!

This weekend I´ll check out the boys at the Night of the Jumps here in Graz, unfortunately a couple of friends also got injured - a quick recovery to Martin Koren and Ali "Loose Cannon" Sayer who both blew out their knees!

Stay tuned as there´s more to come...

Peace

.muph

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, the smoke has definitely cleared by now, things just didn´t turn out as expected...

I was riding alright in Liberec, not doing any big mistakes, but not riding the pretty tight course real smooth either. The whole week leading up to the Masters of Dirt in Graz I was busy with thousands of things, just not having time to get enough sleep and relax before it all went down.

Some of you may have already heard the story, for those who didn´t - that was my Schruf-backed Yamaha after I "finished" my run.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first day of the contest already didn´t go well as I came up a bit short and slid out on the slippery track in my run. Two fingers of my right hand were completely numb after that but since I was riding in front of my homecrowd I did a few more jumps eventually making a mistake breaking into the corner and sliding out again.

I called it quits and was pumped to do better the next day. Sunday practice felt better than the day before but I still hated the course and wasn´t riding smooth or relaxed at all. Nick de Wit had already killed his knee (torn ACL and meniscus - get well soon bud!) on Saturday and also Libor (crashing twice) and Romain Izzo (underrotating a superkicker flip) had their share of problems.

I went into my run trying not to make the same mistake again of coming up short by adding a bit of distance to my jumps which was kinda hairy with the short breaking area and the slippery sandy dirt but I didn´t feel so bad until reaching halfway point of my run.

I was going for a double grab but gassed it a bit too hard in the ramp. When I realized I was going to land far down the landing and coming down hard on my rear wheel I grabbed the bars again but failed to reach for the clutch lever.

So when I landed I got pulled all the way back to the rear fender while I pulled so hard on the bars that I opened the throttle all the way shooting myself second gear pinned straight into the metal door facing the landing.

 

 

 

 

 

Before things got ugly...

Now I got a big metal pin all the way through my right femur along with a couple of screws and some wire and a cast on my broken left foot. The cast is coming off next week, by then I should be allowed to put full body weight on both legs so I´m getting rid of the crutches as well.

Thanx a lot to all my buddies - especially Kaili and mylo -, my family and Clivia for helping me out with tons of things when I was out cold!

Stay tuned for more news, the docs won´t be able to keep me off the bike for long!

.muph

Ps: unfortunately my plutonium powered bike didn´t reach 88 mph in time... check out the video (4 MB)!

I´m back from riding Edge Games for the third year in a row and even though my whole 06 season has been pretty rough and basically without any practice, I managed to secure my best finish at Edge this year with a nearly perfect 1st run.

1st Fredrik Berggren (SWE)
2nd Libor Podmol (CZ)
3rd Martin Koren (CZ)
4th Jussi Seljas (FIN)
5th Martin Schenk (AUT)
6th Niklas Olsson (SWE)
...

For the whole gallery of pictures the ingenius swedish photographer Mattias Klockar look here...

Thanks to Anders and Monika for helping me out so much, and to Palle from Yamaha Sweden for providing a bike for me!

Thanks so much also to Seppi and Joachim at Moto Pitkan who saved my ass by setting up suspension for me at the very last minute, when some f$%&ers stole my bike just days before my flight left for Sweden!

.muph