You will have to tell that story about how you started riding BMX again.
No problem, I told that one pretty often already … My dad is crazy about bikes and he has a friend who used to be one of Germany’s best downhill riders. I learned riding a bike when I was two and a half years old, I even started without training wheels. Then I really, really wanted to have a mountain bike, so I traded my pacifier for a mountain bike that was far too big. But I was happy with it, I rode it a lot together with my dad and even started racing. I got my first BMX bike in 2003 and first I didn’t have a clue what to do with it. I eventually started jumping stairs with it and here I am!
You can almost tell this story in your sleep – you’re pretty media-savvy, you’ve been on German television several times and you do lots of stuff on Instagram.
Instagram is pretty important to me, just creating stuff and showing to the world what’s happening. These television appearances always came around the BMX Masters/Worlds in Cologne. When I was 12 I had to turn down some requests because it got out of hand and I just wanted to ride my bike.
You lived in a pretty remote village and there were absolutely no spots there. How did you deal with that?
My Dad built some small ramps, about 40 centimetres high. And we built a small dirt jump behind my grandmother’s house. Then there’s the indoor park in Cologne, about an hour away, and my parents drove me there about once a week. And the rest of the time I just rode the streets and sidewalks. I learned bunnyhop 180s really early and I think it might have been an advantage for me not to have a park next door, because I was forced to learn other stuff.