How did you first get into BMX?
When I went to high school, I met up with two guys, Pent and Timo, who I became friends with. It was the late 90s, and they already had BMX bikes from the previous summer. I had been into bikes before, but not BMX, as it really didn’t exist at all in Estonia back then. I was snowboarding at that time though. Anyway, I was totally in awe of BMX then, as it connected the dots for me. We started riding together, shooting photos and videos, drawing graffiti and comics, making a zine and all that – all the creative stuff around it. We found out there were a few others who had started riding in Estonia around the same time. In the whole country there were less than 10 riders in the beginning.
The beginning was really slow. I think it’s hard for modern riders to grasp what it was like back then in Estonia. As we were the pioneers and among the first in the whole country to start riding, there was no one better than each other to learn from. So you really didn’t have any idea of what could even be done on a bike. Some people just used it to ride to a bar to get beer. And this was before modern internet, Youtube, or anything like that. We got our hands on a few VHS tapes that we lent each other and that was it. The level we saw from the early Schwinn and KHE videos was insane and seemed impossible to imitate. These days one can learn more in a few days, than we did in a year. Since there were no proper ramps, we rode quite a bit of flatland. After a while, we became friends with some Latvian riders. In Latvia there was a small racing tradition and there was a bit more going on, so that helped to progress things. There was this Latvian dude, Dino (Latvian action sports legend), who was also snowboarding, so I knew him from that scene. We became good friends and started riding together. He was a big inspiration to us. At some point earlier in the year, 1999 GT Air show somehow made it to Estonia, with Zach Shaw, Romaric Fath, Phil Dolan and Bart de Jong doing the tour. Seeing that in person and getting to know these dudes definitely was an inspiration too. Bart has been to every Simple Session since 2004. Martti Kuoppa was a big inspiration as well. We invited him over to Estonia to do a demo in my early years at some point, so seeing what was possible on a bike like that was crazy. We’ve had him over many times since.
The Estonian dawn of BMX was quite a strange time. Bikes were heavy and broke easily. There were no role models. Mistakes were made, and progress was hard and painful – quite literally. I fucked up two of my lower discs in my back quite early in the game, so I didn’t really get anywhere far with my level of riding. At some point the movement of bunnyhopping just became too difficult and painful. I think Taj Mihelich got the same problem after his fusion surgery. But having thought about it, I think that was also one of the reasons I pushed further into putting on the event, doing all the designs, magazines, skateparks and other stuff around riding. If I would have been really good on a bike, I would have just probably ridden all the time. I still have my bike and I’m still cruising though.