It’s Day 2 of the Bike Days contest, and already yesterday I felt like I have been in Switzerland for a week and it’s only been since late Thursday night. Relaxed lifestyle, old architecture, very clean almost every where you look, and amazing Swiss typography that brings back memories from my university days.

Saturday is all about qualifying, I headed down to the contest to post the Day 1 repo before we got started judging the contest at 3. When I arrived Dominik Nekolny was the only rider on the floor, and as usually completely going off, it’s really hard to try and update the site whilst wanting to watch Dom ride and go through his practice routine all on board the Deep Blitz frame, Frank Lucas was stoked.

As I finish the Day 1 repo, the floor is filling and now Dub is in the mix. First thing I see him do is clean Rodeo, mind blown…. It’s not even 11am and hammers are being thrown from both Dom and Dub.

After I got all website duties done, it was time for lunch. And nice chat and joke with Matthias Dandois, Frank Lucas and Oli Muller, if you don’t already know Oli is an aeroplane pilot for a living. So it was interesting to quiz him about it, and I ask him if he ever flew Matthias somewhere on his travels, hahaha. Good times. After lunch it was time for the riders to get warmed up, clean the floor one more time and get rolling. 20 riders in the qualifying, down to ten riders for the final that will go down today at 3pm. After a quick briefing about using laptop live scoring and a riders meeting, we were ready to roll any in schedule.

The live scoring worked well, from my point of view I think it’s good for the riders and spectators to see their scores almost immediately. It should build a nice tension today for the finals when the riders see the score they have to beat.

Matthias Dandois took the top spot in qualifying as I already posted yesterday. Amazing to hear from him that he hasn’t touched in a contest this year, think about that… The consistency is absolutely amazing to see first hand, and also I would imagine scary for his competitors. Dub was right behind in the mix, with two touches in his run and a great save on his first line where he got caught up in a two footed forward death truck, skills.
Masato Ito and Minato Sato both lit up the crowd to book their place in the finals, Dom had a tough start to his run missing his opening xft hitch pivot backwards backpacker pivot xft hitch line three times but finished strong. It’s approaching mid day, so just three hours till finals and the riders are starting to arrive.

After the contest, I caught with Dub to interview him about his achievements last year, the interview is around 51 minutes long. Look out for that later next week, as we rolled back to the venue the Battle in the Nations contest was starting. Always good fun with all the riders and the crowd which was much bigger than for qualifying were loving it.

Team japan (Minato Sato and Misato Ito) tied for the win with Team France (Etienne Giraud and Matthias Dandois), if you missed my livestream on the FM instagram. The battle ended up with the riders going off bare feet and swapping shoes, Matthias in Minato’s shoes kicking off the shoes mid line, just crazy!! Great entertainment. Party on the floor after with all the riders and spectators, great vibes in Solothurn, Switzerland.