Corps de Ballet flatland contest
Bystrice pod Hostynem, Czech Republic
7 Jan, 2006

Roadtrip again! We have received an invitation from a young Czech flatland rider a couple of weeks ago. They organized the last round of the annual CFL (Czech Flatland League) contest series in a small town called Bystrice pod Hostynem. We were curious to see what is up flatland-wise in their country and since we do not have indoor place to ride and the winter is rather harsh here, we decided to give it a try.

We called some of our teamriders to see if they were also interested. Adam Kun had a serious college exam on the following Monday so it was not quite okay for him. Peter Sarlos was excited because he was a bit tired of his weekly extra classes, and I also called a young rider that is on our flow list (try to memorize his name because you will surely hear about him in the future): David Nagy. He was really into it because last year he could not compete in any major contests outside Hungary even though his riding is always very dialed.
So we took my fathers car and put our bikes plus one extra complete Gypo2 bike inside that the contest organizer, Vladan had ordered.

The trip lasted only for a couple of hours since you only have to cross a little section of Slovakia to reach the Czech Republic. The city where the contest took place is really, really nice. About one meter of snow covered everything, and our hotel was situated right next to a big mountain.
Thanks to Martons carrier pigeon instinct, we found the contest hall pretty easily.. We got inside and realized that the floor was actually larger than on the photos that the guys had previously sent over. The parquet floor was covered with lino to prevent it from scratches. Unluckily, the contest place was still too small for so many riders and seemed to be a bit wavy, too. We did not really pay attention to the bad floor quality, we were really happy to meet riders that we have not had a chance to ride with before. All the Czech riders are really friendly and enthusiastic.

The first Czech riders (like Milan Haspeklo and Mirek Hanzl) have been riding for about 8 years. There are not too many older riders, maybe that is the reason why the beginners sometimes seem a bit confused like they do not know which tricks they should learn in the beginning. There are lots of moves that are very popular among them, but the majority of the beginners seem to prefer doing the fashionable tricks without having learned the necessary basics. In Hungary, it is completely different: we always try to explain the beginners that they must not miss the basics otherwise their progression might not be as fast as it could be with the most major trick positions.
But there are lots of talented and promising young flatlanders that may have fine prospects. They all seemed to be very impressed by the riding of Peter, David and Marton. Even though the floor was rather small, everybody had a very good time.

At 6.00PM the expert qualifiers begun with lots of squeakers, megaspins and some rolling tricks. There was a very young kid that did a superb run compared to his age with hardly any touches. They held the finals right afterwards.

The pro class was dominated by the OG team. Do not get us wrong: we did not go there to play kings but to make friends, jam together, have a good time, and to motivate. Peter and David are so dialed that it took only a couple of minutes to get used to the floor, and Marton rocked, too: he did f-trucks to inside gliding deathtruck on the pedal to one handed blender to pedaling deathtruck in a straight line to caboose glide.

David has learned lots of tricks lately and dialed combos like turbined firehydrants to crosshand steamroller to crossfoot one-handed tomahawk on the rear peg to regular tomahawk to crosshand steamroller to spinning cliffhanger. Peter did his signature combos like inside rolling opposite karl kruzer to crosshand steamroller to framestand tomahawk to full barflip to framestand tomahawk, just to name one.

We were quite impressed by some of the locals: Hoffman did some nice rolling combos that included backwards cliffhangers and backwards hitchhikers, and Mira Zeidler did some spinning cliffhangers and timemachines on the pedal. There was a young rider called Petr Bilek who will be better than all the Czech riders if he will keep on riding: he had a long backwheel combo that consisted of spinning crossfoot caboose to upsidedown megaspin to spinning gerator to megaspin. He also did turbined crosshand steamrollers and timemachines on the pedals.

Milan Haspeklo has managed to get 4th place, but we know that he is a better rider but the wavy and small floor did not fit his riding.. He still pulled forward deathtrucks to spinning gerator to half bikevarial out and tried backpacker jugglers and pedaling upsidedown megaspins that he can pull in his sleep normally.
After the contest there was a party with crazy things going on: a Czech guy called Vojty frontflipped over at least 10 people (without bike, of course) and some rappers started freestylin on the mic in Czech language that was rather strange to our Hungarian ears..

We got so tired that we went back to our hotel. Peter and David rode so much during the day that it was easy to mislead them by offering a hotel soap as a welcome chocolate bar to them.. They had to rinse their mouth when they realized it was a soap.. That happens when you are tired, others always make stupid jokes..

In the morning we made a little excursion to the peak of the mountain (the car accident shown in the video did not happen to us, luckily..) The peak is a nice holiday resort with amazing amount of snow. We wish we could have stayed for a little longer.. But we had to come back because Peter and David had to go to school..

Thanks a lot for the helpfulness and the kind invitation to Vladan Myska, his father and Petr Bilek! Greetings to all the Czech riders! Hope to meet you all at the OG Summer Gypsy Games this August!

Results (taken from corpsdeballet.wz.cz):

AM:

1.Michal
2.Radek
3.Kalda
4.Pipin
5.Kopi
6.Adam
7.Tomy
8.Panča
9.Tomáš
10.Karel
11.Křovák
12.Filip

PRO:

1.Peter Sarlos (HU)
2.David Nagy (HU)
3.OG Marton Szilagyi (HU)
4.Milan Haspeklo (CZ)
5.Petr Bílek (CZ)
6.Míra Zeidler (CZ)
7.Petr Finda (CZ)
8.Hoffman (CZ)
9.Robert Pospíšil (CZ)
10.Sakon (CZ)
11.Patrik (CZ)
12.Jakub (CZ)
13.Undertaker (CZ)

DOWNLOADABLE VIDEO:

Corps de Ballet video (36MB, 6min, MP4).