On a hot and sunny Sunday morning over 1000 bike enthusiasts made their way down to the Beijing Chaoyang Sports Center in order to get themselves into the Fixed Gear Open. Such is the caliber of the event that people came from all over China to attend, 18^th August 2013 was etched into their schedules as soon as the event was announced, snatching up one of the tickets to get in as soon as they became available.

The day consisted of continuous and varied cycling disciplines, with some of the best around wanting to show off their talents to the capacity crowd. With fixed gear flatland freestyle, bike polo, a 2 lap obstacle race, track standing and a fixed gear bunny hop competition the day was never wanting for some sort of activity taking place.

Everyone brought along their own bike irrespective of whether they were competing or not, just so they could parade it in front of the rest of the crowd, this meant that some truly bizarre creations could be seen round every corner and the whole arena was a rainbow of luminous frames and wheels.

With over 1000 people in attendance it made getting a vantage spot for some of the events difficult, but for those who could see, the best of the early viewings came with the 2 lap race. There were 128 spaces for racers when applications for the race opened on August 1st, within 3 hours all the spots were taken. In the female category with 16 female riders signed up. This type of race is new to China, courses like that have been long established in other countries, this meant that many did not know how to best approach the course which resulted in a lot of crashes, especially from the beginners as a lot of them had unsuitable bikes for this type of event, for example full carbon rims and fork or no brakes. One thing that this has shown is the importance of wearing a helmet as there were some injuries obtained that could have well been prevented if the cyclist was wearing one as the rules and competition officers were pushing! People were falling as the course was a hard one, with 2 navigable obstacles of a banked corner and a box with up and down ramps to get over making the set up of the bike vital to winning the tournament.

While the preliminary rounds of the race were going on, bike polo was being played to a similarly large crowd with some enthralling games keeping everyone engrossed in the action. The highlight of the early games had to be the 5 goal haul from a particularly talented individual, who a couple of people in the crowd dubbed “the Lionel Messi of bike polo”. The Natooke teams, Green, Blue and Pink, played with brakes on their bikes, unlike the vast majority of other players. Subsequently there were many collisions and riding into the fence was a regular occurrence which really slowed the game up and often left teams exposed to the counter attacks. This allowed the Natooke teams to dominate the early fixtures, breezing past several opposition enabling them to get a stranglehold of the competition. Unfortunately there was not a full contingent of teams as the teams from Chengdu and Shanghai were unable to attend, which would have provided an extra dimension to the tournament as the weather in the South enables them to play year round therefore making them an experienced, well oiled unit.

Outside of the sporting arenas there were stalls dotted around with different bike shops and sponsors each with their own enticement to draw people to their stand and keeping the 1000 people entertained, such as games and one stall was even tattooing on site! Each of the stalls had its own tent to display its products and have its games, but as the day progressed it provided some much needed shade from the blistering heat of the sun. Along with the pools on site, which were well utilized by the majority of the crowd in order to help them cool off, as well as providing an optimum opportunity for mates to throw each other in, the spectators were well serviced when it came to keeping cool. In order to keep entertaining the attendees over the hour long lunch break, as well as a DJ playing, they sporadically throughout would shout out about a few free beers at the drink stand causing a stampede of people to try and claim the free drink. The photo’s from the daycan be found here.

After a jam packed morning, at 1 the afternoon session began which were more hotly contended affairs especially as there were big prizes to be had for the winners.

Again, the 2 lap race kicked off the action with a much higher level of pace than the morning session. The competition was fierce, the crowd was growing and the action meant that no one could take their eyes off of the track. With a quicker pace came a greater level of danger and unfortunately for one rider it was too much and he ended up crashing out in dramatic fashion. Thankfully he was ok and just suffered a cut on his chin, but it delayed proceedings for about half an hour and the organizers removed the banked curve obstacle where the crash happened. As racing continued, of the 16 females that entered the winner was Tong Yu Huan from Dalian who competed in the final against Ines Brunn, the girl from Dalian had her set up right with a perfect gear ratio for the course and as she won she celebrated with her coach for her big win. In the men’s competition the final came down to Daniels Langeberg and Liao Xirong, with Daniels pipping Liao to the post and claiming for himself the 10000RMB prize money!! Daniels is an Australian cyclist who lives in Shanghai who competes in many alleycat races, he said his victory came as a surprise to him but his bike and gearing were ideal for the conditions of the course giving him an advantage over his less prepared competitors.

Midway through the afternoon session a large crowd was drawn to the bike polo arena for a fixed gear flatland freestyle competition. This was a hugely anticipated event as everyone there wanted to see what outrageous tricks these riders could pull off. There were 2 distinctions of trick style, with most the riders opting for more BMX style tricks, but also there was representation of a more gymnastic style, each as impressive as the other for rider skill. The event was judged by a panel of 4, rating each performance out of 10 on their score cards and each rider had 120 seconds to show what they had to offer. The differing styles are hard to compare, but the judging was primarily based on consistency, flow overall presentation so the less falling off the better, so it’s not just based on trick difficulty. The flatland freestyle caused the biggest upset of the day with Liao Xirong from southern China not winning, instead coming third, he is normally so dominating at this event, perhaps the scorching heat was too much, along with competing in other events throughout the day too fatigued him! Ines Brunn came in second place with her breed of gymnastic freestyle but not on her typical bike, instead she used her street bike, which involved both wheels of the bike being predominantly on the ground. She pulled off tricks such as doing a headstand on the bike and standing vertically on the bike frame. This paved the way for a relative unknown rider from Shenzhen, Yang Chih-hung to claim first place who through the smoothness of his ride wowed the judges. This showed the rest of the competitors that the flow and consistency of the ride is a vital element to anyone’s routine.

In a successful day, the Natooke bike polo teams ended up claiming the top 3 positions with Natooke Green coming first, followed by their Blue and Pink counterparts respectively. Natooke Green were favorites from the offset after claiming the Fixed Ger Revolution titles in the 3^rd and 4^th years also! Natooke Blue were a team of newer, more upcoming players, but what they lack in experience they more than made up for in sheer pace having a deadly counter attack to stun their opposition with. Natooke Pink are the girls team that were formed to prove that girls can play the game too, and play it well. Due to unforeseen circumstances though one of the girls couldn’t attend so ended up being replaced by another member of the Natooke bike polo team. The Natooke Pink team were not expecting to place so highly, but were obviously over the moon with the sterling effort the entire team put in to achieving this.

There was a track stand competition in the afternoon too, this proved to be a highly competitive event with many participants completing the different elements involved. Natooke’s shop sales and events manager Chizi (Denny) made it to the final of the competition so a big congratulations goes out to him, but he lost out to Huang Jinhong who proved too good for the rest of the field to snatch victory.

The fixed gear bunny hop competition is always an entertaining watch, and this was no exception with the competitors hopping a considerable distance off the ground. The best at this event are those using BMX style fixie bikes. The fixed gear bunny hopping are mostly from South China which might be partly related to the winters in Northern China just being too cold to stand around and bunny hop, as cycling instead will keep them warmer. Compare this with the moderate weather that the South of China experiences in winter enabling them to practice the more trick side of fixed gear cycling in more comfort throughout the year. Hopefully with the exposure this event got, and the rapturous response from those watching will help boost its popularity to more people. Yang Chih-hung was the eventual winner of this event with Yi Quan in second place and Liao Xirong coming in third.

A good day was had by all, the weather could not have been better, everyone there was enjoying the amazing blue sky and sun with a few beers, the events were all very well received by the capacity crowd with there never being a moment without something happening. The 1000 strong crowd is a long way from where it was during the first fixed gear event in Beijing 5 years ago when 75 were in attendance. Each year the event gets stronger and stronger, better and better, and if it continues to grow like that, which from the success of it there appears to be no reason why not, then this annual event could draw in bigger crowds from all around the world with even higher levels of competition to be had.

For photos of the day’s events head to: http://www.natooke.com/gallery/events/