In june 2014 I had the opportunity to join a new trick project by cousins Gavin Godfrey and Ethen Roberts from Nitro Circus: they had set up a huge jump on their compound in Salt Lake City with the intent to pull the world's first triple backflips on mountain bikes on it.
To practice the rotations and get a feeling for the dimensions of the jump, they started by jumping onto a large airbag for two days.
Gavin (left) and Ethen on top of the roll-in to the triple flip jump
Once they got the triples safely to the airbag and felt that they were ready to take them to dirt, the airbag was removed and a huge dirt landing was built in its place.
As soon as the landing was finished, the race for the first triple backflip in MTB history was on. The session was quite scary from the beginning, as the jump was so huge that they had to throw double backflips already at the first try. After two attempts, Gavin was the first to execute the triple flip perfectly!
Gavin Godfrey, world's first MTB Triple Backflip
Shortly afterwards, Ethen also stomped his triple flip and completed the day of triumph for the Godfrey Clan. For the first time in MTB history, a triple flip had been attempted and successfully landed to dirt - and not only once, but twice, by two riders from one family!
Ethen Roberts, world's second mtb Triple Backflip ;)
I'm very happy with my decision to shoot the triples from these two angles, I think they really show the height and length of that monster jump as well as the complexity of the trick of course. The resulting shots have been run in two magazines in Europe and the US.
I hope you liked this little behind the shot story ;)
Click here if you want to check out the moving pictures of this stunt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvpMyZCLAIA ...
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Cheers!
