The Night of the Jumps 2010 in Graz is history so it´s time to fill you in what went wrong lately. 3 weeks ago I was hitting ramps for the first time after my crash and even after my shoulder gave way at the first extended hart attack I did I was still positive I was gonna bring back my tricks in time for the comp. On Monday before the event I teamed up with my buddy Martin Koren and went to our Italian OG amico Alvaro Dal Farra´s place in Belluno to get ready for what was lying ahead.

Even though Alve´s still recuperating from a huge crash last year and not back on the bike yet, he organized everything for us so we had a perfectly maintained park to ride and even woke up his foam pit from winter´s sleep so I could do my first rotations after going down in Kaprun.

Everything was looking good, I had at least worked my way up to small double grabs and was hoping to come back swinging with a couple of flip combos I havent´yet brought to dirt. I knew my shoulder would make problems on pulling back from grabs with the arm high above the head but I wasn´t prepared for it to give way again when I pulled off the ramp for my first flip! Rotation was good but even though I was able to do 4 or 5 more my confidence was crippled. I had hoped to mostly ride the pit at Alve´s place but when the arm hurt pretty bad the day after I knew it would be stupid to go upside down on dirt 2 days later.



I was still confident to at least put in a performance which was worthy of the IFMXF series. Together with Martin I rode every day leading up to the weekend and at the first practice in the hall on Friday I was feeling pretty ok on the course even though the jumps felt so strangely small it was real hard for me not to overjump...

Martin put in a solid ride and qualified for the main event and I even did my first onehanded take-offs for years after I had had a huge crash in Italy where I nearly missed the Daboot mobile landing my a mere 20 cm and jumped down the side of the landing only to wash out on the edge of the pavement and hit a park bench straight on...



I started my run with a couple of small mistakes and on my third jump did a nice onehanded take-off to double hart which is a trick I haven´t been doing probably since 05 and was pretty surprised to get out of the ramp so straight and high into the grab from the seatbounce, but the extra-extension was obviously a bit too much and my arm shifted again in its socket. I knew my run was over before it had even properly started but I didn´t want to go out that way so I got back on the bike and hit the biggest gaps on the course throwing some whips and nacs that I knew my shoulder could take.



For the second day of the competition I now even had to scratch the double grabs which left me with tricks for my run that I have been doing for ages and never thought I´d do in a contest anymore... the only grab trick besides a seatgrab indy I felt was possible was a double indy since I´m doing those without much shoulder extension but with a onehand take-off it was still scary to pull off. After everything was over I was glad I was still in one piece I´ll just have to figure out now how to stabilize my shoulder since I´m not planning to stick to nofoot cans for the rest of the season!

Thanks to my girl, family, friends, doctors and therapists who supported me so much! Special thanks to Alve, Paco, Kaili and Andi!

Peace.

\muph/

[www.martin-schenk.com]