From his perch at the top of the union building gardens, Iron Mandela watched over the mayhem unfolding below. The month long endeavour to create the course for the Pretoria stop of the X Fighters world tour was complete. Four hundred truck loads of earth where carted in along with an assortment of kickers and huge steel quarter pipes. Truly it was an epic playground for the mentally unstable. This would be the fourth event of the five stop tour and with the overall championship still up for grabs those chasing it were hungry. The level of riding was high, stuff that not so long ago might have been kept especially for all or nothing best trick competition now make up the regular components of a riders qualifying runs. This was the pointy end of the freestyle motocross stick. Saturday’s finals started with Johnny Clegg performing to an enthusiastic crowd of flag waving South Africans. Surrounded by an impi of Zulu dancers the performance set the stage for the carnage about to erupt. With one spot left in the finals four riders fought it out for a chance at the podium. Frenchman Remi Bizouard fought off American Adam Jones by less than one point to secure a place in the finals riding up against number one qualifier fellow countryman Thomas Pages. As the day progressed riders were eliminated one by one as they faced off against one another.
Things stepped up in the semifinals. Josh Sheehan’s double backflip and Indian air flair weren’t enough to secure him a place in the final though it certainly left an impression on the crowd. Thomas Pages pushed the limits of sanity to deny Sheehan that spot in the final. Alley oop flair things and bike flips are favourites from this crazy French dudes deep bag of tricks. He used the whole course including the huge quarter pipe transfer setup with a backflip transfer these freaks like to call an “egg roll”. Coming into Pretoria finalists Clinton Moore and Thomas Pages sat 1st and 2nd in the overall standings this year. Moore took out the first 2 stops of the year in Mexico and Greece while Pages was coming off a winning performance at the last stop in Spain. The Australian Moore made his convict ancestors proud putting up a valiant fight but Pages put together a run of the most insanely progressive FMX insanity. Combining a plethora of the most intensely innovative fmx maneuvors in the same run the Frenchman came away with the win.
Peace,
NAZ
Words & Photographs – Aliphant
other Photographs – Brendon Salzer
Spillage Gallery
Not Another Zebra 
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