As Reader's Digest says, and as I've said before, "It Pays to Enrich your WORD POWER!" The word for today, amigos, is "appeasement." Appeasement is when you give in to someone in the hope that he will either be nice to you or leave you alone. In 1938, a lot of people in Europe were big on "appeasing" Hitler, the object of this appeasement being to talk him out of arousing the mighty German war machine and laying waste to Europe. They let him "annex" parts of other countries. They let him march into Czechoslovakia without a shot being fired. They let him build enormous battleships like the Bismarck and Tirpitz despite the fact that the German government had previously agreed not to build any. In short, they bent over backwards to make old Adolf happy. Did it work? Did Hitler agree to stay at home and NOT invade anyone?
The answer is, of course, "heck no." You can't appease a bully successfully because he'll just keep coming back for more. The folks who run the national BMX sanctioning bodies must have been asleep the day this stuff was taught in history class, however, because they can't seem to "Just Say No" to the parents, riders, and manufacturers who demand easy, non-challenging National tracks.
I can hear you spitting out your Corn Puffs right now. "Boswell, you idiot," you are saying, "what are you talking about? Today's jumps have more jumps, and bigger ones, than ever!" True, but that doesn't make a track challenging. Sure, old Jim Boswell may have a little trouble getting over the fourteen-foot dubs in the first straight, but most Experts above the age of twelve have no problem jumping anything on a modern track.
The problem with modern tracks is that they have been specifically designed to eliminate passing and strategy. Most National tracks have every possible feature that could discourage passing - long rhythm sections, doubles immediately after turns, and my personal least favorite modern track feature, the 180-degree, heavily-banked turn.
Why do I call this appeasement? Simple. Most parents, particularly the parents of young "superstar" riders, absolutely hate the idea of old-school BMX. I have seen more than one parent file a protest over a non-contact pass in a turn, and I recently received an e-mail from a parent which stated, "You aren't helping by telling kids to bump each other in turns... True BMX would be a time trial, so that riders couldn't interfere with each other." I would laugh heartily at this attitude, were it not so common among today's BMX moms and dads. Today's parents don't like the idea of some kid outsmarting their little Bobby in the last turn and taking the first place at their Bobby's expense. 180-degree turns are quite a bit tougher to pass on than 90-degree ones, as anyone who has tried to catch up in a recent National can attest, so for that reason, and to keep speeds up for the mondo-jumps ESPN seems to demand, 180-degree turns have become de rigeur for the 1999 National season. And there's nothing you can do about it.
Or is there? The conventional wisdom says that there is only one "fastest line" through a 180 degree turn, and that you can't pass a rider who takes that line unless you are significantly faster. Luckily for all of us, I, Jim Boswell, profoundly disdain what "everybody knows" and take considerable pains to prove what "everybody knows" wrong, at every opportunity. I will show you how to destroy riders who take "the line". I will show you how to end the careers and smash the hopes of other children like yourself. I will show you how to make the parents of your competition put their fists through the side of their airbrushed trailers. All you need to do, dear reader , is...
We will start by looking at The Line. Here's a standard "hairpin" turn, with The Line shown in blue.
This is, no doubt, the "fastest" line through the turn, particularly if the turn is steeply banked. At the Grands track in Louisville, for example, it is possible to actually accelerate through the hairpins by leaning hard and pedaling all the way out. This is also the line all the young sheep-kids take through every turn at every track, actually lining up behind the first-place rider if there isn't enough room to share The Line. Yuck.
Let's assume that you are in second place and want first. This can be done by what used to be called a "block" but today is more commonly called, oddly enough, a "pimp move." The pimp move is shown in red:
How does this work? Well, by taking a so-called "suicide" line into the turn, you don't have to follow the turn, and you will therefore show up at the top of the turn ahead of the first-place rider. Those of you who are particularly enterprising will pedal into the turn to make sure this happens. Naturally, you will be headed over the berm at this point, so you will need to slow down. You will do this by contacting the first-place rider and using him as a bumper. You might want to practice this with your friends quite a bit before you try it in a race. Showing up too "early" will cause you to go over the berm because you won't have the rider to bump, while showing up too late will make you hit his rear tire, which will slow you down without affecting the other guy too much.
Where do you want to hit this poor guy, anyway? The best bet is to start turning right before contact is made, and to use your outside elbow against the target's inside elbow/body. I should stress that you are not trying to hurt this other rider. A properly executed block doesn't hurt anybody. I personally pulled off two passes in a row like this in a single race three weeks ago without even hurting anyone's feelings, and you will eventually be able to do it much better than I can!
It goes without saying that this move slows you down quite a bit, and for that reason you won't always be able to use it. If you are in sixth place in a qualifier and want to take fifth before you grab fourth in the next turn, you will have to try a less severe method. The "cutoff" is the thing to do in these cases. Let's take a look.
The "cutoff" is a wonderful move, because if done properly it lets you pass the rider and break his heart, so to speak. We'll start by taking a direct line into the turn, just like we would with a "pimp move." Since we have no plans of making contact, however, we'll do out best to get to the top of the turn before our target does. Once there, we'll pick up the front end of the bike, swing around, and lean back into the turn. This isn't easy, and it doesn't always work, so work up to it gradually by practicing at a local track. Younger riders should try the alternate method of locking up the rear brake and sliding the rear wheel around to make the turn.
The cutoff move works by frightening the rider you are passing. When this guy (or girl) sees you bombing into the turn, he'll panic and slow down. Now you're in front of him, right? You have lost a small amount of speed making the tough lift-and-turn, but you should still have enough speed to pull away from him. Now you'll "break his heart" by moving over out of the turn and forcing him to slow down even more! This works because even if this rider has managed to escape your cutoff, he still has to come out of the top of the berm because, after all, it is The Line, and riders love The Line, right? When you move over coming out of the turn, as shown above, you are cutting off The Line and forcing the target rider to lock his brakes again. You will be accelerating while your target rider is both behind you and braking. That's a successful pass in anyone's book, and it also forces all the Line-users behind your target to slow down and fall out of the race, as well. The more you do this, the better you will get at it, and the more great passes you will make.
The two moves above will get the job done ninety-nine percent of the time, but as Yoda said to Ben's ghost in Return of the Jedi, "There is another." The "push" move is the professional rider's last, best, hope, and if you need one place in a moto or qualifier and are willing to take a big risk to get it, the push move will make it happen. It is shown below:
A push starts with leaning and turning HARD into the lower part of the berm. As you can see, that cuts across The Line's entry path and will force everyone behind you to slow down or bail. Great. Now you don't have to worry about them for a while. Draw a bead on the guy ahead of you as he comes out of the berm and bang him while picking your front wheel up and turning.
It sounds like I'm asking the impossible, and it is true that this is the toughest of the 180-degree turn moves, but it has been done by ordinary riders in the past and will be done by more of them in the future. For some proof that it can be done, here's a photo of Billy Au putting a push move on some helpless dude at Pacer BMX in Delaware, Ohio, seven or eight years ago:
That guy's going over the berm if he doesn't think of something pretty quick.. As a matter of fact, he did think of something pretty quick---tossing the bike out from under him and landing on his tailfeathers at the bottom of the turn.
Now why did Billy do that? Was it to win the #1 Pro? Was it to make a National main? Was it even to make it out of his motos? Nah. This was a pass from seventh to sixth place in a local Pro Open main, and it was the difference between a $10 payday and a $20 payday. Billy had the push move in his bag of tricks and it earned him ten bucks. Chances are that you are occasionally faced with a situation in which a pass means as much to you as $10 meant to Billy, so don't be afraid to make the move if you see a chance to do it.
I think we've managed to prove that these "pass-proof" turns are not, in fact, pass-proof at all. In fact, there's a larger lesson here: Messrs. Tedesco and John can do their best to dumb-down the tracks, but you and I, dear readers, can still use our brains once in a while and benefit from doing so. If you will keep reading, I will keep writing, and I don't doubt that we will take care of our comp the old-fashioned way---by simply out-riding and out-thinking them. No "appeasement" necessary.