When Drew Bezanson’s Uncontainable went viral last year and websites started to pick it up and it got more views than any mountain bike web edit, it saddened me. Not because it was BMX, no not at all! I love BMX and had watched it a week before the MTB websites had picked it up. It was because a BMX video had gotten better traction and more views than anything else mountain bike related. It posed the question “are we that bored with our sport that we need to look elsewhere?” Unfortunately, I think the answer is yes.

Every few years mountain biking gets an exciting injection from another sport to reinvigorate it. Through the 90s and 2000s BMX racing always gave MTB racing the boost it needed. Then Darren Berecloth and Paul Basagoitia came on the scene and gave slopestyle some BMX flavour with 360 drops and lofty backflips. Recently we have had the domination of Aaron Gwin who came from Moto and has given DH racing a big kick in the arse.

Recently (in my opinion), slopestyle has become boring and predictable. If Brandon Semenuk doesn’t automatically win, the first thing I think is “is he having another year off?” or “he must have crashed out, I hope he’s okay.” No-one in slopestyle right now has the vision or creativity to take Brandon down. Except maybe, Drew Bezanson.

Just type his name into Google and you’ll be presented with some of the biggest, gnarliest BMX riding that you have ever seen. And as you watch you’ll think he should be doing it on an mountain bike. You’ll be blown away his creativity and ability to come up with innovative lines and massive tricks.

So is Drew Bezanson the next big thing for slopestyle? I hope so, or at least I’m hoping that someone can push Semenuk to the next level. In the interim, we have some really good new edits to look forward to, tracking his progression to the top level of slopestyle and eventually to Red Bull Joy Ride in The Learning Curve series, Part 1 above.