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phil sundbaum

cmc

Turbo Monkey
Nov 17, 2006
2,052
6
austin
not new, but just came across it again. sundbaum is sick !

http://vimeo.com/11828051

and this is funny how much bigger he is than nyquist. good clip though, nyquist is chill and they have a good sesh.


Dailymotion - [BMX"] Phil Sundbaum Ryan Nyquist Eric Porter Colin McKay - une vidéo Sports et Extrême@@AMEPARAM@@http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/video@@AMEPARAM@@video

http://www.adiridas.com/index.php?id=phil_s
Born: 17.09.1981
Hometown: Seattle (USA)

I didn?t start as a mountain biker. I began racing BMX when I was 15 years old. Then I learned some tricks and I thought that was way more fun than racing. Many kids in our neighborhood rode bikes or BMX and we learned how to bunny hop and do tricks. I guess that?s how it starts for most people.

I remember there was a big fly-out jump in front of our high school, but we always got in trouble when we rode there. Nobody at my high school was into mountain biking. Although I knew everyone at school, I always hung out with different people after school, guys who I had met at dirt jump tracks or skate parks. In a way I was really lucky, because my brothers and I had a broken home. Our parents were divorced, but we never got in trouble, because we had a good group of people to hang out with. Some of the guys were older, but they were a good influence and not into drugs or anything like that.

As I got older, I tried to sneak out of school in order to have more time for riding - pretty stupid actually. But I still graduated with decent grades. Some classes at my school accepted work for school credit. So I chose those classes and worked at a bike shop. However, I was hardly at the shop. I was out riding most of the time.

Right after high school I had to move out at home. I started to work in warehouse jobs to pay for my bills and just rode for fun. I always wanted to go to Woodward to learn more tricks, but I simply couldn?t afford it. And my Dad always thought riding was stupid, so he wouldn?t pay for it. Everything I learned, I learned at local skate parks and jump spots, because I wasn?t able to go to different places. When I got older, I must have been around 22, I started saving for my trips to meet other people and learn new stuff from more advanced riders at Woodward and other places.

Throughout my final high school years I had worked in bike shops and everybody who worked there was riding mountain bikes. So when we went out to ride, I always borrowed a mountain bike. However, I had to be careful, because I couldn?t afford to pay for the bike if I broke it. It was fun, because I like to ride bikes. It was just as fun as riding my BMX and I could do the same tricks with it.

In 2004 a bike shop ?Go Huck Yourself? that A.J. Johnson owned put on a contest called ?The Gathering?. It was a two-night event: one dirt jump night and one skate park night. A.J. knew me through some mutual friends and offered me to borrow his bike if I wanted to ride in the contest. First was the dirt jump contest. Unfortunately I broke the wheel of his bike and felt so bad that wanted to quit. But then I thought I broke his bike so should show up again and show him that I know how to ride. I fixed the bike over night and went back the next day to ride in the skate park contest. I knew the skate park very well. However, that day I didn?t recognize anyone there, because they were all mountain bikers and I had never paid attention to MTB magazines or movies. I could have sat next to the Ryan Nyquist of mountain biking and I wasn?t able to distinguish him from the kid next door. That was actually kind of fun, because I had nothing to lose and I had just fun riding my bike. I ended up getting second place without knowing who Aaron Chase was who beat me, or Paul B. who got third.

After that event, the shop helped me to get a bike together. I was still working in my warehouse job and tried to go to little events now and then. I had fun, because apart from the fact that the mountain bike fit my physics much better, there were many more contests going on. I never got to do so many contests while I was riding BMX. And the more I showed up at mountain bike contests, the more I started running into old buddies, like Boyko and Bearclaw, who used to ride BMX.

Since the vacation time in a fixed job is pretty limited, I always tried to bend the rules to get out of town for the weekend for events like Sea Otter or Super Session. By the end of 2006 my employer was really mad at me. And there were so many contests coming up that I wanted to go to, but I couldn?t afford to quit my job, because I needed the money to pay my bills. And what?s worse, I had run into debt. I decided to put all my eggs in one basket and filed bankruptcy to get rid of my debts and be able to seize the opportunity when it came.

At the turn of 2007, I got invited to two Qashqai stops (Milan and Cologne), so I asked my boss for a leave of absence for one month to go to Europe. When he told me no I quit. I had been with them for 4.5 years, but I didn?t want to miss this chance. I had started saving my money after I had declared bankruptcy and I used this money to pay for my trip to Europe. I went with Ben Boyko and photographer Rob Rebholz. They were going to all five Qashqai stops. I was only invited for the second one, but was showing up at the first anyway, because I had nothing else to do. Turns out that somebody got hurt and they needed another rider, so they let me ride in the event and I won Best Trick. As a result I was invited to the rest of the stops. Unfortunately I had already gotten a plane ticket back home and I couldn?t afford to stay that long. But at least I made myself known and it was my little breakthrough in the mountain bike contest scene. Within a month after Qashqai, I was invited to the Red Bull Bike Night and flew back to Europe. By that point I already knew that I wanted to keep riding and pursue a career in this sport.

At the end of 2007, which was a hard year not having a job and trying to make it to all these contests on my own, Aaron Lutze whom I had known for years, and I came up with the ?Summer of Shred? idea. He took me to Interbike and we found all of my new sponsors for year 2008.

With Summer of Shred we wanted to try something different with the outlook of mountain biking as an all-around sport and not just cover one aspect at a time. I wanted to make a DVD that anyone can pick up and watch and get a cool story out, whether he wants to learn tricks, go out and ride cross country, or watch it with his parents. Making the video that way makes it more fun, too. We are not creating something gigantic, I?d say we are almost documenting the life of riders. 2008 was a very busy year for us. But the hard work really paid off. Every single one of our sponsors is happy with who we are and what we did this year. I attended about fourteen contests between filming the Summer of Shred and I rode well at all of them.

In 2009, I want to progress in everything I am doing. I want to ride as good and hard as I can and I want to make a video that stands out as much as this year?s video did.
 

pnj

Turbo Monkey till the fat lady sings
Aug 14, 2002
4,696
40
seattle
Some Sundbaum trivia for ya.

His dad had my dad as a shop teacher in high school.
 

don

Turbo Monkey
Nov 8, 2001
1,319
0
Rumson, NJ
Cool interview - sounds like he has definitely done some work to get where he is. That photo with Nyquist and him is histerical!