Archive for the ‘Interview’ Category
Some Thoughts and News
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009Hi Folks!
As part of the warm up for Bike to Work Week (May 11-17), I had planned a visit to a school to show them a few trials tricks, then take them for a ride. I certainly didn’t want to be a hypocrite and drive, but how was I going to get to the school with two different bikes? Knowing that my example is more powerful than my words, I decided to borrow a bike trailer from my friend Dimitri, and just tow my trials bike and high jump bar to the school. It was only about a 35 minute bike ride, so no big deal. I, along with 95 students, rode their bikes to school-NICE!!
(Big rig vs Small rig—could this be a sign of things to come?)
If you’re a Vancouverite, the Trips for Kids DownBeat Slideshow and Silent Auction is coming up on May 7th. I’ll be doing a trials demo, Sterling Lorence and Kari Medig will present slideshows, and there will be some incredible auction items up for grabs. Check out all the specifics here!
The desire to progress and push my riding is at a momentary plateau; but I am inspired to progress and push my persona, and to use this brief period of my career in a responsible way to promote the joys of cycling and to contextualize these joys in a way that may help to serve the everyday challenges of life. This is the broad brushstroke of a vision I have for the next season or three or more. How these thought patterns evolve and materialize is yet to be determined, but I’m quite excited about the possibilities.
Mr. David Howard, author, father, and executive editor of Mountain Bike Magazine met me last year at the Mont-Sainte-Anne World Cup to hang out and spend some time talking; the resulting article has just been published in their June 2009 issue. The article is titled “Ryan Leech’s Toughest Trial”, and captures part of my thought process as described above. FYI, after the main body of the article, it is continued on Page 81, they just forgot to add the “continued on” part. Also, the articles referenced in the story titled BikEcology, were written for the now inoperative Mountain Biking Magazine, not Bike Magazine, but are nonetheless available on my blog.
The Sea Otter Classic in California has come and gone, so the riding season is officially on in North America (did it ever end in Vancouver?!). But for those that have winter knocking on the door, I hope you take advantage of some great rides before the weather finally turns.
Have fun!
RL
POV of young kid giving me a high five 
Bike Mag and BRAIN Mag Video Blog
Sunday, February 1st, 2009I’m in a Best Western in Medford, Oregon after a fairly lengthy drive. While Dustan was driving, I edited the last video blog from the trip which features interviews from Bike Magazine and Bicycle Retailer and Industry News. I’m just waiting for it to upload to youtube so I can embed it in this post.
I woke up fairly early this morning to catch the sunrise on the beach in Dana Point, CA. So beautiful. I had to soak that in as I new I’d be driving on the I-5 highway before too long. First though, we met with Steve Casimiro at National Geographic Advenure magazine for breakfast and a chat. Have a look at the website he maintains, some incredible photography. His name is ingrained in my memory from my early days of studying Bike Magazine cover to cover—he’s the one who started that magazine and edited it for five years.
Okay, here’s the video, it finally uploaded…
Trials of Life Video
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008My filmmaker friend Alex Lavigne filmed and edited together a short from one of my Trials of Life school presentations. He had some out takes from Crux that didn’t make the final film, they’re spliced in throughout the short. Have a look if you like:
Crux Interview
Friday, September 12th, 2008I caught up with the film crew from 4-Seasons.tv while at the EuroBike show. They interviewed me about “Crux” and the latest news about my career. It’s about a 10 minutes long interview, and we were generous with the footage from Crux, just in case you’d like a little more of a tease. Of course you can buy the DVD right here if you’re intrigued
Ride ON!
Dirt Rag – Manifesto Style
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008Just wanted to pass along a link to an interview I did with Dirt Rag magazine recently (Sea Otter ‘08), here’s the first part of the interview….
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Although bike trials action may be hard to find these days, Ryan Leech has carved a niche out for himself in an otherwise faded sport. In so doing he has inspired not just riders of any discipline, but through his innovative Trials of Life program, school kids across his home country of Canada.
His smooth, flowing, powerful style-dubbed the Manifesto Style in his first video-draws gasps and enthusiastic applause from audiences. I saw one of Ryan’s trials demonstrations at the Sea Otter Classic this past April and got a chance to find out more.
DR: Through your email newsletters, I found out about the Trials of Life program. It sounds like a great idea, the kind of thing that trials is good for.
RL: Yeah.
DR: What was your inspiration in getting that set up?
RL: Well, a number of years ago I was invited to come to a school to talk about my career as a pro rider. I didn’t really think too much about it…I came into the classroom not really prepared, and just kind of spat my way through this speech about what I was doing. And you know, during the speech all these students were totally paying attention to me and listening to everything I was saying…I was like, wow, these kids are really into this, this is pretty wild, I should perhaps think about what I’ve got to say a little bit more and perhaps I can inspire them more.
So I decided to bring my whole trials show into the school, and instead of just a classroom get the whole school to watch, do a bit of riding, then talk, ride and talk, mix it up like that. It’s been great so far-it’s been really well received and I’ve been having a blast doing it and meeting so many cool young students from all over the place.
DR: I watched one of the videos on your website and it was cool to see the kids get really excited. What’s the message that you try to convey in your talks?
RL: Well, through examples and experiences I’ve had, I pretty much just reinforce the fact that you have to listen to your heart, and that’s really the basis of the whole presentation. Of course, I talk about success, what success really is, about criticism, stuff like that…it all sorta comes back to trying to inspire the students to really find out what it is that they want to do with their lives for themselves, not what everyone else is telling them to do, because there’s so many pressures on students these days. I really believe we all have some special unique thing that we’re meant to do and it’s often hard to discover that if we’re pressured to do all these other things.
DR: That’s a really good message. What kind of schools do you work with, is it pretty much anyone that’ll have you?
RL: Pretty much.
DR: Are they in Canada only or have you gone other places?
RL: Actually I’ve got a week coming up in Rockland, Maine that I’m excited about. One of the bike shop guys was bugging me to come over for the last couple of years, and basically he took it on and got a whole week scheduled together and I’m gonna visit a bunch of schools and do a few shows.
DR: I was reading on your blog about your friend that got to work with students a little more through the Boys and Girls club, taking them on rides. Do you see yourself going into that role a little more, working with students one-on-one? I imagine you don’t have a lot of time…
RL: That’s the thing, I was thinking about that recently, and it seems like my role has been to spread my message to a whole bunch of people without that personal longer-term relationship, so I was trying to decide, OK, what’s best here? At this point I think I’m capable of, I guess you could say, preaching to a larger bunch of people, so I think that’s what I’ll do for now, and then perhaps down the road, things change, maybe I’m not riding as much, maybe I can get a little more personal and one-on-one with people.
DR: It seems like a good approach since your talents lend themselves to a display.
RL: For now I think, yeah.
DR: I read that you changed your style in order to make it more audience-friendly. Tell me more about how you got away from focusing on competitions, since I imagine if someone’s into trials, competition’s sort of the easy route…
RL: It’s one route for sure, and it perhaps wasn’t so much that I changed my style for an audience, I guess it was more I grew tired of the structure of trials competition and rather enjoyed the freedom and creativity of riding for a film or in front of an audience. I enjoyed that outlet, that sort of creative release style of riding, more so than competition. In order for me to really feel excited about riding a line it had to be smooth and flowy to a certain point, which is why I was motivated to create my first film which sort of took away a lot of those slow hopping style things that you often see in trials. That’s kind of how that started and it just lent itself really well to doing shows.Â
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