Posts Tagged ‘Karen Brooks’
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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