Dew tour becomes Dhers tour

In Portland, Oregon, Daniel Dhers celebrated his third Action Sports Tour victory of the year – which in light of the three events to date is not a bad average. Taking stock.

For Wendy’s International, the third stop of this year’s AST Dew Tour, the world’s best BMX riders rightly exhibited a few special tricks. Mike Spinner, for example, combined a 1080 with a quadruple tailwhip, and cashed in a 92.67 score. Steven McCann threw down a no-hander to turndown 720 – as well as a truckdriver to tailwhip and a no-handed 720 over the spine on top. And Ryan Nyquist made the audience breathless with a sequence of single and double barspin 720s.

Victory due to one of the best career runs ever

 

But none of these was enough against Daniel Dhers. The 23-year-old Venezuelan made his rivals in Portland dizzy, firstly with a 720 up the step-up and a 360 whip transfer into the box landing – and then, because he was still in the swing of things, also delivered an amazing double tailwhip, a no-handed 720 and his completely new can-can 720.

720 variations on the 720

 

The latter was the most recent product from DD’s very own bag of tricks. The development of the 720 is actually the current main objective of the X Games winner, who describes himself as being ‘pretty shy, without [his] bike.’ He had already performed a new 720 variant at the AST event in Cleveland, the no-handed corked 720.

Strong performance thanks to strength of nerves

 

But it’s not only innovations like this that make Dhers so unbeatable. There’s also his technical precision – and his nerves of steel. Dhers finds his rhythm – like at the opening event in Baltimore – even when he seems to be out of the race. At the Panasonic Open, following a botched first round, when he was in a seemingly no-win eleventh place, he snatched up the victory right at the end.

Third cup victory in mind

 

Dhers is heading to the last events – the Toyota Challenge from September 11 to 14 and the Playstation Pro from October 16 to 19 – 55 points ahead. But he still doesn’t quite have his third AST Cup win running in his bag, he reaffirms modestly: ‘I can’t really take it for granted yet. You can never underestimate your opponents: Spinner’s always there.’