Game of BIKE 2026: transition edition
Back in my BMX days, a thing my friends would do once every few weeks when we were bored of practicing was to play a game of BIKE. It's basically the game of HORSE you play with a basketball, but on a trick bike. Set a trick, have your friend try and duplicate it, but if they fail, they earn a letter and the first one to spell out BIKE loses.
The thing is, everyone learns many of the basic bike tricks, then as they get better, they tweak their favorite tricks into their own signature moves. For a good (fair) game of BIKE, you don't just pull out your hardest signature tricks, instead you pick tricks you think your buddy could do but you maybe haven't seen them do that trick in years. It pushes everyone competing in a game of BIKE to try new things and the results are sometimes amazing where you might pull something you're trying for the very first time. Another big go-to strategy in BIKE is doing really weird, awkward tricks to see if your friends can do them too.
Top level BIKE
I'm a huge fan of Dennis Enarson because he's a fantastic all-around street and park rider (plus he's no slouch on a MTB) and he's run a series of games of BIKE with top riders over the past few years on his YouTube account. Earlier this year he did a series of competitions in a big park course that pushed everyone to their limits. What's great about these competitions is I get to see all my favorite riders but ultimately, whoever becomes the champion often has to be totally versatile, a master of every kind of trick, not necessarily the top guy in the world of BMX.
Recently, he brought back many of the same riders for another round of competitions, this time focused on transitions (ramps). He tweaked the classic formula by having riders compete in teams of two, and it all takes place in the ramp park used by USA cycling for Olympics training with huge transitions, gaps, and walls.
The first two sessions are out and a new one drops every Friday. It'll probably take another couple months to get all the way through to the finals and crown the winning team. After years of Dennis doing these kinds of videos, he's really firing on all cylinders and these the best games of BIKE I've ever seen after decades of riding. Dennis is also now killing it terms of venue, filming coverage, rider expertise, and creativity.
Game 1
Kevin Peraza is my favorite rider on earth, and I love that they brought in Jay Dalton on the other team because he's ridiculously creative. My favorite challenge in this match is Jay's one-handed wall ride, which is a bonkers trick I've never seen or even thought of before.
Morgan Wade and Ryan Nyquist are guys still riding in their late 40s, kings from a different time and they bring incredibly fun, weird tricks from the 1990s.
This really is the pinnacle of the sport, a great example of the best riders on Earth doing creative tricks, pushing each other to do better, in a format unlike any normal BMX competition.
