5-29-07 // Online Exclusive: Inside The Qashqai

David Ulrich

It’s as unlikely a location for a freeride mountain bike competition as you’ll find—downtown Cologne in northern Germany. Miles away from the trees and the dirt and the mountains of our sport. Regardless, this past weekend (May 25th-26th) 24 of the planet’s best trick and air blessed mountain bikers gathered on the cobblestones of a park in the city’s centre for the fourth of five stops on the Qashqai Urban Challenge.

It’s hot and humid in the “Mediapark”, a large town square surrounded by high tech glass and steel buildings, home to some of Germany’s more popular newspapers and radio stations. In view of both the old and the new: a giant transmitter tower and the steeples of The Dom, one of Europe’s most impressive cathedral’s, major shit is going down. Three truckloads of wood have been transformed into a wild infrastructure of step-downs and spines, wall rides and box jumps.

The Qashqai Urban Challenge’s title sponsor is Nissan Europe, who hopes to use the tour (whose overall costs lie in the millions of Euros) to raise buyer interest in their new Qashqai, a small SUV-like sportster. Why mountain biking? According to Tarek Rasouli, who runs Rasolution, an event production and promotion company hired by Nissan to run the tour, the folks at Nissan like the parallels between their Qashqai and our sport—a versatile and fun mode of transportation that can rip both mountains and city streets. They’ve made a commitment to mountain biking, with plans to run similar tours for the next two years.

In that vein, the tour has attempted to bring the mountain to the concrete and crowds of downtown environments with the creation of four differently themed events. Newcastle, England was North Shore, Milan, Italy was dirt jump, Madrid, Spain, street, and now, four weeks after the tour started, the park comp goes down in Cologne, Germany. The tour takes a four-week break before finishing up in Paris, France for the big air competition.

And while everything may seem all peachy on the surface, especially considering the prize money (there’s 20,000 Euros up for grabs per event, with the winner of the whole deal going home with a whopping 50,000 euros), and royal treatment for the athletes (they stayed in a four star hotel while in Cologne) not all is perfect.

“I’m here because it’s never happened before,” says Paul Basagoitia, the current points leader on the tour, placing 3rd at Cologne behind Berrecloth and UK park phenom Lance McDermott. “It’s cool because we’ve never had anything like this before, a five stop tour. Hopefully we’ll learn from on our mistakes.”

David Ulrich