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Santa Cruz Style

March 16, 2007


Jamie Goldman: Take a freeride
BY GWEN MICKELSON
SENTINEL STAFF WRITER
Jamie Goldman can't ride his bike right now because of a sprained
right knee, and he's getting impatient watching other bikers fly over
and flip off dirt ramps sculpted into an Aptos field.
"It sucks, but it really just makes me want to ride more every time I
get hurt - it's kinda weird, actually," says Goldman, 20, a
professional freeride mountain biker and team rider for Syndicate,
Santa Cruz Bicycles' pro team.
Injuries are just part of the job for Goldman, who fell in love with
freeride mountain biking at age 12. He uses his bike to go airborne
off dirt or wooden ramps and perform astonishing tricks while flying -
flipping 360 degrees and landing perfectly, kicking the bike around in
a horizontal circle while holding onto the handlebars and reconnecting
his feet with the pedals just before hitting the ground.
But with the ecstasy of soaring comes the fact of gravity; Goldman has
ruptured his spleen, had his appendix removed, broken his collarbone
and a couple of ribs and torn ligaments in his knee. Perhaps worst on
the injury list, at 16 he broke both his ankles at the same time and
was in a wheelchair for three months.
His parents, Michael and Karen, don't really worry about him, says his
dad.
"But it's hard for me to watch now, because they're going so huge,"
Michael says.
It's all worth it, according to Goldman, because the sport has him
hooked.
"I think it's just the adrenaline and being able to push your body and
see what you can do with it," says Goldman, squinting in the hot
spring sunshine on a recent weekday.
He started out biking to class at Shoreline Middle School, and he and
his buddies would jump off the stairs. Then he started doing dirt
jumps at DeLaveaga Park. As a boy, he raced BMX bikes, then rode
motocross before making the transition to a mountain bike.
"You could ride your mountain bike anywhere," says Goldman, a Santa
Cruz native with blond, all-American looks. "You could ride to trails,
ride trails and jump"
With a slew of firsts and other high rankings at international
contests, Goldman could rest on his laurels. But he's driven to do the
best he can.
Next up on the trick wish-list? Back-flip tail-whips. "I want to do
that really bad," says Goldman, who had brought his bike out so a
photographer could snap him at least sitting on it.
But for now, he needs to wait a couple weeks for his knee to heal. His
friends have invited him to the beach, but first, he loads his bike
into his truck and heads to the taqueria.
Contact Gwen Mickelson at .

===
I am working on creating wildlife habitat that is off-limits to
humans ("pure habitat"). Want to help? (I spent the previous 8
years fighting auto dependence and road construction.)

Please don't put a cell phone next to any part of your body that you are fond of!

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