“I’ve gone mad and bought a field” Kye told us.
We weren’t quite sure what he meant. Was he swapping his Red Bull helmet for a flat cap and quitting bikes to become a farmer?
Nah, of course not, not yet anyway. But, that was the start of Kye Forte’s Green Acres Jam.
That was the last we heard for a while. Then suddenly there was talk of a jam with Red Bull. A couple of weeks later the field had be sculpted, fenced, drained and even had a duck pond. Then there was a beautiful line of trails carving down the green hill and it was on!
True to Mr Forte’s word there was trails, ales, live music, local food and even a mini slalom for Wideopen to run. The plan worked perfectly – a dream-team-combo of BMX and Devon – all in the summer sun in the new Forte family field, washed down with lots of local beer and Red Bull.
The trails
The trails are a masterpiece and crash down the hill with BMX-track style rollers up the top, hips and dirt waves in the middle and a double, berm, double combo to finish. There’s a great big, gnarly, scary line that Kye proudly tells us is “right next to a bloody great big spiky Hawthorne tree!” and smaller – though definitely not easy – lines that meant rippers as young as nine were out throwing down alongside the big guns of BMX.
“I wanted the jumps to be fun and to feel like a set of trails rather than a death trap! I wanted to make something I would want to ride after everyone had gone home!”
It turned out good, it’s like a scaled-down Empire of Dirt” Kye Forte
5 corners in the sunshine
Kye was cool enough to invite us down to run a little slalom race as side-show to the main event. We borrowed some freelap poles, Kye brapped out a track on his crosser and we spent the day getting loose down 5 drifty turns in the sunshine. There’s something very awesome about shredding corners and then watching BMX legends Corrie Bohan, Mike Hucker Clark, Scott Edgeworth and Chris Doyle have a go.
Chris Smith took a break from hitting the trails on his DH bike to put a time in and spent the day battling for the lead with Rich Thomas. Chris took the win with a 12.02 and won cider and a trip to the Red Bull Soap Box Derby in London for his efforts! An honourable mention goes to Kieran Abbot who turned up and rode about 50times more laps than anyone else!
… and the Big Guns
The main event was the Pro trails jam. Kye had invited some seriously heavy weight riders, put them up for a week at his place and made sure the talent was overflowing. The jam format meant no stress – riders sessioned the track, went as nuts as they wanted, fixed the trails between rides and just had a blast.
Pro winners:
1st Joe Baddeley
2nd Chris Doyle
3rd Hucker
Joe Baddeley won the Pro jam with a 360 flip a double flip and by “generally going a bit mad” (says Kye!). 2nd was Chris Doyle and 3rd Mike “Hucker” Clark.
“Everyone’s riding was cool. Everyone was doing big tricks but it was chilled at the same time which was great. It didn’t have that intense comp vibe. It was more like a session.
I did one run and landed on my head. It’s the last time I try and organise an event and ride at the same time!” Kye Forte
Toby Parker laying the table
Kye’s brother Leo on the hip.
Words of wisdom from Kye – “don’t run an event and ride at the same time”. Turn down shortly before landing on his head.
Chris Smith on the DH bike. Incredible.
And the future?
Kye didn’t have much time to regroup after Green Acres. Before the dust had settled he was in the camper and on the road to NASS for the next event where another set of trails need to be built. Kye’s wife Gemma stayed at home to manage the aftermath, empty her house of BMX’ers and get her wish of drinking a “bottle of wine with a straw!” after weeks of event planning. Next stop after that Nass Kye is on to the British Downhill Series. After that he might just get a couple of days at home to start thinking about next time…
“It’s savage putting on an event. There’s no break from it. There’s a million and one things that could have gone wrong and did but I think we’ve got a lot of stuff in place now though so we can do it again. I wouldn’t advise anyone else to do it!
But … It looked like a mini-festival and it was exactly how I wanted it to be. Everything went really smoothly and yeah, we’ll do it again.” Kye Forte
