Video: awesome gravity-defying overtake

Every now and then a Youtube video has the wonderful effect of making me push myself away from my desk, throw my hands in the air and look around in slight disbelief. “Did anybody else see that?” The element of surprise seems to be the thing which gets me the most, and I’m not alone, as evidenced by the 17 million people who watched the clip of the mountain biker being flattened in spectacular fashion by a hartebeest (here is a link to the clip if you STILL haven’t watched it: mountain biker gets taken out by buck).

This video from the JBC 4x Revelations downhill mountain biking event in the Czech Republic seems like just another video of some gung-ho bikers flying down a hill. Having seen the jump toward the top, and the subsequent fall, it doesn’t seem like anything particularly special. You feel a little sorry for Michal Marosi, as he scrambles to get back on his bike, running slightly pathetically up the next jump. The other riders are thinking “that’ll teach him for trying to be too awesome too early in the race”. Little does anyone suspect that Marosi’s awesomeness will boil over as he gives new meaning to ‘taking the high road’.

The commentator couldn’t have said it better: ‘Well the tagline here at JBC four-cross revelations is ‘grab your balls’, and he most certainly did to take the win on that one.’

The only slightly disappointing thing about this video is that the frame isn’t perfectly aligned at the crucial moment. But fear not! Youtube provides us with exactly the angle we might want from a professional sports broadcaster. What I like about this clip is that the reaction of the camera man is exactly what mine would be if I wasn’t in a room full of concentrating people.