Kieran Reilly: Gateshead BMX rider completes world first triple flair stunt

In the world of BMX, the holy grail of stunt riding has long been the first triple flair – a jump with three complete 360-degree rotations taken off and landed on a wooden ramp. For a long time, it was regarded as an impossibility. Even when riders began to attempt it, it remained an elusive dream. Until this month.

When Gateshead-born 20-year-old Kieran Reilly landed the world’s first triple flair in a specially-constructed area of the Asylum Park skatepark, near Nottingham, he didn’t just achieve something that had been more than a year in the making. He changed the course of BMX history.

“I’d learned the double a couple of years ago, but I’d got to the point where I’d started to become quite comfortable with it,” said Red Bull rider Reilly. “I was doing it fairly frequently, but the fear factor of doing it had gone and I wasn’t getting the adrenaline rush of doing that trick.

“I just had the idea one day, ‘Imagine adding a third rotation – why hasn’t it been done?’ Now, having tried the trick, I can see why no one had thought of it. It was definitely a challenge.

“A couple of guys had tried it on scooters but hadn’t been able to get it done, so I think BMX riders across the world just thought, ‘Well, scooters are a hell of a lot smaller and lighter than BMXs, so if it’s not going to work on that, why would it work on a BMX?’. It kind of got left dead in the water really, no one wanted to even attempt the challenge.

“I know of a couple of guys who had tried it into a foam pit, but as far as I know, no one had even attempted to land this trick on a wooden ramp before me.”

Operation triple flair had begun. In layman’s terms, adding an extra rotation to a BMX trick requires two things. Extra speed, which is generated by using a longer and steeper ramp, which in turns creates extra height, enabling the rider to complete three full turns before returning back down to earth.

In theory, it sounds simple. In practice, it is much harder to perfect, especially once the mental challenges of attempting something so extreme and potentially physically-damaging are factored in.

“The biggest challenge straight off was the set-up,” said Reilly. “You need the ramp to be big, but you also need the right ramp because to do three rotations, you don’t just need the right momentum, you also need to get the right amount of G-force out of the ramp in order to be able to rotate.

“But as well as that, my biggest challenge – and I think anyone would have had the same thing – was mental. It was a trick where I was on top of a 30-foot roller, on my own, just looking at this ramp and thinking, ‘I’ve got to go down there’. Once you commit, you’ve got to give it 100 per cent.”

With the preparations complete, Reilly made his first attempt at achieving the triple last May. It was not an immediate success.

“We had a block of seven days,” he said. “There were a couple of days of trialing in a foam pit, then a couple of days of basically crashing on wood. It was one of those tricks where you had to give it so much commitment that if you did crash, you crashed hard from 20 feet in the air.

“You could only really try it properly a couple of times a day because, if you didn’t do it, your body was written off. Waking up on the final day, my body was just slammed from taking so many falls. I’d hyper-extended my forearm from having such a tight grip on the handlebars, and it blowing out.

“I couldn’t even grip the handlebars on the final day, so we had a couple of days’ rest and came back for one more day, but couldn’t get it done.

“That final day first time round, I couldn’t even drop off the ramp. The mental block was just so difficult. I ended up being at the top of the ramp for about four hours before I had to say, ‘Look, this just isn’t happening’.”

Most people would have given up then, but not Reilly. Seven months down the line, and he felt ready to confront his demons by returning to the super-ramp once more.

“We gave ourselves three days the second time around because we’d already worked out the logistics so didn’t need to go through that again,” he said. “The first day was really a warm-up, the second day was crashing again.

“The last day looked like it was going to go the same way as before for most of the day. We got to the skatepark about 10.30am, but the trick didn’t end up getting done until 8pm because it was a whole day of going through these mental battles.

“My body was beat up – I’d crashed the day before and ended up with a trapped nerve in my neck, so we had to have a sports physio come out and help with that – and when I was up there, that was in my head. I also had the fear of déjà vu happening, another day where I’d have to come down off that ramp and admit defeat.

“In the end, I just went for it. The first one, I crashed quite hard, but I’d got past the barrier. The next time, I did it. I had a couple of my close friends there, who are also riders, and they just went mad. They were pretty amazed. Since then, other people around the world have seen the video, and I think they think it’s pretty mind-blowing.”

Achieving a world first has catapulted Reilly to a new level of stardom within the adrenaline-sport community, and with the continued support of Red Bull, the North-Easterner wants to carry on pushing the boundaries of what is possible in stunt riding. However, he also has his eyes set on another prize – a place on Team GB at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

“I’ve worked with British Cycling as a guest rider, and they’ll be working on a programme towards Paris,” said Reilly. “The Olympics is definitely a massive goal, and a lot of my energy is going to be going into that, but having a sponsor like Red Bull means I can also continue to try to do these amazing feats.

“You can unlock new tricks and do amazing projects cinematography wise. I love putting a lot of time into one thing, and creating content through that. That won’t be stopping, even though I will be aiming for Paris and doing competitions to try to get points to qualify for the Olympics.”

*  The trick can be watched on Red Bull UK’s Instagram, TikTok, with a full behind the scenes edit launching on Red Bull’s Bike YouTube channel. A full behind the scenes edit can also be seen at redbull.co.uk/tripleflair

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