Defending The Dew Cup: Cameron White

With so much talent coming together at the Dew Tour, it’s easy to get wrapped up in lauding each sport’s latest technical advances. With regards to BMX Dirt, it’s great we have Cameron White. The 25-year-old has continuously pushed things forward: from his barspin-to-backflip tailwhip in competition at the 2007 Toyota Challenge in Salt Lake City to his performance that helped him snatch the Dew Cup in 2008. We caught up with Cam during his downtime down-under, where he was busy doing things like hosting the Hillside Dirt Jam 3 in his backyard in Wamboin, Australia. This year the event raised about $10,000 US for the Stephen Murray fund. We talked to him about his thoughts on the past year of Dirt riding, why he thinks BMX Dirt videos can bite the dust, and what we can look forward to this summer.

Aside from hosting that big dirt jam, what has your off-season been like? Have you been training? Have you taken some time off?

Ah, I took some time off to hang out with family and friends. We’ve had the BMX X Games contest, which is pretty much the other big contest we have in Australia—We went down to Melbourne for that, and that was a bit of fun. The weekend after was my jam. It’s been busy but quiet also.

What tricks do you see going down this coming season?

Hopefully they will be a bit of different stuff from last year—that would be cool. Last year there was a great variety. Everyone was pushing every sort of limit. Ryan Nyquist was throwing double bar spins and 720s, which is pretty ridiculous. Dennis Enarson was doing crazy stuff, too. I think there was a great variety of styles and different tricks through last year’s season. I’m hoping the tricks might mellow out a little bit. I’m hoping the jumps might get bigger and scarier so that the tricks aren’t quite so gnarly. I think that would be a cool way to go. The tricks are getting so wild, with double flips and all of that. It’s pretty gnarly.

You’re saying you’d like to see things cleaned up a little bit?

Yeah. I prefer to see a big 360-transfer on a 40-foot jump over a 1080 or a double back flip. To me it’s more where the roots of dirt jumping are. It’s just a 360 but it would look gnarly because the jump would be so big.

As a pro rider, what emphasis do you put on contest riding?

I love contests. I think it’s a great way to go hang out with the boys. It’s a lot of fun. Obviously I want to do well, but if you don’t, you don’t.

Do you see more BMX progression in the contests or the video parts?

Growing up, I just always liked watching contests. With a video part, you can spend a year on a video part. You can try the gnarliest things 50 times and finally get it once. That’s pretty crazy and it’s cool to watch, but a contest is more on-demand. You got to pull that stuff every day. That to me seems like more work than a video part. I think watching Ryan Nyquist do a 720 double bar spin at a contest is more exciting than just clicking a video on Youtube. As a kid reading the magazines, I was always stoked on the Dirt comps because the jumps looked good, and the tricks were big.

As a kid did you grow up taping contest footage, as opposed to being the kid with the huge video library?

Not really. In Australia I would just flip through the magazines, and I was always stoked on the Dirt comps because the jumps looked good and you see all the big tricks. That’s kind of what I am. I like to do big tricks and ride big jumps, so it fits one-in-one.

The Dew Tour is entering its fifth year. What is your favorite moment?

Probably last year when I won the Dew Cup was the gnarliest day of my life. Everything lined up. I’d had a few hard slams, and I had everything against me. That was probably the biggest moment of my life, ever.