Name: Keelan Phillips

Age: 20

Where are you from? Leicester, England

How long have you been riding? I’ve been riding a bmx since I was about 10 but u know just messing around and jumping curbs and stuff, been riding flatland around 5 ½ years now.

How did you get into riding?  When I was little my older brother had a bmx and as the little one I always wanted what he had. He eventually gave it to me and I loved it. Then my cousin got 1, we used to go out on our bikes all the time. Then we bought some magazines and found out about freestyle bmx. As time went by I wanted to be different so I thought I’d try flatland because I could do my own thing plus it was fun and it went from there.

How often do you practice? I practice everyday around 4 hours a day. Often things happen or I need to do other stuff and I have a day off which I hate or sometimes I will ride up to 6 hours if I’m trying new stuff or having a good session and time flies by.

Why do you ride brakeless? Around 2003 I started doing tricks like crackpackers,hitchhikers and halfpackers which don’t require brakes and I liked the feeling of a free rolling bike, the only thing I ever used my brake for was pinky squeaks to spinning hitch hikers. I then learnt to do a pinky to spinning hitch without a brake and the day after I won the backyard jam oct 2003 in expert I took them off and my sessions became so much more fun and creative so I will never put a brake back on now. I like the fact that I can learn a trick people use brakes for and do it without plus it brings more flow into my riding.

Last trick you learnt?  4 g-turns in a cliffhanger I haven’t seen anybody g-turn it more than 2 times before so I want to do as many as I can, 4 is nice.

What motivates you to ride?  I want to do links and tricks that are done in my own way, I want to progress and learn/create tricks that I feel are going in my own direction, I want riders to be like he’s doing his thing, a different style. Good music makes me want to ride, but my main motivation is to progress.

Describe your style? I’m not sure about my own style because I do some rolling tricks but also some fast spinning tricks. I guess it’s whatever people think of my riding, I don’t know myself, I just ride and don’t think about what style I’ve got, I suppose just a different style but I want my riding to look good too.

What sort of music do you listen to? I listen to everything, often when I ride I listen to the radio, I like all kinds of music. The main thing I like is u.k hip hop to name a few I listen to is dizzee rascal,sway, the streets,nasty crew. I like the u.k scene right now and I like riding to it, hip hop beats are good to ride to and when I’m riding indoors I love the bass turned up.

Most inspirational video?  I haven’t seen all the vids out there but the last really good 1 I seen was martti kuoppa’s dvd very original and mixt, that was inspirational( one of my favourite dvd’s), I like the intrikat vids they don’t have the best editing but it concentrates on the tricks which is the most important thing for me in a vid. I like jeff d’s parts in the vibes too, anything new/original is inspirational to me.

What do you associate inertia with? I see it as a straight forward company, light,simple and strong parts quality made, no unnecessary features that a rider has put had work into creating, and U.K represent.


Plans for the future? To keep riding and progressing, learn my own tricks/links and try to be a bit more consistent for comps, I know comps aren’t that important to me because it’s my riding in general that counts. I don’t think a riders full potential can be seen at a comp but I would still like to do good at them plus I really like traveling everywhere to comps so in the future I would like to travel more and see more riders and places.

Thanks: yea thanks to Lee for putting me on the team, Paul Cartwright, Lee Wilson , my sis for letting me ride at her indoor place and people who believe in flatland,  peace