He's called himself the bridesmaid before because of all his second-place finishes to Jamie Bestwick, but one look at the height of Chad Kagy's airs and the tricks he has up his sleeve – like a barspin flatspin – and there’s no telling when he'll put it all on the line and add to his collection of trophies. He was one of the first guys throwing down flip whips and double backflips, and his innovation continues to this day with his recent barspin flatspin at last month’s Dew Tour. Alli sat down with Kagy, a resident pro at Woodard, to hear about the new trick he’s been working on, his recent gold at X Games and his hobby of racing motorcycles.
We just saw a new trick out of you when you tried the barspin flatspin at Dew Tour. What’s the story on that?
I started working on that over the winter. I had learned how to do a barspin flair a couple of years ago and I did it a few times and it hasn’t really caught on. Nobody else has been doing it, and I like doing new tricks that nobody else knows how to do.
I started doing them again in Woodward on the resi and into the foam. I started messing with different options, barspin to barspin, barspin to X-up. Things weren’t really working. And one of my friends who was across the ramp, saw me do a regular barspin flair, and said, ‘Wow, you really start pulling your handlebars towards you and I almost thought you were going to do a no-hander.’ And I tried it into the foam and it worked.
It took a few months to figure out how to land it on resi. I’ve done it on the resi ramp probably about 15 times, and I haven’t yet done it on a real ramp. I was planning on it for one of the first few contests, and first Dew Tour it didn’t happen. X Games, I fell down twice in my Finals runs so I didn’t want to throw out a new trick that was a risk.
And then came Portland Dew Tour, so I figured that was the time, and I was behind on the scores and it was a risk. I was still in top-five at that point, and I got bumped back to sixth, but I figured I had enough points to survive if I didn’t do it. It sucks I crashed it, but it was one of those risks. That seems to be my style though. I have a trick in my head and I end up throwing it when I probably should be safe.
That trick is a barspin to no-handed flair, which is all the pieces that it is. But so far I haven’t really named any tricks. I’ll invent a few tricks, but sometimes I’ll just wait and surprise people at a contest.
You just won gold in Big Air at X Games. How did that go?
That actually went a lot easier than I was expecting. Not easy, as in, it was an easy competition. It was easy on me that I did my backup run, and I did it first try. Then everybody else kept falling and I didn’t have to tap into my new bag of tricks that I’ve been working on for Megaramp. That happens to be the one ramp that, unlike the vert ramp at Dew Tour, where I should probably stay more conservative and just throw what I have in my bag of tricks. Megaramp has bitten me really hard in the past, so if I don’t need the hard tricks that I’m 100 percent sure I can pull, I’m going to hold out on them. So I was able to do a 70-ft. flip whip to a 14-ft. high flair whip. I landed really smooth at the top and it held on. My score held all the way to the end.
Do you even have a Megaramp to practice on?
No. I’ve got a Megaramp jump, which isn’t the same. It’s not the same takeoff, and it’s definitely not the same landing. Woodward has an airbag resi, so it’s a big giant stuntman airbag built to be a landing with a resi over it, to jump 50 feet. So we can practice the jump, but the closest thing we have to practicing the quarterpipe is riding the vert ramp. That's sort of my benefit and my advantage, how often I ride vert, and that I love going high.
You had Anthony Napolitan, Andy Buckworth and Morgan Wade doing really cool jumps, but only until they hit the quarterpipe. Morgan was going high, but he didn’t have as much experience riding a vert ramp. The tricks he was trying, that was the first time he ever tried them. For Andy Buckworth, obviously you can tell that he doesn’t ride vert because his flairs were anywhere from 3 to 5 or 6 feet. It’s an advantage to be a vert rider on that particular ramp. But now Woodward West has an entire Megaramp.
A lot of the guys SoCal vert skaters have private ramps to ride. Do you have anything like that at home, or is that what Woodward is to you?
I don’t have a private ramp, I just consider Woodward my private ramp. During the summer there’s 12 weeks where there’s a thousand kids cruising through camp, but outside of those 12 weeks, there’s really just the residents.
So everyone that’s a resident pro, Stevie McCann for nine months out of the year, Andy Buckworth for most of the year, Jamie Bestwick full-time, myself full-time, Tom Stober and John Parker have been full time. Those are pretty much the only guys that see us ride.
On tour with the Nitro Circus
It’s kind of difficult at times because I’ll go to an event, and if you have a private ramp, your friends know what you’re working on. However, my friends happen to be the guys I’m competing directly with. So me and Jamie going head to head for the last three years of Dew Tour, he gets first, I get second, we know what each other has in our bag of tricks of possibilities and what we know we can pull on the vert ramp. So it makes it a little bit weird as far as that because we know ahead of time. But anything can happen.
Having a private ramp would have advantages to a certain extent, but at the same time, living in the state of Pennsylvania, during the winter if it goes to 5 degrees for a week, a warehouse would be so cold you can’t ride. And Woodward has indoor ramps, with heat and lights, and we go in there and ride.
You had surgery early December, then podiumed at Dew Tour and won X Games. Does that mean your back to 100 percent?
No more rehab. The surgery that I got was for compartment syndrome in my left leg, in the calf. The muscles in there had scar tissue built up and pulled tight on the tissue that surrounds the muscles. So when I would really use that particular muscle, which was the shin muscle, the blood that pumps into the muscle didn’t have enough room to flow when the muscle had contracted. So too much blood in there ended up making my foot fail. So I had foot drop and it wouldn’t work. I had surgery to cut all that stuff off. The recovery was a little longer than I anticipated. It was about two months worth of not riding my bike, and then getting back on and getting back into shape. So I’m back to as close to 100 percent as my body will let me.
You were part of Nitro Circus, how was that to be riding with Travis Pastrana and all of the other guys?
Nitro Circus Live Tour was five weeks of shows plus rehearsal days on a jump that was adjustable. So we had a 32-ft. jump, a 40-ft. jump and a 50-ft. jump. So that was really my practice for Megaramp, to tell you the truth. I had six weeks straight of jumping without the vert. But the Nitro Circus Tour was intense. It was wild doing 40-foot double backflips on a nightly basis to a resi landing, then watching the motocross guys.
Clinton Moore was doing body varials for a 75-ft. distance. Cam Sinclair was doing double backflips on his dirtbike for every single sold-out show. We had 11 shows, and I think he did nine double backflips on a dirtbike. It was intense. And every time we went into a new city, there were new opportunities and a new crowd. The ramps were the same setup but slightly different as far as the width and stuff. We were always looking for something new to do. By the time the third stop happened, Travis was jumping on his mountain bike in full motocross gear trying 360 backflips over the 50-ft. jump. It’s definitely one of those interesting setups when you get that group together and the peer pressure and the excitement and the adrenaline starts flowing.
The Nitro Circus crew
I heard you also race motorcycles. Is that more of a hobby for you, or something you see yourself getting serious about?
I started road racing last year. I started riding on a track just doing track days and schools about three years ago. The track is just outside Salt Lake City in Tooele, Utah at Miller Motorsports. It’s this Yamaha champions riding school that hooks me and Jamie Bestwick up. We go out there, we do the school, we bring out some press, and then we go out and we race. Jamie started racing a little bit last year. This year has been so hectic with me for travel, that I haven’t been able to make it out to any of the races. My bike is actually still in Atlanta because I was planning on going to some races down south. But Dew Tour overlaps, Nitro Circus overlapped. I gotta do the real job first. It’s a hobby for me, but it’s a really, really fun hobby. If I could get more involved in it, I totally would. It’s new for me. I may end up riding my bike at Woodward for two months and I learn one or two new things. I can go out to a three-day school in Salt Lake City and I’ll learn 50 new things in three days. So it’s like the learning curve. When you’re new at something and you’re really involved in it and want to do it. The ability to learn so much is there, and that feeling of accomplishment happens. I like it.
Check out Chad's second-place run from this year's Nike 6.0 BMX Open
