Simple Session timeline

The first-ever Simple Session, then known as SIMPEL Session because of the main sponsor Simpel, was born in 2001 after the success of Pepsi Street Challenge the previous year. This time around, the competition was a 2-day event and things got loose – the riding was on another level thanks to fresh obstacles, the parties were poppin’ and the Latvians went all Mortal Combat in the streets. So don’t let the name fool you, it’s never been a dull, simple competition.⁣⁣
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Thanks to the Finnish pros, BMX Flatland was introduced to the already packed line-up of BMX Dirt, BMX Street/Park, Inline Park, Inline Vert, Skateboarding Street/park. Can you name another contest these days that is as varied? It was a hectic, adrenaline-filled weekend celebrating action sports in its absolute best form.⁣⁣
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Even more international pros showed up for the competition: flatlander Kimmo Haakana from Finland, skateboarders Jussi Korhonen, Timo Kuulusa, Tero Malinen, Juoni Leino, Vesa Ritola, Jussi Tuominen and many more from Finland, park & vert rider Jonas Malmberg and park & ramp rider Mikael Malmberg from Sweden as well as vert rider Alex Reinke from Germany. All accompanied by many more riders and skaters from all these countries.⁣⁣ As well as crazy Latvian dirt and park riders.
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The afterparty was held at the most legendary nightclub in Tartu – Club Atlantis. This marked the beginning of a wild action sports and party festival we’ve all grown to love so much. The competition

and its tiny country were put on the map for its crazy antics on and off the course. Joe Rogan knows what we’re talking about.⁣⁣

2003, the year @apple launched iTunes and riders all the way from Denmark and Germany showed up for the last ever Simple Session main event held in its hometown, Tartu. Foreigners came and dominated in every discipline except for Aggressive Inline – not a well-known fact, but Estonians were and still are the kings of rollerblading, which you can obviously tell when walking on the Pirita promenade on a beautiful summer evening. ☀️#themoreyouknow ⁣
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BMX Dirt was upgraded from one jump to three jumps and a roll-in, so this time you not only didn’t have to pedal from across the skatepark, but you actually had to stay on the bike for a couple of jumps for your run to count. Latvians managed to figure out what the judges were looking for and stayed consistent at that snatching up all the podium spots. ⁣
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Finnish skaters Jani Mäkelä(@maksyvsp), Harri Puupponen (@harripuupponen), Timo Kuulusa (@alikuumotus) and Jouni Salo (@jouni.salo) took the top honours in skateboarding. Flatland wizards Martti Kuoppa (@marttikuoppa) and Viki Gomez (@vikigomezbmx) came to demonstrate their skills and judge the contest. German BMX badasses Robert Krömig, Markus Wilke and Sascha Claussen showed what was possible at the skatepark on a bicycle. In fact, a vast amount of stunts they did back then were still being discussed at the spot almost 15 years later. ⁣
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Rumour has it that @maksyvsp will be back at #simplesession20 to compete.

Another huge year for Simple Session: the event was getting more POPular and changed its name to Pop! Session Winter Bash due to a slight change in the sponsors, and fans were pleased with wonderful news – there was a live broadcast for the first time, so now you could be a part of the action straight from your home wherever in the world! 🌍

 

On the flip side, there was a huge storm in Estonia that caused some electricity problems. We think it may have had something to do with the fact that we had an EPIC line-up of some of the biggest American names such as Ryan Nyquist, Josh Harrington and Mike Vallely, who brought the thunderstorm straight to Saku Suurhall! ☇

 

The dudes were killing it and our party boy Nyquist took BMX Park gold medal, Achim Kujawski in BMX Vert and the Frenchman Bastien Salabanzi in Skateboarding. It’s worth mentioning that there were also a few female skateboarders ripping the park to pieces!

2007 was one of the most important years in the history of Simple Session for many reasons:

Dave Mirra, a key person in the history of BMX, the man who shaped the sport into what it is today, paid a visit to Estonia and the Simple Session course. It’s obvious why that’s still a highlight of the event to this day. We miss you dearly, Miracle Boy.

 

The second huge milestone for the competition that year was the same course and its design that Mirra got to lay his wheels on. This was the first year another legend in the game, Nate Wessel designed the skatepark and came to build it himself. Nate’s own fast and gnarly riding style has given him the ability to see lines nobody else would see and it’s quite clear he’s putting that skill to use when designing some of the best skateparks in the world for Woodward, the X Games and so on. This year marks the 14^th year in a row the skatepark Yoda’s been blessing us with his creativity at Simple Session. Also, for the first time, there was an Open Day for the local people to enjoy the high-level skatepark once the competition was done and dusted.

 

There was a high air competition on a massive quarter, where two speed-maniacs, Josh Harrington and Sebastian Keep tried to aim for the roof. Josh actually made an impressive appearance on the whole course with his signature fast-paced lines, blasting to the moon and back. Unfortunately, one of those landings wasn’t exactly the softest kind and made him take the top podium spot while having his face covered in bandages. A moment to remember for sure.

 

For cinema fans, there was a proper Simple Session Film Festival. During the three days of it, a wide selection skate and BMX movies were screened in two cinemas. The movie list included Men At Work (first Estonian skate movie, 1999), Flybikes “Dos” premiere, Mirraco short movie premiere, Fitbikes “Fitlife”, Volume Bikes “On the clock” European premiere, Hoffman Bikes “Broke off”, “A mul meeldõb” (Estonia 2006, premiere) and many more.

This year, the MasterChef Nate Wessel cooked up a fine, more street flavored masterpiece of a skatepark. This brought in a wide selection of the best street riders that wanted to get a taste of it all, and as far as we know, a large majority of them were loving it. Even the undisputed STREET-weight champion of the world Garret Reynolds made his second appearance. Yes, he won again. Axel Cruysberghs the wonder kid from Belgium took home the gold medal in skateboarding while being only 14 at the time.

 

Red Bull BMX Best Trick award went to the man who can bunnyhop your neck, Ty Morrow, who busted out a massive bunnyhop 540 down the Red Bull gap over a handrail. Jeremy Rogers banged out an impressive switch fs tailslide 270 out in Snickers Skate Best Trick contest. Simple Session 09 got its own TV show – Simpel Session TV, which had 4 episodes that introduced the competition and its athletes to the wider public before the event. The competition was starting to show really great statistics – 10,000 spectators and 180,000 live viewers. The riders were enjoying how crazy into it the fans were and in turn, they had to offer them an even better show. Wherever you looked in the crowd, you could see fan-made flags with their favorite riders’ names on them.

 

There was another summertime event – Simpel Summer Session 09 at the Freedom Square in Tallinn, where Daniel Dhers managed to take the gold even after going through a nasty frontflip crash in his first run.

The competition was getting very intense – Brett Banasiewicz was banging out World’s Firsts such as the Cash Roll Turndown and the Cash Roll Tuck No Hander, while the leading champion Drew Bezanson decided to take a different route to the course – he entered the arena with an enormous caveman drop-in from the judges’ tower railing and did a barspin to icepick on the lower part of the very same railing.

 

Red Bull Highest Bunnyhop was won by Ty Morrow, who managed to clear a whopping 117cm/46.1 inches.

 

Ryan Sheckler, the skateboarding superstar came back, this time all healed up and won both the street-park competition and Snickers Best Trick with a Frontside Bluntslide to Backside Flip out on the big flat rail.

 

Aaron Ross and Tom “Dang Dang” Dugan had to miss out on Simpel Session 11 because of the big snowstorm in the US and thousands of flights being canceled. They sent in a video greeting that was shown on the big screen and LIVE webcast.

 

Simple Dream movie with Kristjan Aasmäe:

Following the dream-come-true story of an aspiring local BMX-rider Kristjan Aasmäe. The film was selected for the program of the 2011 Bicycle Film Festival in 26 cities worldwide. The BFF 2011 events were attended by 225,000 bike lovers.

 

Simple Session was put in the Skateboarding World Cup series for the first time.

 

Tens of thousands of passing spectators on Helsinki main square witnessed the second Stadi Summer Session, summertime edition of Simple Session, going down in the history books as the biggest BMX contest ever thrown in Finland – Darryl Nau became an announcer and Tom Dugan decided it was too hot to ride with clothes on.

 

Magazine Sahtel Simpel Session special edition.

By 2013, technology had evolved quite a bit from the days the first live broadcasts were done and people were looking for more. And a partnership with Microsoft on Xbox gaming consoles allowed just that and for the first time the broadcast was in full HD quality.

 

And it wasn’t just the technology at home, these days most people were carrying smartphones in their pockets and that also meant a rise in viral dance moves, dance moves didn’t belong only to the dancefloors of the clubs anymore. During Ben Snowden’s second run the “Harlem Shake” song came on and everybody went wild with it on the course!

 

Fortunately, not everybody had their eyes glued to the small screens of their fresh smartphones, so Simple Session decided there was still a reason to release its own newspaper. Also, people were still keen to see film premieres at the cinemas, so Subrosa’s “Get Used To It” was amongst the highlights of the festival.

It wasn’t just the technology that was getting more complicated, it was also the tricks because Michael Beran brought out the world’s first 360 bikeflip to tailwhip, Kevin Peraza pulled the first-ever Double Decade Air and not only did it blew everyone’s minds, but it also earned young Peraza a sweet gold medal.

 

Kyle Baldock, on the other hand, wasn’t as lucky. He nailed perfect runs in the qualifiers but got knocked out for a couple of seconds in his first finals run. Like a true warrior that he is, he gave his all in his second run as well but passed out at the end of it. To everybody’s surprise, he still made it back on the course for his final trick, a Double Flair attempt. The man is a beast.

Simple Session celebrated its 15th anniversary with a big change, the contest moved to the freshly opened Tondiraba Arena. This turned out to be a great challenge because it meant a big change in the logistics and even the locals had a hard time finding the place or where to get food from. The small shops nearby were suddenly full of people buying chips.

 

Simple Session 15 featured an hour and a half long documentary on NBC channel in the Red Bull Signature Series that reached over 120 million homes in the USA. Hosted by Sal Masekela and commented by Chris Doyle and NBC’s Todd Harris.

 

Drew Bezanson secured his 5th win at Simple Session with a wild caveman to barspin drop-in. Mike Varga came second with a 900 barspin, Kevin Peraza third. In the skateboarding competition, the Frenchman Robin Bolian took home the gold, Danny Leon silver and Egor Kaldikov bronze.

 

In 2017 the competition was opened by the first female president of Estonia, Kersti Kaljulaid, and Kelly Sildaru, multiple time X Games gold medalist in Freestyle skiing. You know you’ve done something right when the president wears your brand’s shirt!

 

This was also the year something else had to be done right – the judging and giving credit to those who deserve it. BMX was split into two separate disciplines for more fair judging as many of the street riders were feeling their technicality wasn’t rewarded as well as the speed of the park riders.  Another excellent change was having the Estonian and Russian BMX qualifiers at the competition park a day before the official Practice days. This allowed another way for more fair judging and having the best-suited representatives at the main event.

 

While most were scared of the massive spine ramp right after the jump box, Larry Edgar shone brightly on it while aiming for the roof and taking the win in BMX Park. The Nitro Circus skater Beaver Fleming proved that skateboarders can also blast a jump box and go upside down. He also took the flip to that insane spine ramp.

 

Visit Estonia ice hockey SKATE vs BMX was introduced to the program as a side event and it became somewhat of a tradition for some of the athletes. The first year felt more like the guys were just learning to skate on the real ice, but that only meant a bunch of laughs for everyone involved! Another highlight of the SS17 side program was the We The People “Foundation” premiere.

 

For the first time, Simple Summer Session 17 took place in Riga, Latvia right in the heart of the city, on the Freedom Monument bridge, where Kostya Andreev and Alex Donnachie walked away with their first Simple Session gold medals.

Tony Hawk and Bam Margera came to Simple Session. Margera and Austin Augie got a bit more than just a taste of the local nightlife and ended up having to wear sunglasses for the rest of their stay in the country.

 

Women’s Skateboarding class was brought back and the supertalented young Wondergirl Sky Brown took the win. She and her brother were all over the Estonian media, maybe getting even more attention than the old legends, who had their own special skate jam. Skateboarding movie “Skate Kitchen” about American female skateboarders screened in Apollo cinema and in other cities around the country after the event.

 

Kenneth Tencio started his runs with one of the most insane flip drop-ins and for sure kept the crowd on their toes. The Australian rider Boyd Hilder really showcased his skills by not only competing in both Street and Park but also bagging the gold medal in the later. His one-handed superman seat grab became an instant favorite amongst the BMX riders and pretty much a highlight of the event. Tom van den Bogaard went all in during the Pumped BMX Best trick competition with 360 quadruple downside tailwhip attempts – he was so close to landing it, but eventually got quite a good idea of what the concrete floor tasted like and couldn’t ride in the finals.