I was recently going through my old archive folders and came across some photos of Matthias Dandois who just so happens to be one of the most well known flatland riders in the world at the moment. The thing is though, it wasn’t always that way and at one point you would be hard pressed to find anyone outside of the flatland community that knew of him. Back in May of 2008 when I was shooting the Voo Doo Jam in New Orleans I kept hearing about this young kid from France that was amazing and that I really needed to try and shoot with him. Terry Adams specifically made it a point to meet up with him and make it happen. Little did I know that he would go on to win flatlander of the year the very next year at the Ride NORA Cup awards and go on to become an inspiration to the BMX community as a whole and bridge the gap between all disciplines. If you ride BMX, and you don’t enjoy Matthias’s riding you should just sell your bike and get a pair of rollerblades because it wasn’t meant to be. Even though it didn’t take very long for Matthias to make moves here in the States, I consider myself lucky enough to have had the chance to not only meet him five years ago but also to shoot with him as well on a one-on-one basis back before most people even had a clue as to who he would become. Looking back on these photos made me want to come up with an idea for a column so I decided to take one of the photos we shot and do a re-edit of the original almost five years later for this week’s TTL.

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