Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25037
The physical abuse of Matt Hoffman. What keeps his bruised wheels o .c a. (; Matt Hoffman knows it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt when he slams 48 feet onto the handlebars of his bicycle. It's going to hurt on the way to the emer gency room. And recovering from surgery. And waking up every morning after. But his world of hurt is a world of vert, an ambition that is addictive exactly because it has no ceiling. He can't stop just because he's already the best bicycle stunt (BS) rider in the world. Matt Hoffman knows the only place it will stop hurting, will never hurt, is up in the air. "It's easy to have an excuse to quit because you're injured," Hoffman muses in his Oklahoman drawl, "but I've been injured so many times that the excuse is only an excuse, you know? I'm already 26, and I've got a friend, Dennis McCoy, who's 31 now, and he's still a top pro. Football players get beat up and those guys go to 40. I guess it's just how much heart you have." Now the host, director and producer of ESPN2 extreme lifestyle program "Kids In The Way," Hoffman has always been on a one-man mission to take it higher. The popularity of BS and vert ramp riding was waning before Hoffman arrived with moves like the world's first 900-two-and-a-half revolutions spinning vertically in the air off the lip of a half-pipe-in 1989. Then came an insane 27-foot aerial backflip which was on the cover of every 'zine that had anything to do with skate culture and res onates still in the mind of anyone who's seen it. Hoffman's really outrageous experiments, however, happened in his own backyard in Oklahoma City. "You know how a normal ramp's about 10 feet tall? I built a 21 -foot one," Hoffman chuckles, "and had my friend tow me [behind a motorcycle] about 60 miles per hour at it. I got about 27 feet above it. People were into that, because it was kinda like the aerial thing, like, wow, you can really visually understand what's going on." That's 48 feet in the air. How do you land something like that? "Um, just hopefully on the wheels. " Hoffman rode the ramp for about a year, eventually building a half-pipe out of it. "I made a 48-foot roll-in and a bike [to ride it]. I got a Weed-Eater motor and reversed the points so the little engine would run backwards and attached it to the back wheel. It was kind of a fun little project. But I ended up gettin' hurt pretty bad." he says. "I could get 18 to 20 feet out of those ramps. But it was really awkward because the engine was off-balance and stuff, so I ended up just slammin', and I had to get my spleen out. I got worked." That time, he took a handlebar to the gut. But he doesn't consider that the worst kind of accident. "The spleen took a month and a half. Whereas it took four months to reCU P""o hom ,hooldo, ,"'go,y." 5 P een l A Matt Hoffman base jumps with bike in Norway for Groove Productions' new show "Kids in the Way" on ESPN 2. credit: morgan stone li � rry