In issue 169 we did a little feature with Jason Phelan about the ParaXtreme video he was a part of. ParaXtreme was a viral campaign leading up to the Paralympics for Channel 4. Jason was asked to teach some budding para-olympians how to backflip. (You can see what happened in the video below.)

We asked Jason 5 things that happened on the day of filming.

1: NO IDEA
When I was asked to teach some BMX guys to do backflips I wasn’t told much just that it’s going to be a little bit different than usual, but of course I was still game but little did I know the two BMXers had prosthetic legs and the one dude named Arron was in a wheelchair, so you can imagine how I felt when I met them.


2: CARVING A QUARTER
When I was teaching the guys how to carve on a quarter one of them fell off and so did his leg. He just sat there chilling on the ground with his leg by his side as though nothing had just happened.


3: DUCK TAPE
Ricky kept slipping the pedals because as you could imagine it would be pretty hard to feel the pedal with a prosthetic leg, what would you do in this situation? Well Ricky duck taped his leg to the cranks. Job done


4. CATCHING LEGS
When Ricky first tried to flip into the foam he went in head first and got buried, “shit, you ok man I shouted” and out popped a hand from beneath the foam with a leg in his hand “yeah man” and he flung his leg to me to grab it. Never did I ever think I would have someone throw their leg at me, crawl out of a foam pit, stick his leg back on and do it all over again. TRUE LEGEND


5. AND FINALY
I pulled my first ever naked double backflip!

Just a quick note, these guys are true inspirations to everyone and myself and I was so happy to hang out with this bunch of super cool dudes. I never imagined that BMX could take me this far and it’s only getting better. Have fun and enjoy the best sport in the world.

“Paraxtreme
Just because you are missing an arm or leg doesn’t mean you can’t get involved in BMX. To coincide with the Paralympics in London we hooked up with a few guys who share our creativity and love of action sports and took them around the UK so they could show us what they got.

Both disabled and abled bodied people should be inspired by the determination of Ricky Owens as he gets put through his paces by UK Pro Jason Phelan – His aim, to learn backflips in a day.”