SPYNETWORK –REWIND VISIONARIES BEING THE BEST - MARTIN VARI
”I WANT TO PUSH THE SPORT IN A MIDDLE DIRECTION, STILL DO BOARD-OFF PARACHUTE JUMPS, BUT ON THE NEXT JUMP PULL A KITELOOP, DO AN UNHOOKED KITE DIVE TRANSITION AND GO FOR A KGB ALL IN THE SAME SESSION WITH THE SAME GEAR. I THINK THAT THAT WILL MAKE THE NEXT ULTIMATE COMPLETE RIDER.”
In 2002 there were two world tours, the PKRA and KPWT and at the time riders were unrestricted to compete on both. Mark Shinn pipped Martin to the 2002 PKRA title and he also won the KPWT (read more in his column this issue on page 132). As things would turn out, Martin had a plan to totally blow the doors off the world tour in 2003 and when the Space Monkeys played a premiere of their new movie to an unsuspecting crowd at the PKRA rider’s meeting in Austria, just ahead of the first event of the year, it was clear that handle-passes had arrived and if you couldn’t do them, you’d be toast. It had only taken Martin the winter off-season to nail a totally new breed of freestyle, with a new level of technical difficulty which the judges simply couldn’t ignore. The judging criteria changed more or less overnight at that first event of 2003. Vari inevitably went on to claim the title.
KW editor Hugh Miller interviewed Martin at the end of 2002,
