This CD taught me a lesson. This is a scan of one of the photo CD‘s that photographers sent out to magazines back in the day when there was no Cloud Storage or Link Transfer around. This one in particular is Frank Hoppen‘s photo CD of the infamous RIOT Freeride contest in 2004. And it contains a misunderstood sentence that actually led to a wrong statement about FMX history in US magazines.

See, @twitchthis8 once said that he‘d be mad about Frank for claiming that @mikemetzger was the one doing the first natural terrain Backflip during that contest, because that’s what certain magazines (I think it even was RacerX) were writing down as the big news, and quite a few people still think it was that way. What really happened was that Twitch did it first two weeks prior to the contest and rode it out again at RIOT, but Frank was not prepared to capture it. Quickly learning from his mistake, he then grabbed the camera and captured Metz‘ attempt at it and shot the photo. Later that day, when the sun was already setting, Metz just did Metz things and rode out his very first Flip on his CRF 450.

Well, on the photo CD that went out to magazines, Frank seemed to choose the wrong words because it reads like Metz was the first one doing a natural terrain flip, whereas he was actually referring to Metz‘ first 450 Flip. Well, at least European (motoX) and Australian (FRMX) magazines were writing it correctly.

Seemingly small mistakes or misunderstandings can happen all the time, and no photographer or journalist is safe from it. Frankly (hah!) though, not even Twitch cares about the wrong statement nowadays anymore. For me though, this is one of the moments in history that give me a reason to learn from for my book and to take it as an inspiration to be as accurate as possible in the words I choose.