Santa Cruz Bikes

Syndicate's Goldman Back In Action, 3rd At Rock D'Azur

Rock D'Azur, France

"Ding...ding...ding....ding...the song of the alarm clock goes off and I know it's gonna be a long trip to Europe. With a 7-hour layover at each stop of my trip Adrienne and I decided that we were going to make the best we could out of our flight. Upon arrival in San Francisco we went straight to the Bart train and headed into the city. I have always gone to baseball and motocross events there but I have never actually just walked around and been a tourist. We walked out to the edge of the piers and looked at Alcatraz, the old jail on an island in the middle of the bay, and walked for about 5 or 6 miles just looking at the city and all the beautiful buildings and boats. It's weird how you can live so close to somewhere your entire life and never actually explore it until you move away.

Anyway, we hopped back on the plane with perfect timing and quite exhausted from all the walking so we slept for most of the flight. We arrived in Frankfurt and set up a camp on the floor and made a bed to sleep on and watch movies... we weren't about to leave the airport there because of the fear of getting lost and not being able to find a soul that spoke English. Dangerous Momo picked us up at the airport in France and we headed straight to Roc d' Azur.

I love this event because the city is killer and the crowd is always so excited for the event! The first couple of days were very hard for me because we were staying up late and my Jet Lag was probably the worst I have ever gotten. I missed some of the practice because I had no energy to even get out of bed. But we spent some time at the beach and got some extra sleep the night before finals and I started to feel much better.

The day of finals was really weird because in the morning practice there was a head wind for the jumps and during the finals was a tail wind. The head wind was good for the first drop because you had to brake a lot going down the roll in, but for the rest of the jumps it was hard to get speed. In practice with the head wind I 360'd the drop which I was really stoked on because I haven't spun a drop in a long time. I wasn't planning on spinning it again until the finals, but there was a film crew that set another rider up with a helmet cam and they wanted me to do it again in front of him. That was scary even though it all went dialed.

Right before finals we had a couple of minutes to practice and since the wind changed I was a little scared to spin the drop but this time with the tail wind I tapped the brakes pretty hard and sent it and cleared way down the landing. I got a little sketchy but kept my run going. It was a good thing I tested it again in practice because otherwise that would have ruined one of my runs for sure.

For finals I just tried to have fun and do tricks that others weren't doing so we could put on a good show. All my runs were pretty solid and all in all I had a blast. I'm stoked because I bagged 3rd on the podium plus it's always awesome to walk away from a contest without injuries and with a stoked crowd. We got an encore and did some sick trains at the end of the comp to end 'er off. Hats off to Amir and Yannick for their 1st and 2nd places. Now I'm on the flight back to the USA and it's a long one. I get to go to Santa Cruz and visit some family and friends, which will be the cherry on top of an awesome euro trip. Cheers and thanks to Momo, his employees, and all my sponsors... "

Jamie Goldman

Thanks to the SYNDICATE Sponsors:

• Santa Cruz Bicycles
• SRAM
• RockShox
• Truvativ
• Avid
• DT Swiss
• WTB
• Crankbrothers
• Lizard Skins
• Clif Bar
• Troy Lee Designs
• Chris King
• Five Ten
• Galbraith Chiropractic
• Portable Shade

And Jamie's personal sponsors:

• Monster Energy
• GIRO
• Globe Shoes
• Skullcandy