Podcast – John Povah

Headed to Huntington Beach to meet up with Paul Roberts and fellow UK transplant, John Povah to record a podcast. John is one of the early guys from the UK BMX World making the move to California back in 1989 and is still out here today. We start with John getting into BMX in the 80s born in Croydon starting out in the race World, Hillington Hawks Club then moving more into Freestyle getting on Raleigh and doing Demos with Andy Ruffell and the Raleigh Team during the mid 80s BMX craze in the UK. We touched on the local London Scene during the 80s before his move to California. We then talk the early 90s Freestyle scene, living with Chris Moeller and John Paul Rogers, building ramps, POWs, learning backflips with the Wildman at Sheep Hills, team managing for Schwinn with a star-studded team including the likes of Jay Miron, Joey Garcia, Brian Foster, Dave Osato just to name a few. John talks about after Schwinn and Rooftop getting him a job at Etnies and some of the riders he worked with during the early years to being back at Etnies now and how things have changed for a TM as Social Media comes into play in today's World. John also talks about being a member of the IBMXF when Freestyle was looking like it was going to get in the Olympics with all of the behind the scenes/politics and meetings with Mat Hoffman, Stu Dawkins, Ian Morris, Bart de Jong and co. and some backroom goings-on that resulted in IBMXFF getting pushed aside and UCI going with FISE into the China Games. John also gives his thoughts on the Games themselves, Jamie Bestwick executing a plan for Team GB and the impact following the Games. Lots more covered and a big shout-out to Paul for assisting with this one. I know jumping into the Freestyle conversation I was happy to sit back and let Paul take the lead with the questions and enjoyed listening to the conversation. John is 40 years deep in BMX and we only skimmed the top of his continued successful career and touched on some cool stuff he has in the works in the future. Thanks, John and hope everyone enjoys this one. Cheers