"We flew out there and he had the big flat bag and I was practising on that for about three or four days. "He messaged me and said I want to have you fly out to my place and I want to see you do the world's first triple front flip on a BMX. "I've probably flown around the world 10 times now, but one of the craziest trips was when I went to Travis Pastrana's house in Maryland," Williams says. Williams could easily be on the road for two months straight, come home for a week and then fly back out for another month. The world of action sports is very seasonal. Today, Williams splits his time between travelling around the world with Nitro Circus, competing at X Games events and making countless sponsor appearances. It would turn out to be the launchpad into an action sports career. It was an all-expenses-paid trip to California which ended in Williams finishing runner-up. The first paid gig Williams received came at the age of 16 when he was selected to travel to the United States for a scootering competition.
As long as I was doing well in school she didn't mind if I was having fun at the skate park with my mates, and that's all we thought it was going to be until I progressed to the point where I was earning money from it." "At one stage she was the best in Queensland at BMX racing, so she wasn't very hard to convince. It eventually progressed to going to the skate park, riding roller skates, then the scooter and eventually a BMX bike."įor most young teenagers, convincing their parents they want to hurl their body into the air for not only fun, but as a profession, would be a difficult sell, but Williams never had any trouble getting his folks on board with his career aspirations. "Straight after seeing that I would go to the rollerdrome with my mum and fall on my butt about 30 times.
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"I remember watching that movie and it had all kinds of crazy stuff and when they got to the motocross guys I was like 'I want to do that'," Williams recalls. His obsession with all things action sports began at age seven after Williams stumbled across Ultimate X, a documentary which depicted the 2002 X Games competition. Even before he had reached his teenage years, he was achieving more air and perfecting tricks those double his age could only dream of landing. Williams was never just ambling around the park on his scooter. "I didn't really mind what people would say to me but as I grew up I could see the stereotype more and more and I could see that younger people were really getting some slack for riding a scooter. "When I started I was just a kid doing my own thing," Williams tells ESPN. Across scooter and BMX disciplines, Williams has claimed seven gold medals in big air and best trick events at both X Games and Nitro Circus. It was a craft he developed for a decade and a half, and now Williams, more commonly known as R-Willy, is considered the world's premier scooter rider.
While those around him were grazing their knees from BMX bike falls and skateboard stacks, Williams was the odd one out, honing his craft on the humble kick scooter. You know, that metal board mounted on two little wheels and attached to a long steering handle.īut back then, in the mid-noughties, it wasn't exactly the most popular activity taking place at his local skate park in Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast. He was just a 12-year-old boy who had a passion for scootering. "You only ride a scooter because it's easy." "You're never going to get anywhere riding a lame scooter." Ryan Williams will never forget the nasty words haters often threw in his direction.
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You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browserīullied to X Games gold: Ryan Williams' extreme ride to the top
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