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Freddy Pulman ‘Two Thousand and Fourteen’

We originally set out to shoot Freddy’s end of 2013 edit to portray his skill, deft ability to eat shit and get back up and some incredible new tricks he’s been working on throughout 2013. Having achieved 3rd in the UK Dirt Wars, there’s a whole lot more to this 19 year olds skills than just turning it on in comps. But when we got news of Freddy picking up some big new sponsors for 2014, it was time for a re-think. It seems to us that if big companies like One Industries, 661 and Maxxis can see the potential for Freddy to be in the limelight a lot more this year, then we needed to show what more he can do in the year to come! With dreams of Slopestyle comps, euro trips and shiny medals bouncing around in our heads; Freddy Pulman and Friction Multi Media came together to show just how many tricks this guy has in his roster and show off that burly, floating style.

With this Winter being the wettest ‘since records began’ in the UK, we were pretty limited to locations. As cool as it would look on film, no one likes pulling a tail-whip to dolphin dive into some of the puddles that are filling up on trails across the country. So our first port of call was the slightly obvious, but big, protected and quiet Lymington Jumps. With the weather holding up nicely and even some super rare sunshine poking through, Freddy threw down. Pulling 720’s, triple truck drivers, Double whips, Flip whips and opposite 360 inverts to name but a few.

Next up is Holdshott trails, a great collection of smooth flowing jumps and some other inventive features. When we arrived the place was covered in a thick layer of leaves, so a mass burn was started by the locals to clear everything up. The smoke, combined with the low sun made for some amazing looking backdrops to the Whip Drops, double truck drivers and 360 bar spin drops Freddy was pulling out the bag.

For our final location we had planned to visit Woburn trails. Two days before filming the trails were ripped down and the whole place flattened. It was devastating loss for the UK dirt jump scene and apart from the fact that we are all now missing a big part of our winter riding/filming locations, A lot of people poured hundreds of hours of their time digging Woburn into one of the top MTB locations.

So our Plan C was to take it back to Plan A, Lymington. A month or so had passed now since our last filming session and Freddy had a few more brand new tricks he wanted to get into the edit, so back to good ol’ Lym. It’s impressive just how fast he came back to us with new tricks, and despite having to go back to Location A, Freddy still managed to keep it fresh. It’s that sort of commitment to riding his bike after a long day at work and all weekend long that makes Freddy such a powerhouse of the dirt jump world. He also pulled THE single most upside down, inverted invert 360. It was the last shot at Lym and all of our jaws hit the floor as we watched the footage back, even Freddy couldn’t quite work out how he’d managed to get his tyres back on the dirt.

We then jumped into the car and drove a quick hour down the road to one of the most ghetto skateparks I’ve ever visited. Pulling into a dodgy looking potholed Dorset car park, we stopped outside an old run down warehouse. Climbing out the car, east coast rap drifted down to us outta the chicken wired top windows. Pulling the kit out the car we followed Freddy up into the derelict looking building. To get in, there’s a tight (especially with a 26″ mtb) carpeted spiral ramp to climb until you pop out into the top floor of the warehouse. Spreading out before you is a well tended, neatly fitting and impressively large skatepark. Including a bowl, spines and quarters. The Hip Hop blasting locals were working on one of the transitions when we arrived and were super accommodating. They turned all the lights off for us and we were able to get some dark, ghetto looking shots with our studio lights as Freddy switched from Dirt slayer to Park rat. It’s that seamless transition of being able to ride big floaty dirt jumps and then straight to small technical skatepark tricks that hammers home his potential and hints at the ease he could fit into the world of the FMB world tour.

Expect to hear a lot more from this ultra keen rider, with a tangible love for riding his bike, an incredible ability to take hits that’d take most guys 2 weeks to recover from and tricks that put him up there with the best of the best, 2014 could be Freddy Pulman’s year.

Rider: Freddy Pulman
Production: Friction Multi Media.
Camera men: Squish Williams, Lew Smith, Jack Davies
Gopro/Stills: Fin Davies
Edit: Jack Davies
Grading: Fin Davies
www.frictionmultimedia.com