Local rider soars as BMX event makes landing at Sears Centre
Addison's Koji Kraft was asked about his livelihood as a bicycle-motocross rider.
"It's got its ups and downs," he said with a straight face.
Those literal ups and downs will be on ample display when Kraft competes in the ASA Action Sports World Tour at the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates Friday night.
It's the first Chicago-area stop in more than a decade for ASA Entertainment, formed in the mid-'90s, before the X Games or Gravity Games, and the first time the 26-year-old Kraft, one of the first to execute a double back flip, will get a chance to compete at the top level in front of local friends and family.
"First time when all the major pros are coming to town," he said, "so it's going to be pretty good, I think."
Kraft gives off the vibe that any day spent on his bike is a good one, and that having found a way to do what he loves and make it pay, there isn't much more to ask.
"I really enjoy riding my bike," he said. "I do it because I love to. I'd do it still if I had a normal job or anything like that."
Fortunately for him, however, that's not a concern. He's been riding professionally for 10 years and competes in three major BMX disciplines: street, dirt and vert (short for "vertical," of course). Friday will find him in the Big Air BMX Triples, in which riders compete head to head performing tricks over a 170-foot-long course with two 25-foot jumps and ending with a 10-foot halfpipe. Also part of the evening's events will be the Skateboard Vert, in which competitors perform tricks on a 14-foot-tall, 60-foot-wide vert ramp.
Like any BMX rider, Kraft got into the sport at an early age. "As a kid, I just rode in the woods with my friends," he said. "We'd make trails and hang out together."
He was fortunate to have some skilled riders as friends who had already turned pro, such as Jimmy Walker, of Elmhurst, who's likewise still riding competitively.
Ten years ago, Kraft pretty much "snuck out" on a road trip with friends who were competing at a BMX event in Nashville. Once there, they urged him to lie and say he was 18 and enter, and he did, performing well enough to pick up a Schwinn sponsorship and qualify for the Gravity Games finals later that year. "And it's been nonstop ever since," Kraft said.
Yet he wasn't just a natural. He'd laid the foundation for excelling at BMX's twists and jumps with a background in gymnastics at Addison Trail High School. "I was a gymnast for four or five years, in high-school varsity my freshman year and went to state," he said. "I learned a lot there. I could tell where I am in the air, so I could do stuff where I'd be really scared to try it, but after you started getting used to it it would be all right. I'd do that in my riding."
Kraft could have gone in any of several directions. In addition to gymnastics, he played cello in the Addison Trail concert band, then he'd typically end the day on his bike. "It was a pretty busy schedule when I was in high school," he said.
Eventually, though, the bike won out, in part because it was what he most excelled at.
"I just had different tricks and tried different things than they used to do," he said of his early BMX buddies. "I don't think I was really good until a couple of years after that. I just got better and better.
"Actually, getting paid to ride my bike helped me a lot," he added. "I didn't have to do other things to make money or concentrate on something else. I could focus on just riding."
That devotion paid off in 2002, when he followed Dave Mirra's breakthrough in the X Games to become the second person to land a double back flip in competition. He went on to win the world championship in mini ramp in Prague in 2005, and as recently as last year was the silver medalist at the Asian X Games in vert in Shanghai.
"I get to see a lot of places I would never have the opportunity to see," Kraft said.
Yet, again, it's not all ups and no downs. It's worth noting that, in addition to Oakley bicycles, one of his sponsors is a chiropractic clinic, and just last week in Minneapolis he tried to pull out all the stops at the end with a double back flip, only to come up short and land flat on his back from a height of 15 feet.
"It's kind of embarrassing to just be lying there and everybody else is saying, 'Get out of the way,'" Kraft admitted with an abashed smile. Yet, as in being thrown by a horse, he had to get right back out there, and he spent this week drumming up interest in Friday's competition by doing a series of exhibitions as part of a U.S. Marines-sponsored anti-smoking tour at local high schools.
He said he's always working on something new, but not to expect any BMX-world-shaking breakthroughs this weekend. "I've got a lot of things I've been working on," he said, "but nothing I really want to try. My family's all going to be there, and I don't want them to see me get hurt," he added. Besides, he figures to have his hands full dealing with the unusual local fame and notoriety.
"Out of nowhere, people are like hitting me up on Facebook, and high-school friends are saying, 'I heard your name on the radio and I saw you on TV. What's going on this weekend? Can I get tickets?' I'm like, 'Yeah, I can get you in.'"
Hey, in a decade-long career, how many times has he had to do this before?
ASA Action Sports World Tour competition
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday
Where: Sears Centre, 5333 Prairie Stone Parkway, Hoffman Estates
Events: Big Air BMX Triples, Skateboard Vert
Who: The top performers in the sports, including Koji Kraft of Addison in BMX and Pierre Luc-Gagnon of Canada and Sandro Dias of Brazil on skateboard
Tickets: From $10 youth admission to $60 VIP floor passes, available at the Sears Centre box office at (847) 649-2222 or by visiting searscentre.com or through Ticketmaster at (800) 745-3000 or ticketmaster.com
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