Tyler Fernengel, a 19-year-old Wyandotte native now living in San Diego, came back to Metro Detroit recently for a one-of-a-kind BMX thrill ride.
The international competitor taped this Red Bull promo, posted Tuesday, at the doomed Silverdome in Pontiac. It was a homecoming for the former dirt bike rider, who "raced there every year [from age 3] until I was 10 years old."
The teen's showing off includes a risky spinning jump from the stadium's club level down to the floor, which took three tries to do satisfactorily.
Tyler Fernengel: "It brought back a lot of good memories," the former Silverdome dirt biker says.
He's "the last professional athlete to perform inside the famed Silverdome — former home of the Detroit Lions, Wrestlemania III, Supercross and World Cup soccer games," Scott Hart of Red Bull writes at its site. Here's part of what Fernengel, one of the few competitive BMX stars from Michigan, says in an interview accompanying his three-and-a-half-minute video:
The last time I was inside the Silverdome was nine years ago — at the last amateur Supercross race I attended when I was 10. When I showed up to scope for the shoot, so many memories were coming back.
Just sitting in the tunnel — where you come out on the track and where the players would run out — I remembered sitting there, years ago, with my dad and all the other kids. It brought back a lot of good memories.
Being out on the field, it was crazy to think that there once was a motorcycle track there, every year, with all the fans, but now it’s nowhere near the same. It’s like a war zone.
In case pulse-quickening stunts by the 19-year-old aren't dramatic enough, Hart breathlessly describes the seting as "a stunning, modern-day backdrop of natural destruction." Right, whatever.
Fernengel, who turned pro at 16, moved to San Diego early last year when he turned 18. He has been sponsored at national and Asian events by Haro, Vans and now Red Bull.
-- Alan Stamm
