Aussie daredevil Harry Bink lighting up Nitro Circus

IF Travis Pastrana says you are “beyond being good” then you must be doing something right. Harry Bink, the 21-year-old Aussie, is setting Nitro Circus on fire.

TRAVIS Pastrana looked at the roof and knew there was room for only small error. He started doing the math in his mind.

The place was the Brisbane Entertainment Centre last weekend and the double ramp was set up and the easy out here is always to call them crazy. It explains the lack of understanding about what actually happens when motocross riders look to do things that the rest of us, with an aversion to broken bones, avoid doing.

So the double ramp was in place but nobody was going near a double flip right away so long as they kept eyeing the roof.

Aware there would be limitations when Nitro Circus got to Brisbane they got a surveyor to practice one day to tell them how high they were jumping on their double backflips. The surveyor put his eye to the camera and pulled back.

“Fifty-two feet,” he said.

With this high and important in his mind Pastrana looked at the Entertainment Centre’s roof, 56 feet high. That’s about 17m for the rest of us.

“There was about four feet from hitting the roof and falling to the airbag,” he says.

At the best of times they operate in a sport that works on margins, but this was cutting even that fine.

This reveals they are not nearly crazy, as many believe. It is calculated bravery.

Travis Pastrana with Aussie stuntman Harry Bink.

So the riders started straight jumping the ramp. Hitting the ramp straight, seeing how high they went, how close to the roof they got before they dared a trick.

Pastrana could virtually see the dust on the rafters.

Then Harry Bink hit the ramp.

Bink, 21, is out of Canberra and takes an ambitious approach to his freestyle motocross.

He started riding when he was two. He has rarely been off a bike since. He still wears a boy’s smile and his enthusiasm is a solid match for it.

After Pastrana saw him jump he knew he wanted him for Nitro Circus, who perform at Homebush’s Qudos Bank Arena on Saturday.

So Bink scratched together what few dollars he had and moved to the Gold Coast where there was a big foam pit to fall into and he began training with other Nitro Circus riders.

Bink got there and hit the ramp that dropped him into the pit and has not stopped since.

Unlike so many freestyle riders who live the alternative lifestyle to excess Bink treats it like any professional athlete would. If he is not on the bike he is in the gym or getting rehab or generally finding some other way to improve himself.

“Harry is beyond being good,” Pastrana says.

Just Travis Pastrana backflipping over a hovering helicopter.

“There’s a lot of really great up and coming freestyle motocrossers but Harry’s dedication and understanding of the risks, and his willingness to really step up to take those risks but also to rehabilitate and to keep himself strong so he doesn’t get hurt, is what’s going to set him apart.”

Broken bones are a way of life for them all.

Bink broke his wrist recently and thought he was coming back when an infection in the break sent him back to hospital again. Such is the life.

Over time he has broken nearly all his bones. Less through carelessness than knowing there is a line he needs to push his toes against.

It’s why he is one of only two men in the world who can successfully do a rock solid backflip. Halfway through the somersault, when he is upside down and his world is a whirl of senses, Bink leave the bike before recapturing it and getting back in the saddle to nail the landing.

He is the current Australian Freestyle Motocross champion. He also won best whip at the titles.

He is young and he carries all the ambition young men have.

So when Bink saw Pastrana and the rest of the Nitro Circus crew straight jump the double ramp in Brisbane and how high they went and how near to the roof he went through his own maths before he rolled back the throttle.

He hit the ramp and as he headed towards the roof he pulled hard on the handlebars and pushed heavy through his pegs.

He backflipped. Not once, but twice.

No straight jump for him.

Pastrana was stunned.

“The first time he saw the roof he was coming around for a double flip,” Pastrana says.

The jump said everything about Bink that Pastrana already knew. And not just talent or daring.

“Most people are saving the big tricks until everyone is watching,” Pastrana says.

“But it was just us there.”

He cared less about accolades or recognition than he did about getting on with what he simply loved doing.

GRAEME LANGLANDS

1973 Kangaroo Captain, Immortal

Immortal Graeme "Changa" Langlands.

For a long time you were Australia’s most capped Test player and for a lot of that you were captain. Is it hard being Australian captain?

You didn’t have to do much really because whoever gets put in the position knows what he’s talking about. It was that easy.

Well you certainly make it sound easy.

Everyone knows what they’re doing. They seemed to think so, anyway.

You captained a much different era than now, including long tours like the 1973 Kangaroo tour, was there ever any trouble?

We probably had little ones but nothing really. You get over them pretty quickly.

Who taught you how to be a good captain?

Norm Provan. He used to lead the team and everybody would follow. He was a great player and everyone used to just follow him.

What about today’s game, how does it compare?

Aww I don’t want to go into that.

A GOOD WEEK FOR

IN what really is good bad news, revelations that 31 dirty athletes from the Beijing Olympics - eight years ago - have gone positive after a re-testing of their samples is a warning that doped up athletes might get to experience the joy of standing on the dais, but that the bell will ultimately toll. Drug testers have always been behind the drug cheats, we knew that, but with samples kept and re-tested as new drugs are discovered the cheats can’t hide forever. Literally. How will the record books look in 50 years?

A ROUGH WEEK FOR

THE return of cancer to Jarryd Roughead’s body hit the AFL community hard this week. But the rest of Australia has shared a sympathetic nod, too. Having beaten cancer once already last season, the Hawthorn champion was recuperating from off-season knee surgery when he got news the cancer had returned. The future for such a setback is the worst kind, it being unknown. Athletes are pragmatic people and handle setbacks better than most, diving into their recovery just like their training. Roughead, by all reports, will need all of that. Wish him well.

DON’T MISS

THE AFL’s strategic planning continues to impress with the rise and rise of the GWS Giants. The beneficiary of considerable draft choices and support from birth, the investment is paying off with the Giants, who play Western Bulldogs tomorrow (Fox Sports 3 3pm), going into this round equal third with none other than the AFL powerhouse Sydney Swans. The AFL’s philosophy of not planning for today but for tomorrow and a decade from now is paying off. As the old phrase goes, when the tide rises, all the boats rise.

CHILL PILLS

WHEN it comes to the great divide between men’s and women’s sport, racing is one of the few where both compete on equal terms. Kathy O’Hara is as tough and good as any. Great to see her back in the saddle after that terrible fall.

Jockey Kathy O'Hara returns to trackwork. Picture: Gregg Porteous

ANGRY PILLS

IT all turned ugly in Melbourne. It appears the Storm and Rebels had a “keep off the grass” rule about poaching each other’s players for the betterment of their codes. On the flipside, nothing like a stink to get fans of the big code to take interest.

Originally published as Aussie daredevil Harry Bink lighting up Nitro Circus