I have been busy recently and missed this post first time round.
Here's a pic of Joe doing a tailwhip air at the time he first started doing them in '88. Pic and words from Ride mag. A little history lesson for those who don't know the story of the tailwhip.
I think you can see Mike D attempting a tailwhip air in the Joe Kid DVD, looks like one to me anyway.
Words and photo Mark Noble
Kicking the back end of bike around the front end of a bike is one of those fundamentally simple moves that never ceases to impress even the most clueless of BMX virgins – "Woooo, can you do that again?"
Once upon at time, it was enough to do it on flat ground, and it's still the place to learn it from scratch. Brian Blyther, arguably one of the smoothest riders to ever grace a vertical ramp, invented this trick on the flat bottom of a halfpipe on day in 1982 – both without a front brake and with a straight cable. He was just messin' about between getting his vert on – jammed his foot in the front tyre, kicked the back end around, and before you could say "tennis ball in the front wheel" a vert rider had invented a pivotal, landmark, building-block flatland trick.
The next stage was to take it airbourne. Mike Dominguez flew one out of the vert corner of a 15ft deep pool at Del Mar in 1984, but it was Joe Johnson who figured out how to do it halfway through a 180º aerial on a quarterpipe in 1988. Joe Johnson was one of those riders who could learn at a frightening pace. He was bio, determined yet laid back, and always blew up at contests: always unleashing the unexpected. He dialled in single whips in '88, and was pulling double whips in '89. He even came close to nailling triples the next year. So, what's that… 17, 18 years ago? Half the kids doing them now weren't even born back then. Flatlanders (led by legendary visionary Kevin Jones) took them from stationary swings onto high-spped rolling whiplashes which still look amazing today when done perfectly, and he almost single handedly built a mountain of tricks from there on in. And nowadays, in the streets, parks, and X Games vert ramps, whips are everywhere. Cranmer can seem to do them into and out of anything he damn well pleases, Jamie Bestwick can throw two whips in, upside down, while flairing his way to gold medal status, and full speed flat ground whip hops are a warm-up on towards a video part enders. Everywhere you look, everyone has the whip down. The tailwhip. The back end goes around the front end. Simple Iconic.
