First athlete to be named to the new POC Receptor Team: Daniel Dhers (10/31/2007)
The Receptor Team is POC's new cross-disciplinary team that brings together athletes from a wide range of different gravity sports including: skiers, skateboarders, wake and kite boarders, BMX, cyclists and "bike parkers". Aside from being top athletes in their respective disciplines, they all use POC's new Receptor helmet. To our knowledge it is the only helmet certified for all these disciplines in the U.S. as well as Europe. To learn more about POC and the Receptor helmet, go to www.pocski.com
Venezuelan Daniel Dhers has come a long way since he first learned to ride a bike at age 12. Now he's touring the world, winning top BMX awards right and left and splitting his time between his family's current home in Buenos Aires, his birthplace Caracas and the U.S. where he trains.
Daniel spends most of his year in the States where he finds the BMX parks offer the best conditions for advancing his extraordinary skills. All those years of training - nine and still counting - are now paying off. So far in 2007 he's taken home the Gold in the latest X-games and he won the BMX Park finals at the PlayStation Pro in Orlando in October.This latest win gives Daniel the Dew Cup and the $75,000 payday that goes along with it.
Hitting the American BMX contest circuit in 2006 as a complete unknown outside his training parks in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, Daniel went on to win five podium finishes in the AST games and a bronze at the X-Games.
How does he do it? He says he spends hours training each day. Although he doesn't call it training. "I like to ride hard every day. Doing tricks is how I get my adrenaline rush. I work on the same tricks over and over again until they get less scary. There's nothing more exhilarating than surviving a trick that could have killed you if you'd got it wrong".
Daniel says he doesn't compete against other bikers. "I always try to compete against myself. That's why I always try to do at least one trick that I have never done in a contest on a real ramp at every championship. This is where I find my motivation to keep getting better".
About his commitment to collaborate with POC to improve safety standards for his sport, Daniel says: "I'm super motivated to work with my friends at POC. Since day one they've been helping me to make improvements on a helmet that is already the best. Allowing riders to give input on a product they depend on shows just how interested POC is in the safety of the riders".
