At the first stop of the Dew Tour last month, 2006 BMX Dirt overall winner Anthony Napolitan went down hard in practice and had to miss the contest. Anthony went to the hospital in Baltimore as soon as he crashed and learned that he had a grade-one AC separation and needed to stay off his bike for a few weeks.

The few weeks Anthony needed to stay off his bike happened to fall right over the Red Bull Elevation BMX dirt contest and the Props Rock and Roll Road Fools tour. Even though he couldn’t ride, Anthony still showed up at Whistler to check out Elevation.

“Not riding Elevation kind of sucked. The jumps looked amazing and I’d been looking forward to the contest since last year’s Elevation. At the same time I realized there was really nothing I could do about it so I just sat back, relaxed, and watched everyone stress over the last jump,” Anthony said.

Because of having to miss the Rock and Roll Road Fools tour, Anthony had a hectic travel plan to get back home to Woodward from Whistler.

“I met Devin from Target in the hotel lobby at 6am and my flight left Vancouver around noon. I had to fly from Vancouver to Minneapolis, then from Minneapolis to Cleveland, where I had to spend the night in a hotel. The next day I woke up, flew from Cleveland to Washington Dulles, then from Dulles I flew home to State College where Daniel Dhers picked me up.”

After getting back to Woodward, Anthony has been splitting up his time between icing his shoulder, doing some physical therapy, pedaling around on his bike, and learning to use his new 8gig iPhone. 

“The same day I got home from Elevation I road the race track at Woodward. It felt pretty good, but my arm still didn’t have a lot of muscle so it was hard to pull up over rollers and jump.”

Anthony has been riding every day and says his shoulder is continuing to improve; he’s just making sure to keep it as stiff as possible when he rides.

“I’m able to do x-ups and turndowns again, which are the hardest tricks for my shoulder. It’s getting better and better every day I ride. It’s hard to say if I’ll be at 100% at the Dew Tour in Cleveland, but so far everything is going good.”

Anthony plans to drive to Cleveland for the Dew Tour on Tuesday.


  
 Anthony at Elevation; definitely not riding.