The Flying Metal Crew started out with poorly shaped jumps at contests. Ramon Hunziker, Hannes Erb and Pascal Breitenstein left more than once because the jumps didn't work and the course wasn't rideable. The three of them founded a club and helped the organizers shovel and test the kickers. Only when Ramon found them to be good was the line released for training.

This commitment turned into a commitment to the Dirt Jump Contest at the Bike Days in Solothurn. Convenient for the Bike Days organizer: the Thun-based company not only built the course and organized the contest, it also supplied the field of participants. And because all the signs were already pointing to biking back then, they were also at the start of freestyle.ch in Zurich. They also put on their own event, the Rocket Air in the Thun ice rink. They called the organization behind it the Flying Metal Crew.

Rocket Air: the Thun spaceship takes off
"We were pretty loosely organized back then," recalls Jerome Hunziker. "But the very first time, we had 3,000 people at Rocket Air on Saturday evening." The event in Thun was the flagship of the Flying Metal Crew for many years. With their slopestyle course, they used the dimensions of the hall to the last centimeter, and the audience in the stands did the same. Even though the ramps were higher elsewhere and the media coverage was wider, the best riders eventually competed in Thun and made the event a legend.

But ramping up the infrastructure and staff for an event two or three times a year, giving it your all and then reducing it to practically nothing again is a very exhausting business principle in the long run. That's when the people of Thun, who were still dirt jumpers at heart, came across the modular pump track made of plastic. They became a successful rental company and helped to spark the pump track euphoria in Switzerland. Some municipalities first tested the concept with a track that could be plugged together and, after a successful trial, had an asphalt pump track built.

A Swiss man at the Rampage and a freeride film from the Alps
The founding years were particularly intense for Ramon Hunziker. Not only was he at every event in the Ok and as a rider, he also rode in the big slopestyle competitions. "It was psycho for him, extremely exhausting," Halter describes. As a world-class rider, he was a figurehead and guarantee of quality for the Flying Metal Crew. He also rode the biggest parks around the world and brought this experience to the Flying Metal Crew's facilities.

The highlight was "Rämu" Hunziker's participation in the Red Bull Rampage. "It was very cool for us to have a Rampage participant in our ranks," confirms Halter, who has always been responsible for communication. It was also a highlight for the respective shovelers to ride with Ramon to Utah and shape his line. Ramon Hunziker was the first Swiss to be invited to the Rampage. And he is still the only one today.

The Rampage experience inspired Ramon and his crew to search for the most spectacular freeride terrain in the Alps and to film him in the steepest gravel gullies. "Ramon Hunziker Ride The Alps" was the name of the video. It showed three things: Ramon was at the level of the best freeriders of the time. The Alps offer just as epic slopes as the mountains where the greatest freeride films were shot. And thirdly, no matter how good Ramon was and how epic the locations were, the video couldn't compete with the best freeride films. Even though videos have always played an important role for the Flying Metal crew, film production would never become their core business.

Another goal of the Thun team from the very beginning was to build trails. This was difficult in their home region, the Bernese Oberland, where trail bikers were about as welcome as flu viruses at the time. No wonder they were allowed to build a trail for the first time in another canton. Part 2 of the Flying Metal History looks at how they became a trail building company.