BMX Event
Dew Tour
The Dew Tour is a US action sports tour launched in 2005 that ran televised BMX park, dirt, vert and street contests across several city stops each year.
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The Dew Tour is an American action sports series that began in 2005, bringing BMX, skateboarding and motocross contests to a run of host cities each summer with network television coverage. BMX park, dirt and vert were part of the tour from the start, with street added later. For roughly a decade it was the second major televised contest stage for BMX in the United States after the X Games.
History
The tour launched in 2005 as the Dew Action Sports Tour, named after its title sponsor, the soft drink Mountain Dew. It was created as a season-long series rather than a one-off event, with five stops in its first year in cities across the United States and a points championship decided at the final stop. NBC and its partners broadcast the events, and the prize money, including a substantial bonus for each season champion, was among the largest in BMX at the time.
In the early years the BMX programme was park, dirt and vert. The park and dirt fields overlapped heavily with the X Games, and the tour quickly became the main place where those riders competed between the big annual event. As street riding grew in prominence in the late 2000s and early 2010s, a street contest was added, and the format shifted. The number of stops was reduced, and by the early 2010s the tour was running a smaller number of stand-alone events, including a beach-side summer event and a city-based event.
NBC Sports sold the tour to TEN: The Enthusiast Network in 2015, and the 2015 season, with BMX street contests in Chicago and Los Angeles, was the last to include BMX. The Dew Tour has continued since without a BMX contest, focusing on skateboarding and snowboarding.
Format
The format changed over the tour's life, but the series years followed a clear pattern.
- Each stop hosted a separate contest in every BMX discipline on the programme, with its own course and prize money.
- Riders earned championship points based on their finishing position at each stop.
- Points were totalled across the season, and the leader after the final stop was the Dew Cup champion in that discipline, earning a large end-of-season bonus.
- Contests were run as timed runs in park and street, a set number of jumps in dirt, and timed runs in vert. The best run or the aggregate of two runs counted depending on the year.
- Judging followed the usual criteria of difficulty, variety, style, amplitude and execution.
The series format rewarded consistency across the summer rather than a single peak performance, which suited riders who could ride well at every stop.
Notable moments
- Jamie Bestwick was the dominant figure in Dew Tour vert, winning season titles during the same period in which he was winning repeatedly at the X Games.
- Dave Mirra and Ryan Nyquist were both regular contenders in park and dirt in the early seasons, extending careers that had begun in the 1990s.
- Venezuelan rider Daniel Dhers was a frequent winner in park and won multiple Dew Cup titles in the discipline.
- When street was added, Garrett Reynolds and Chad Kerley were among the leading riders, and the Dew Tour street course became one of the few televised stages for the discipline.
- Dennis Enarson and Kevin Peraza were among the younger riders who came through on the tour in its later years.
Significance
The Dew Tour mattered because it gave BMX a full season of televised contests rather than a single annual event. Riders could earn a living from contest prize money in a way that had not been possible before, and sponsors had regular broadcast exposure through the summer. The points format also produced season-long storylines that the X Games could not.
The tour's shift towards street in the late 2000s reflected a wider change in the sport, as covered in Rise of street riding. Its eventual exit from BMX, meanwhile, coincided with the growth of brand-run events and online video as alternatives to television.
Although it no longer includes BMX, the Dew Tour is remembered as the event that filled the gap between X Games editions for a generation of American pros, and its archive of broadcast runs remains a record of contest riding in the 2000s.
Related
Frequently asked questions about Dew Tour
What was the Dew Tour format?
In its early years the Dew Tour was a multi-stop series. Riders earned points at each city and the season champion in each discipline was crowned at the final stop. Later editions moved to single stand-alone events.
Does the Dew Tour still include BMX?
BMX was part of the tour from 2005 to 2015. Later editions focused on skateboarding and snow sports, and BMX has not been part of the programme since.
How was the Dew Tour different from the X Games?
The X Games is a single annual event with medals. The Dew Tour was built as a season-long series with a points championship, prize money at every stop and a large payout for the overall winner.
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