Ismael’s Leader Shadow Bike Check

Fixed gear freestyle has a future in France. And it comes in six letters: I.S.M.A.E.L.

We first met Ismael at an Okami Riding meet-up, just as we were about to set off. He came over with a grey Santafixie Raval and told me he wanted to learn tricks. That caught my attention: at the time, meeting someone who wanted to get into fixed gear freestyle in France was rare.

By our second meeting, he had bought the FGFS bike we’d spotted on leboncoin.fr—the Leader Shadow featured here. Ismael brought the mindset of a football freestyle champion to riding. It was the only reasonable explanation for how his bike control went “stonks” in less than seven months.

His riding is aggressive in the best sense: big barspins, keo spins, stair gaps and fakie. Within a few months, he had made a name for himself in France’s growing fixed gear freestyle scene.

Components

A Leader Shadow is rare, even in the US. How did you get one in France?

“I had the chance to find it ready to go on leboncoin, already built! I was searching for an FGFS bike strong enough to beat the sh** out of it : gapping stair sets, bunny hopping around without breaking it.”

What do you use your bike for?

“It's a do-it-all bike. With that seamless trick track geometry, I ride every morning to the university (always on one wheel obviously), I gap what I find (platforms, stair sets…), and ride a lot flat. Sometimes, I go the "street" side of the skatepark here, in Bordeaux.”

Any favorite trick?

“The most enjoyable tricks to do with my Leader are the tricks coupled with a bunny hop (those most inspired or common to FGFS and BMX: the 180°, the bunny hop barspins, the 180° barspins, 360° taps, rollbacks/backlashes etc.) Why? The frame of this bike is slightly inclined towards the back, which allows you to take a good impulse to throw your bunny hop, and the large tires (700×47c at the front and at the rear) allow shock absorption, avoiding you (if you use the right technique for the trick in question of course) to destroy either your bike or your wrists on an impact following for example a 180° from the top of a stair set.

The geometry of my frame allows me to use it in a very all-purpose way: I can mistreat it with big jumps, a lot of impacts and throw big tricks from heights, but the bike is at the same time sufficiently straight to be absolutely comfortable. Moreover, the frame is versatile enough to allow me to do tricks more focused on the trick track side of fixie freestyle (fish and chips, super sliders, keo spins, one-hand/no hand wheelies, stem wheelies, frame wheelies , tire wheelies, rim wheelies etc).

But one of the biggest advantages offered by this frame is the famous barspin clearance, absent from almost all track bikes currently on the market.”

Any drawbacks?

“Frankly, this bike is perfect for me, but if I absolutely had to nitpick, I would say that the frame could lean back more to have more space for my bunny hops.

It's not really a fault in itself, but since I found this complete bike on leboncoin.fr, I hadn't chosen the size of the frame, which was adapted to the previous owner, much taller than me.

If I had assembled the bike myself, I would have taken a frame one size down, and I think that would have really changed a lot of things: I could have bunny hop even higher very easily and the bike would have been even more nervous and fast in rotations. That said, even if it’s too big for me, this bike is excellent in every way and its size never really restricted me.

However, progressing, this aspect could encourage me to take a new bike, this time a pure FGFS, so as not to be disturbed by the frame and the saddle when I perform a big bunny hop.”

Follow Ismael on Instagram for more FGFS, or join us at @after.spin.