BACK FLIPS, SIDE-SURFS, AND EURO ACTION – PART ONE OF MY INTERVIEW WITH TOM MEENTS
Seven-time World Champion Tom Meents is competing more in Europe this fall than he has in previous years, showing fans in Sweden, Holland, and Belgium just how his Maximum Destruction has become one of the world’s most popular and successful Monster Jam machines. The busy season for Meents across the Atlantic Ocean continues this coming weekend when he competes against a star-studded line-up in a huge soccer stadium in Cardiff, Wales, the first time for Monster Jam in that spacious venue which promises fans in the United Kingdom the chance to see live the spectacular type of stadium event that has become so popular each winter in the U.S.
Meents has always been one to stay busy after the hectic first quarter of the year, racing and freestyling every chance he gets even in the summer and fall when there are less events contested. The difference is that to stay busy this year Tom is in action thousands of miles from his Paxton, IL, home, which had me wondering if even though he is keeping his skills behind the wheel sharp on the Monster Jam World Tour, will the time away from the always busy Team Meents shop this fall cost him prep time for the 2008 Monster Jam season? “Just a little bit”, Meents answered. “You know, the truck I’m running over here this year is exactly like mine; it’s the truck that Neil Elliot always uses. It’s a real good piece. It’s actually a year newer than mine. It takes me a little bit of time, say two to three days, just to get used to this truck, say, just from being unfamiliar with the way it handles. You’d think they’d be the same but there are slight differences. But now getting to run like we did in Arnhem (Holland) with so many good drivers there, you know we had a class act field. A lot of good drivers with a lot of good trucks, and it was really good to get out there and run on a course that is really similar to what we’re going to run on in the winter time, you know, in the first quarter in the large stadiums. “
While Meents had just run a few events in previous years on the Monster Jam World Tour he sees a busier schedule this year in Europe as something that can be beneficial to him when the new season rolls around, getting to battle top talent on big courses throughout the fall, something that should then just roll on into 2008 for his team. Meents told me he has seen some drivers in previous years use the chance to improve and stay sharp in Europe as a momentum builder for the next winter campaign. “Yeah, I think you would probably agree yourself that some of the people that were on this tour last year and the year before, and I didn’t run it much the last couple of years, you would see them roll out in say, March or April, then you wouldn’t see them again until January and they’d be a lot better and you’d wonder ‘where did they get that at?’” Meents noted. “Well they were actually over here running some of the bigger shows over here, running on some big time courses and it actually helped them out a lot.” Several drivers fit into that category but probably the driver that has benefited the most from past action in Europe is Adam Anderson, who gained invaluable seat time across the pond and even won his first stadium race in Europe, then returned to North America to emerge as one of the fastest rising stars in the industry.
This 2007 edition has been a World Tour already filled with spectacular moments and it’s only half over, so European fans definitely have lots to look forward to in the events still to come: first in Cardiff, then next month in Stockholm, Sweden, and Helsinki, Finland. The top of the list of unforgettable moments so far on this year’s European circuit came back in June when Monster Jam debuted at Ullevi Stadium in Gothenburg, Sweden. As fans who watched Monster Jam on Speed last Saturday saw for the first time on television, it was there that Meents actually flipped Maximum Destruction 360 degrees, a complete back flip with the truck never stopping as Meents continued on in a breathtaking freestyle performance that earned a perfect 30 from the Swedish judges. Talking with Meents about that moment it’s clear that he is proud of what he did, but not satisfied. He says he can do it better, and says that we can look for him to continue to try to nail more back flips in competition when the course and obstacles present the opportunity. “Absolutely” was Meents’ response when I asked him if we are going to see him continue to try for the perfect back flip in Max-D. “I’m going to say that was kind of the first. I mean it is definitely more of a progression of a truck to be able to do it 100% clean. It was not 100% clean, but it shows the progression. Somebody had to do it on a motorcycle. You had Kerry Hart out there who was not doing it clean, then he did it clean, kind of, but he did it actually in his back yard more than he ever did it in competition. It was then Mike Metzger who actually brought the whole, full 100% back flip out. You know you have to start somewhere. And if you look at that and you look at any of the others who have done anything, that’s by far the closest any one has ever come to a clean one (a back flip in Monster Jam). It was a good one and I drove away. Actually I have pulled off some similar tricks that weren’t as clean as that one. In St. Louis this last year, and in a couple of other venues, similar to the one I pulled off in Detroit this year, kinda off getting a feel for it actually. You’ve really got to get a feel for it before you actually do it, I think.”
When we see moves like Tom’s back flip in Sweden and the incredible air that the top stars in the sport have been getting, not just during this year’s Euro events, but thinking back to the 2007 season and World Finals 8, many have asked whether the trucks are reaching their limit in terms of how high they can fly, how far they can leap, and how many new spectacular moves the drivers can come up with. Always an innovator on the track, Meents tells fans they can keep looking for him and the other top stars of the sport to keep raising the bar higher and higher. “I think we can definitely keep coming up with new stuff”, Meents predicted. “We haven’t reached the main plateau. You know I’m always dreaming about something new or thinking about something new. You know every year I go to the shows and I kind of pull something off before I do it. I was the first guy to freestyle on three wheels. It started when I broke a wheel off in Houston during a fall show when I was driving Monster Patrol and I just got to thinking, ‘man, why the heck didn’t I just keep that thing going. I should keep going, people would go crazy, I think I’ll try it next time. I should, the next time, actually pull the truck ahead, actually pick that one wheel up and go on.’ So the next time I broke a wheel off was in Minneapolis, and it was crazy. I pulled off some donuts with only three wheels. So that actually happened for the first time in Minneapolis a few months after the first time (that the wheel broke off in Houston). You kind of have to have the idea, then you have got to perfect it, just like anything else, you have to fail a little bit at first, but then you bring it to perfection.” That philosophy might surprise some who think that Meents just blasts on to the track without a plan and goes crazy, but Meents is one driver who visualizes and dreams of that next unprecedented move.
One move that always amazes the fans is a Maximum Destruction specialty, when Tom feels his truck start to roll over, then with the truck over sideways he hammers the throttle and continues to perform with the truck riding on the side walls of the tires in what has become known as “side-surfing”. Again, anyone who thinks that Meents’ side-surfs are unplanned, random events doesn’t realize just how much thought and practice go into these types of moves that have helped make Meents famous. As for the side-surf, “It takes a little bit of work”, Meents explained. “People aren’t used to being rolled over or thrown over in a car, or even in a Monster Truck for that matter, but a couple of times this year, like in Indianapolis, the truck would roll over and as it gets to the top of the tires as it rolls over it actually starts to back up, and everybody was asking me ‘how do you back across the floor that fast, do you throw it in reverse?’ No, you’ve got to think about it. And it did take me a while to think about it, but it’s going forward. You know you are riding on the top and the side of the tires so pushing forward it will actually start to back up. It’s actually crazy.” It’s that type of “crazy” that fans all over he world have come to love from Tom Meents.
In this space next week I’ll have more of my conversation with the record setting Meents, as the only seven-time Monster Jam champ looks ahead to next year and offers his thoughts on the new crop of Monster Jam stars that have entered the sport in the last few years.
