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Name: Jay Quinlan
Profession: Freestyle snowmobile rider
Birthdate: 4.27.79
Current Residence: Breckenridge, Colorado
Freestyle Snowmobile
Jay Quinlan is many things. He’s a snowmobile racer, a freestyle rider, an instructor, and a helicopter pilot. But, most importantly, he’s an innovator. Quinlan was the first snowmobile rider to stick a backflip in competition. That was at the 2003 Red Bull Fuel + Fury, in Jackson, Wyoming. When the rest of the field caught on, he answered by executing back-to-back backflips at the 2004 event, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The Innovator at Work
Quinlan’s innovation goes far beyond the backflip. In fact, Quinlan has been credited as a major player in the sport, leading the movement from racing, to freestyle, to freeride.
Born in Alaska in 1979, Quinlan scored a snocross racing sponsorship as a teenager. Successful years at the X Games and the snocross circuit followed, but Quinlan felt the need to take his talent to a new level. So he packed in his snocross gear and started perfecting freestyle runs on his own dime.
His work paid off with a win at the 2000 Gravity Games, on a course that combined quarterpipe, hits, huge tabletops, and gap jumps. Quinlan saw the sport’s potentials, and he was determined to help it realize them, bringing his tricks to the masses via groundbreaking video segments. Fans took notice and started wondering about the backflip.
There’s a natural progression in extreme sports: when somebody perfects a trick, it’s only a matter of time until fans demand to see the same stunt on a new apparatus. After Mat Hoffman did a backflip on a BMX bike, the expectation for one to be done on a dirt bike became huge. Once Mike Metzger did twenty-one flips in a single day, a snowmobile backy emerged as the new competitive grail.
“Everywhere I went, people were asking me when I was going to do it,” Quinlan remembers. “No one seemed to care about my past achievements; they cared only about the backflip. I knew I had to go out and kill it.” Quinlan understood that achieving a natural rotation wasn’t going to be easy, so he and his buddies built a special ramp to send the sled nearly vertical.
“I totaled four snowmobiles and took a trip to the hospital for a concussion, but in February 2003
I pulled off the backflip,” the Alaskan remembers. Next, he had to throw it down in a contest. Red Bull Fuel + Fury at Jackson Hole provided the opportunity, and Quinlan took the gold.
Godfather
Having accepted a special award from the governing body of snowmobile competition for his dedication to improving the sport, the man people call the “Godfather of Freestyle Snowmobile,” even in his mid-20’s, continued to push the envelope.
During the 2003 Red Bull Revolve Freeride Sled Tour in Australia, Quinlan set a new Southern Hemisphere jump record, spanning an amazing 30 meters. His return to Red Bull Fuel + Fury in 2004, was where he completed the first-ever consecutive backflips in competition. Still, Quinlan made perhaps the biggest positive impact for snowmobiling when he agreed to appear on The Late Show with David Letterman in 2005.
Quinlan firmly believes that the future of snowmobiling is in Alaska, which is one of the reasons he has become a helicopter pilot and flight instructor. Although he currently makes his home in more centrally located Colorado, someday Quinlan hopes to move back to the forty-ninth state, riding snowmobiles in the winter and flying visitors in for remote expeditions during the summer.
“In Alaska, the kids are pulling backflips over 100-foot gaps in natural terrain – they just push it so hard,” he says. “
2006 was a pivotal year for Quinlan. He worked with Rath Films to release “Too Weak to Walk,” and got back to his racing roots, winning the Red Bull Erzberg Challenge, a timed endurance event in Austria. He competed again in the Red Bull Fuel + Fury, which moved to Alaska, on the forefront of the freeride movement, and began filming a barrel roll, for the tv show, Stunt Junkies. The project was put on hold, however, when he lost his mother. “My mother was my biggest fan out there, and was always pushing me to never give up. “
Still dealing with the loss, Quinlan is charging on into 2007. For the first time, SKI-DOO has directly sponsored a team of riders, which Quinlan leads. He’s also been working on freestyle again, working out the issues that come with riding different sleds.
“It’s different from freeriding because of different motor sizes. I ride engine sizes from a 440, to a 600, modified all the way up to the three 800's that I have. People don't understand the differences when is comes to sleds and horsepower. So, going back and forth all the time sometimes can be dangerous with the broad range,” he explains
Quinlan is particularly excited about getting back to the X Games, as Winter X 11 will host Snowmobile Freestyle for the first time. No one is sure what he’s got planned, but you can bet it will be something innovative.